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As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Manuscript format
Regular articles

The manuscripts should be written in English in the following sequence: Title page, author(s) and affiliations, Abstract and keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Acknowledgements, References and Appendix (if any). Each of these manuscript components should start on a new page. All manuscripts submitted are subject for peer review and will be sent to at least two experts in the field. Author(s) is/ are encouraged to suggest the names and full addresses of potential reviewers, but the editorial board reserves the right of final selection.

  • Title page:
      The title should be brief, describing the contents of the paper. It should include the name(s) of the author(s) and institutional affiliation(s), the name of the corresponding author along with full address including e-mail address. Numerical superscripts should be used against affiliations if the authors are more than one.
    1. Abstract:
    2. The abstract should be self-explanatory and comprehensible without reference to the text. It should not exceed 250 words and must state main objectives and findings of the research. It should be written in the past tense. Literature should not be cited.
    1. Key words:
    2. Following the abstract, about 3 to 5 key words that will provide indexing references should be listed in alphabetical order
    1. Introduction:
    2. This part of the paper should state the justification or underlying hypothesis for conducting the research in relation to recent international work and the scientific progress should be pointed out accordingly. At the end of the introduction, a clear-cut and precise statement of the aim of the work should be added.
    1. Materials and Methods:
    2. Under this heading a concise description of the conditions, under which the investigation was carried out and the procedures, techniques, experimental designs and materials used should be given. In addition, data collection, statistical methods and analysis of data should be clearly described. In general the materials and methods should be complete enough to allow experiments to be reproduced.
    1. Results and Discussion:
    2. Results should be presented and described systematically. Detailed interpretation of data should be discussed with reference to problems indicated in the introduction or stated as objectives with other earlier findings in the area of current research work. Conclusions, in a few sentences, can be stated at the end of the results and discussion part of the paper.
    1. Acknowledgments:
    2. Acknowledgements of persons, grants, funds, etc. should be brief, may be given in a separate section immediately following the results and discussion (conclusion).
    1. References
8.1 Citation in the text:
Except for invited reviews, no more than 25 papers should be cited. In the text, a reference identified by means of an author’s name should be followed by the year of publication of the reference in parentheses (author- year-style). 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.
Examples:
(Solomon and Waktole, 2005) or
… According to Solomon and Waktole (2005)…..

For three or more authors, use et al., i.e. Solomon et al. (1989) in the text (but give all authors’ names in the references list). References are listed in alphabetical order in the references list. Put dates of publication chronologically when references are large (David et al., 1990; Whittaker, 2007; Aneja and Ulf, 2010).

Examples of acceptable formats for presenting references from various sources are:

8.2. Journal Article:
Erickson, WA, Jaeger, MM and Bruggers, RL. 1980. The Development of Methiocarb for Protecting Sorghum from Birds in Ethiopia. Ethiop, J, Agric. Sci. 2:91-100.

Beyene, C, Coppock, CE and McDowell, RE. 1977. Laboratory evaluation and estimation of nutritive values of some Ethiopian feedstuffs. J. Assoc. Adv. Agric. Sci. Africa. 4(2): 9-23.

8.3. Book
Steel, RGD and Torrie, JH. 1960. Principles and procedures of statistics. McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New York.
8.4. Chapter in a Book
Loegering, Q. 1984. Genetics of the pathogen- host association. pp.165-192. In William RB and Alan P (eds.) The cereal rusts, vol. 1. Academic Press, Orlando, Florida.
8.5. Paper in Proceedings
Mesfin, A. 1982. An investigation in the cause of wilt in cotton. pp. 129-139. In Proc. of symposium on cotton production under Irrigation in Ethiopia. Melka Werer, Ethiopia, 21-22 October 1982, Inst. Agric. Res., Addis Ababa.
8.6. Web based papers:
Indicate the web site as follows:
Anonymous (for unknown author), year, title (on line), available at: web page pp and accessed date should be indicated.
Example: Anonymous(2007). Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Technology on the Horticultural Plant Production at Nursery. http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/faculty/davies/
students/alarcon/AMFApplications.pdf; pp1-11 (accessed 10-07-2007).

However, when author(s) is/are known: Author(s), year, title (online), available at: web page, pp. Accessed date should be indicated.
Example: Wiersum F. (2008): Experiences with certification of wild forest coffee in Ethiopia.
www.underutilizedspecies.
org/Documents/PUBLICATIONS/experiences_wild_coffee_certification.pdf, pp1-25 (accessed 28-05-2008)

Unpublished and other source materials not readily available in libraries should not be included in the reference list but should be mentioned in parentheses in the text as personal communication.

Abbreviate periodical names according to accepted standards.

Typing and Paper
The manuscript must be typed, double-spaced; on one side of an A4 paper (21 by 30 cm).

Margins and Page Numbers
Leave margins of 2.5 cm on the left, right, top and bottom of each page and number all pages.

Headings and Captions
Main text headings should be centered and typed in title case. Sub-headings are typed in small letters starting from the left-hand margin. Both headings and sub-headings should be bold.

Tables and Figures
Tables and figures should facilitate comparisons, reveal relationship, and save space. Do not repeat information in the text presented in the table or in figures or in charts or graphs. Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively/serially by Arabic numerals as Table 1, Table 2 etc., and Figure 1, 2, etc. in the order in which they are first cited in the text and should be referred to in the text by their numbers. Each table and figure, with its specific heading and legend, should be typed on a separate page. Do not use internal lines (horizontal lines) for tables. Place explanatory matter in the footnotes, not in the headings. Explain non standard abbreviations that are used in each table as footnotes. The approximate position of each table/figure should be indicated in the text.

Abbreviations and Symbols
Use only standard abbreviations and recognized symbols for chemical elements, statistics, etc. However, abbreviations should not be used in the title and abstract. The full expansion of terminology for which abbreviations stand should precede its first use in the text unless it is an internationally accepted one.

Units
All measurements should be reported only in International System of Units (SI). Symbols and nomenclatures should conform to international recommendations with respect to specific fields of specialization. For example, do not use quintal (q) but ‘kg’ or ‘t’ instead. IUPAC Nomenclature should be used when naming compounds (www.iupac.org).

Font Size and Type
Use font size of 12 point; Times New Roman
Short Communications
Short communications are limited to a maximum of two tables and two figures. They should present a complete study that is more limited in scope than is found in full-length papers. The items of manuscript preparation listed above apply to short communications.

Review articles
These are aimed at giving an overview of a particular subject suitable for a wider audience. Review articles summarize information published on a certain topic and are not limited to own results. Rather than an assemblage of information with a complete literature survey, a comprehensive critical description, and selection of the material is indispensable. They typically should have a length of 45 000 characters (or ten manuscript pages). Up to 15 figures may be included (one figure counts approx. 900 characters).

Book chapters
A critical evaluation of recently published books in any discipline of applied natural sciences will be published under this column.