Author Guidelines

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the online Manuscript Tracking System. Regardless of the source of the word-processing tool, only electronic PDF (.pdf) or Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf) files can be submitted through the MTS. There is no page limit. Only online submissions are accepted to facilitate rapid publication and minimize administrative costs. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the paper during submission and peer review. If for some technical reason submission through the MTS is not possible, the author can contact tech@skyfox.org.in for support.

Terms of Submission

Papers must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by Skyfox or any other publisher. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the authors’ responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission of a paper that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability. All enquiries concerning the publication of accepted papers should be addressed to tech@skyfox.org.in.

Peer Review

Skyfox Publishing Group journals employ a double-blind review process, in which the author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

Article Processing Charges

International Journal of Agricultural and Life sciences is an open access journal. Open access charges allow publishers to make the published material available for free to all interested online visitors. For more details about the article processing charges of International Journal of Agricultural and Life sciences, please visit the Article Processing Charges information page.

Corresponding Author Responsibilities

The corresponding author takes responsibility for and speaks on behalf of all authors.
Pre-publication:
• Ensure that the manuscript is in full adherence with all SKYFOX editorial and publishing policies.
• Ensure that all authors have access to the final version of the manuscript that is submitted to the journal, and agree to the author list and author contributions.
• Ensure that all authors have seen the final draft of the manuscript before it is published.
• Provide to the journal written confirmation that all authors consent to any requested changes in the manuscript’s authorship.
Post-publication:
• Continue to be the point of contact for queries about the published paper.
• Inform all coauthors of any matters arising and ensure such matters are dealt with promptly.

Units of Measurement

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

Title and Authorship Information

The following information should be included

Paper title
Full author names
Full institutional mailing addresses
Email addresses

Author Identification

SKYFOX endorses ORCID and requires that all corresponding authors provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. We encourage coauthors to register and use their ORCID as well.
We publish the corresponding author’s ORCID iD as well as any ORCIDs provided by coauthors if the manuscript is accepted. We participate in the auto-update feature implemented by Crossref such that when a paper is published, the authors’ ORCIDs are deposited and subsequently used to update each author’s ORCID record. Read more about ORCID.

Data Sharing Policy

If you’re submitting your paper to a Skyfox Publishing Group journal with a data sharing policy, then you’ll be prompted to provide a data availability statement with your submission.

Copyright

Authors retain the copyrights of their papers (Effective on 01.01.2018), and all open access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations.

While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express, or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

License

Skyfox Publishing Group applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to works we publish.Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse your article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This facilitates freedom in re-use and also ensures that SKYFOX content can be mined without barriers for the needs of research.

Appropriate attribution can be provided by simply citing the original article (e.g., Seydi, Y., & Arzu, U. (2016). The importance of geographical indication in gastronomy tourism: Turkey. Int J Agr Life Sci, 2(4), 73-79. doi: 10.22573/spg.ijals.016.s12200069). If you have a question about the license, please email us.

Disclosure Policy

A competing interest exists when professional judgment concerning the validity of research is influenced by a secondary interest, such as financial gain. We require that our authors reveal any possible conflict of interests in their submitted manuscripts.
If there is no conflict of interests, authors should state that “The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.”

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
Final approval of the version to be published.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope and number of institutions involved (vide infra). The authors should provide a justification, if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

Contribution Details

Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. Description should be divided in following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One or more author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as ‘guarantor’.

Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests

All authors of must disclose any and all conflicts of interest they may have with publication of the manuscript or an institution or product that is mentioned in the manuscript and/or is important to the outcome of the study presented. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Copies of any Permission(s)

It is the responsibility of authors/ contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. A copy of the permission obtained must accompany the manuscript. Copies of any and all published articles or other manuscripts in preparation or submitted elsewhere that are related to the manuscript must also accompany the manuscript.

Protection of Patients’ Rights to Privacy

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients’ names from figures unless they have obtained informed consent from the patients. The journal abides by ICMJE guidelines:

1. Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to obtain the patient consent form before the publication and have the form properly archived. The consent forms are not to be uploaded with the cover letter or sent through email to editorial or publisher offices.

2. If the manuscript contains patient images that preclude anonymity, or a description that has obvious indication to the identity of the patient, a statement about obtaining informed patient consent should be indicated in the manuscript.

Sending a Revised Manuscript

The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. However, there is no need to submit the “First Page” or “Covering Letter” file while submitting a revised version. When submitting a revised manuscript, contributors are requested to include, the ‘referees’ remarks along with point to point clarification at the beginning in the revised file itself. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as underlined or colored text in the article.

Reprints and Proofs

Journal provides no free printed reprints. Authors can purchase reprints, payment for which should be done at the time of submitting the proofs.

Checklist

Covering letter

Authors

Last name and given name provided along with Middle name initials (where applicable)
Author for correspondence, with e-mail address provided
Number of contributors restricted as per the instructions
Identity not revealed in paper except title page (e.g. name of the institute in Methods, citing previous study as ‘our study’, names on figure labels, name of institute in photographs, etc.)

Presentation and format

Double spacing
Margins 1.25 cm from all four sides
Page numbers included at bottom
Title page contains all the desired information
Running title provided (not more than 50 characters)
Abstract page contains the full title of the manuscript (structured abstract of 250 words for original articles, unstructured abstracts of about 150 words for all other manuscripts excluding letters to the Editor)
Key words provided (three or more)
Introduction of 75-100 words
Materials and Methods (This part should contain sufficient detail so that all procedures can be repeated. It can be divided into subsections if several methods are described)
Results and Discussion (This section may each be divided by subheadings or may be combined).
Conclusions (This should clearly explain the main conclusions of the work highlighting its importance and relevance).
Acknowledgments (All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the paper before the references and may include supporting grants, presentations, and so forth).
References according to the journal’s instructions, punctuation marks checked
Send the article file without ‘Track Changes’

Language and grammar

Uniformly American English
Write the full term for each abbreviation at its first use in the title, abstract, keywords and text separately unless it is a standard unit of measure. Numerals from 1 to 10 spelt out
Numerals at the beginning of the sentence spelt out
Check the manuscript for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors
If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer’s name and address (city and state/country).
Species names should be in italics

Tables and figures

No repetition of data in tables and graphs and in text
Actual numbers from which graphs drawn, provided
Figures necessary and of good quality (colour)
Table and figure numbers in Arabic letters (not Roman)
Labels pasted on back of the photographs (no names written)
Figure legends provided (not more than 40 words)
Patients’ privacy maintained (if not permission taken)
Credit note for borrowed figures/tables provided
Write the full term for each abbreviation used in the table as a footnote

References

References text type should be 12 point (Times New Roman). In the text, a reference identified by means of an author’s name should be followed by the date of the reference in parentheses. When there are more than two authors, only the first author’s name should be mentioned, followed by ’et al ‘. In the event that an author cited has had two or more works published during the same year, the reference, both in the text and in the reference list, should be identified by a lower case letter like ‘a’ and ’b‘ after the date to distinguish the works.

References must be followed to APA style guidelines

Article in a Journal:

Shree T.D., Wilson T.C., Moses W.A., & Trace, C. (1995). Storage of papaya seeds for improved quality. Int. J. Chem. Stud.; 4(3): 2125-2132.

For Book:

Brown B, Aaron M. (2001). The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York.

For PhD Thesis:

Brown B, Aaron M. (2001). Practical dissertation title (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Yale, New Haven, United States.

Conference Proceedings:

Jinap, S. and Yusof, S. (1994). A Comprehensive Approach: Reveals Conservation Education In College. 1-7. 10.17501/icedu.2018.4101.

Internet

Internet: Food and Drug Administration (2000). Bad bug book – Aflatoxins. Downloaded from http:vm.cfsan.fda.gov/¬mow/chap41.html on 3/3/2000.

Contributors’ form

Click here to download Manuscript Cover Letter

Click here to download Author Disclosure Form

These ready to use templates are made to help the contributors write as per the requirements of the Journal.

Save the templates on your computer and use them with a word processor program.
Click open the file and save as the manuscript file.