Articles

Author's Guide (Click to Download PDF Format)

Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Journal (AFNRJ) is an international peer-reviewed, open-access, and print journal. AFNRJ is the official scientific journal of the Faculty of Agriculture, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. The scope of the journal is to publish peer-reviewed research papers, short communications, reviews, and comments. The emphasis is on Animal Science, Crop Science, Forest Science, Wildlife Management, Food Science and Technology,  Fisheries, Aquaculture Management, Climate Change and Environmental Management, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Extension, Horticulture, Rural Sociology, Soil Science, Veterinary Science, Agricultural Engineering, Agroforestry Practice, Biotechnology, Biomass, Carbon, and Bioenergy;  Genetics and Breeding; Molecular Biology; Landscape Ecology, Biometrics and Remote Sensing, Conservation and Ecotourism, Rangeland Management, and other relevant fields.

What can you expect if you publish in the Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Journal (AFNRJ)?

1. A straightforward and friendly publishing service
2. Immediate, free access to your article for anyone anywhere in the world
3. Rigorous peer review featuring constructive dialogue with experts
4. Retention of the full copyright in your work
5. Rapid publication on a state-of-the-art platform
6. Global marketing and indexing, including innovative article-level metrics
7. High production valuesPerpetual archive preservation of your work

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

 Manuscripts for AFNRJ must be written in UK English. Authors whose native language is not English must have their manuscripts checked by a native speaker of English before submission. The manuscript will be peer-reviewed by referees selected by the editor and will be published in approximately the order in which the final version is received. Manuscripts will be judged based on originality, innovativeness, relevancy, and acceptance based on reviewers’ recommendations. Upon acceptance for publication, the manuscript must not be published again in any form without the written consent of both the author(s) and editor.

Manuscript Submission

 Manuscripts for publication in AFNRJ must be submitted electronically as text files saved in MS Word to [email protected] and copy [email protected]. Submission must be by the author(s) to whom acknowledgment of receipt and other correspondence will be addressed. Any manuscript submitted must be unpublished work not being offered for publication elsewhere. Upon submission, a manuscript number will be emailed to the corresponding author within 72 hours.

General Format

 The manuscript should be typewritten with double spacing on one side of standard A4. The text should be prepared in single-column format, 12 pt. New Times Roman. Headings except the abstract should be bold and capitalized. Subheadings should also be bold, with keywords starting with a capital letter. Both headings and subheadings must be left aligned.  All pages must be numbered.

Original Full-Length Research Manuscript

This should include original empirical data that has not been published anywhere earlier (except as an abstract). The manuscript should not be more than 6–8 published journal pages. As a general rule, this means that the manuscript should be limited to approximately 15 double-spaced typewritten pages, from the abstract to the reference page or appendix, as the case may be.

Review Papers

Review paper should not have empirical data acquired by the authors but should include a discussion of papers published and data acquired in a specific area. All data used must be adequately referenced. The review paper must explore the topic thoroughly and should be approximately 18–20 double-spaced typewritten pages.

Short Communication

Short Communications should be urgent communications of important preliminary results that are very original, of high interest, and likely to have a significant impact on the subject area of the journal. There is no strict page limit for short communication, but not more than 5–7 double-spaced typewritten pages, plus 2–3 figures and/or tables, and 15–20 key references are recommended.

Manuscript Structure

 The order of the sections should be as follows: title, author(s), address, abstract, keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, conclusions, acknowledgment (if applicable), conflict of interest, authors’ contributions, and references.

✔      First Page

• Title of manuscript
• List for all authors, affiliations, emails, and phone numbers (WhatsApp preferred)
• Open Researcher and Contributor IDentity (ORCID). All authors must provide their ORCID. Authors who don’t have ORCID should register for free using this link: https://orcid.org/signin.

✔      Second Page

Title Page

The title page should contain the title of the manuscript, name(s) of the author(s), and their affiliations. The title should not contain any abbreviation, and it should enlighten the contents of the manuscript. The affiliations should contain the department, institution, city, state, and country. A superscript number must be provided after each author's name and in front of their addresses for identification. The corresponding author should be indicated with an asterisk and the e-mail address provided.

ABSTRACT

The abstract should be concise, informative, and not exceed 250 words. The abstract should be arranged in one paragraph, covering a brief description of the purpose of the work. Techniques, methods, and the design used. Major findings with relevant statistics, p-values, and confidence intervals.  Major conclusions and recommendations.

Keywords

Between 4 - 6 keywords should be provided. Authors should try as much as possible that keywords contain the words not in the title and avoid general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of').

✔      Third to last page

INTRODUCTION (TIMES: NEW ROMAN, CAPITAL, BOLD, 12 FONT)

This section should provide a factual background, a clearly defined problem, a proposed solution, the scope and justification of the work done. All these should be backed by relevant literature.  Ninety percent (90%) of the literature used should not be more than TEN years from the date the work was carried out, except in exceptional cases.

 

MATERIAL AND METHODS (TIMES NEW ROMAN, CAPITAL, BOLD, 12 FONT) This section should provide adequate information that will allow the experiment to be reproduced. Already published methods should be mentioned with references. Significant modifications of published methods and new methods should be described in detail. This section should include sub-sections based on the test or investigation carried out following the format below:

Subheading (Times New Roman, Bold, 12 Font): Second Level Heading. Note: All the keywords must start with a capital letter.

Sub-subheading (Times New Roman, bold, 12 font) - Third-level heading. Note: Only the opening word in the caption must start with a capital letter.

 

Sub-sub-subheading (Times New Roman, italics, bold 12 font) fourth-level heading. Note:

Only the opening word in the caption must start with a capital letter.

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Results should be clearly described concisely. Results for different parameters should be described under subheadings or in separate paragraphs.  Table or figure numbers should be mentioned in parentheses for better understanding. Discussion must not repeat the results but provide a detailed interpretation of data. This should interpret the significance of the findings of the work. Recent citations should be given in support of the findings (note: 90% of the citations must be from literature published not more than TEN years from when the work was carried out). The results and discussion may be separated. But it is recommended that the sections be joined. As in the material and method section, this section must include sub-sections based on the results of the test or investigation carried out following the format below:

Subheading (Times New Roman, Bold, 12 Font) Second Level Heading. Note: All the keywords must start with a capital letter.

Sub-subheading (Times new roman, bold, 12 font) - Third level heading. Note: Only the opening word in the caption must start with capital letter.

Sub-sub-subheading (Times New Roman, italics, bold 12 font) - Forth level heading. Note:

Only the opening word in the caption must start with a capital letter.

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures should be placed inside the text. Tables and figures must be presented in relation to their appearance in the text. It is suggested that the discussion about the tables and figures appear in the text before the appearance of the respective tables and figures. No tables or figures should be given without discussion or reference inside the text.

Tables should be explanatory enough to be understandable without any text reference. Single spacing should be maintained throughout the table, including table headings and footnotes. Table headings should be placed above the table. Footnotes should be placed below the table with superscript. lowercase letters.

Each figure should have a caption. The caption should be concise and typed separately, outside the figure area. Figures should be self-explanatory. Information presented in the figure should not be repeated in the table. All symbols and abbreviations used in the illustrations should be defined clearly. Figure legends should be given below the figures.

CONCLUSIONS

Conclusions should be based strictly on the major findings from the study. It is recommended that the conclusions be itemised using Arabic numerals.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A brief acknowledgment section may be given after the conclusion section, just before the references. The acknowledgements of people who assisted in manuscript preparation, funding for research, etc. should be listed in this section. All sources of funding should be declared as acknowledgments. Authors should declare the role of the funding agency, if any, in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

 

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

“Authors A and B” (e.g., Chukwu J.U. and Okeke, P.O.) managed data collection, interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript, material support, and review of manuscripts and wrote the first draft of the manuscripts. “Authors B and C” (e.g., Okeke, P.O., and Okonkwo, B.I.) managed the literature searches. “Author D” (e.g., Somtochukwu, O.C.) managed the development of methodology, data analysis, and the development of the model. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

REFERENCES

 Authors are required to pay special attention to the accuracy and correct presentation of references. All references must be arranged first alphabetically and then chronologically. The author(s) should follow the latest edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) style in referencing. Please visit www.apastyle.org to learn more about APA style or Click to DOWNLOAD APA Reference Example Guide (PDF).

In-text references should be cited by giving the author's name and year of publication (Ebenebe, 2024). In the case of two authors (Meludu & Chukwu, 2023), and in the case of more than two authors (Igwe et al., 2006). If the reference is provided by the same author(s) in the same year, it must be identified by the letters "a," "b,"  "c,"  etc., which are placed after the publication year (Ikeogu, 2022^a). Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically. Examples: "as demonstrated (Agu, 2011^a, 2011^b, 2011; Agu & Obasi, 2012; Chukwu et al., 2012; Ezenwenyi and Umeh, 2013; Ojomah 2020).

Example of in-text citation: According to Obidiebube (2024), the impact of climate change has been reported on both natural and human systems (Okeke, 2023).

References to unpublished personal communications or in-press materials should be avoided. The references should conform to the following style and punctuation:

Journal Article

Ogana, FN., Chukwu, O. & Ajayi, S. (2020). Tree Size Distribution Modelling: Moving from Complexity to Finite Mixture.  Journal of Forest and Environmental Science, 36(1), 7-16. https://doi.org/10.7747/JFES.2020.36.1.7 

Kiribou, R., Tehoda, P., Chukwu, O., Bempah, G., Ku¨hl, H. S., Ferreira, J., Sop, T., Carvalho, J., Mengel, M., Kulik, L., Mucyo, J.P.S., Hoek, Y.V.D, & Heinicke, S. (2024). Exposure of African ape sites to climate change impacts. PLOS Climate, 3(2), e0000345. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000345

Conference Proceedings

• Conference proceedings published in a journal

Duckworth, A. L., Quirk, A., Gallop, R., Hoyle, R. H., Kelly, D. R., & Matthews, M. D. (2019). Cognitive and noncognitive predictors of success. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 116(47), 23499–23504. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910510116

• Conference proceedings published as a whole book

Kushilevitz, E., & Malkin, T. (Eds.). (2016). Lecture notes in computer science: Vol. 9562. Theory of cryptography. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49096-9

• Conference proceedings published as a book chapter

Bedenel, A.-L., Jourdan, L., & Biernacki, C. (2019). Probability estimation by an adapted genetic algorithm in web insurance. In R. Battiti, M. Brunato, I. Kotsireas, & P. Pardalos (Eds.), Lecture notes in computer science: Vol. 11353. Learning and intelligent optimization (pp. 225–240). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05348-2_21

Conference presentations

• Conference presentation

Evans, A. C., Jr., Garbarino, J., Bocanegra, E., Kinscherff, R. T., & Márquez-Greene, N. (2019, August 8–11). Gun violence: An event on the power of community [Conference presentation]. APA 2019 Convention, Chicago, IL, United States. https://convention.apa.org/2019-video

• Abstract of a conference presentation

Cacioppo, S. (2019, April 25–28). Evolutionary theory of social connections: Past, present, and future [Conference presentation abstract]. Ninety-ninth annual convention of the Western Psychological Association, Pasadena, CA, United States. https://westernpsych.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WPA-Program-2019-Final-2.pdf

Book

Nwoboshi, L.C. (1982). Tropical silviculture: Principle and techniques. Ibadan University Press, Ibadan, Nigeria. 333p. https://doi.org/10.1037/JANH168-000

Contribution to a Book (book chapter in an edited book)

Mettam, G.R. & Adams, L.B. (1999). How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: Jones, B.S., Smith, R.Z. (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age. E-Publishing Inc., New York, pp. 281–304.

Web pages

Bologna, C. (2019, October 31). Why some people with anxiety love watching horror movies. HuffPost.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anxiety-love-watching-horror-movies_l_5d277587e4b02a5a5d57b59e  Accessed 26 June 2024.

 Note: Authors are strongly requested to include the DOI in the reference, if a journal article has a DOI. If the journal article does not have a DOI but does have a URL (https, www) that will resolve for readers (e.g., it is from an online journal that is not part of a database), include the URL of the article at the end of the reference.

Units of Measurement: Units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using System International (SI) units.

Preparation of Figures

All figures should be cited and presented in the paper in a consecutive order (e.g. Figure 1:). Figures should be supplied as JPEG or PNG formats. Images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If an image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers. Title of the image or figure should be provided below the image or figure.

Preparation of tables

Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title, and if numerical measurements are given (e.g., Table 1: Table showing the number of crops utilized for this study), the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used (please see the table below or refer to an already published paper in AFNRJ).

Table 1: Bird species composition in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka

Habitat	Forested	Open	Pooled
Number of Families	25	24	28
Number of bird species	57	55	73
Total number of individual birds	1019	965	1984
Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index (H-)	3.20	3.18	3.19
Pielou’s species evenness index (E)	0.461	0.463	0.46

Source: Ukpeli et al. (2024)

Equations

All equations should be numbered in order from starting, and the notations used in the various equations should be given after the abstract.  Authors are insisted on following standard notations and SI units’ systems, even though it’s not mandatory. All equations should be prepared using Microsoft Equation Editor.

 Article Processing Cost (APC)

AFNRJ has no funding or sponsorship; hence, the author pays the following one-time fees to cover the costs of peer review, copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving, and journal management.

• Authors, resident Nigeria:

Submission fee (non-refundable): N5,000

Publication fee (accepted manuscript): N15,000

• Authors resident outside Nigeria:

1. Low-income Countries

Submission fee (Non-refundable): $20

Publication fee (Accepted manuscript): $70

1. Middle-income Countries

Submission fee (Non-refundable): $30

Publication fee (Accepted manuscript): $100

1. High-income Countries

Submission fee (Non-refundable): $100

Publication fee (Accepted manuscript): $500

Manuscript received will be subjected to a thorough peer review. However, the decision on acceptance or rejection of an article rests entirely upon the reviewers’ reports and Editorial Board members. Authors of accepted papers will be required to proceed with payment of the publication fee and submit a corrected copy of the manuscript with evidence of payment.

Note: The category was based on the World Bank, kindly Click HERE to confirm your country category. In addition to Nigerian Naira (NGN), we also accept payment in Euros (EUR) and US Dollars (USD).

Click to Download the PDF Format of the Author's Guide

Payments should be made to:

Acc No.: 1312857748

Acc Name: Agric, Food & Nat Resources Journal

Bank: ZENITH BANK