Notes to Authors: Guide for preparation of papers

Papers and posters should be sent by E-mail to the Senior Editor preston@lrrd.org. If acknowledgement is not received within two weeks then authors should send a reminder to the Senior Editor with details of the file names and dates sent.

The papers can be written with the aid of any of the principal word processing software programs and should be sent by e-mail as an attachment and with "LRRD" in the subject line. Email messages with attachments and unknown subject lines are not opened in view of virus risks.

The principle tools for publishing the journal are now: Open Office and Microsoft Office. These are the preferred formats for receiving papers and short communications.

(Note that Open Office is a package of free software, with equivalent features to Microsoft Office, that you may freely download from Internet at: http://download.openoffice.org/)

Authors should examine carefully the Notes to Authors appeared in the last issue of LRRD and strictly follow the all the instructions.

Lack of respect of these instructions may lead to the rejection of the paper

Key words

Do not repeat the words already in the title of the paper. Search engines such as Google automatically search the title. Key words should draw attention to features of the paper not addressed in the title. .

Body of Text

- For Page Set up Use: Paper size A4 and Margins 2.5 cm
- Use the font "Times New Roman" 12 pt.
- Do not use full word capitals for titles nor for names of authors.
- Include your e-mail address below your postal address in the Title
- Indicate the Keywords after the Abstract in alphabetical order
- Separate the Titles and associate-titles from the previous and next lines by an empty line, using the ‘return’ or ‘enter’ key
- Do not use numbers such 1.; 1.1.; 1.1.1.; to mark the Titles and Sub-titles.
- Separate each paragraph by an empty line, using the ‘return’ or ‘enter’ key
- Make sure the paragraphs are aligned to the left not “justified”
- Do not use an indent in the beginning of each paragraph

In text and tables:

Ensure that numbers contain only three digits after or before “000... ”
Eg: 234.214 becomes 234
1.2367 becomes 1.24
0.00032176 becomes 0.000322
0.01 should be 0.00712
for R²only two digits after or before “00... ”
eg: R²= 0.677 becomes R²= 0.68

Graphics:

Where possible, please always supply in Excel or Open Office Calc the original spreadsheets including graphs and data which were used to produce graphics in the papers, since this allows us to produce a uniform look and maintain the quality of the finished journal. Within the graphics Font should be: Arial – Regular – 10 pt.

Tables:

Please format them using the Table menu, and not Tabs and Spaces
- when using the tabular format please allot a new cell to each piece of data.
- include the title of the table as well as the notes at the bottom of table inside the Table itself not in the body of the text.

Example:

Table 1. Mean bodyweight and body size parameters of male and female Nigerian local Chickens
Measurement	Male	Female
Bodyweight, kg	1.4 9 ± 0.43^a	1.13 ± 0.29^a
Body length, cm	42.0 ± 4.60^a	37.2 ± 3.44^a
Body girth, cm	28.8 ± 3.35^a	26.5 ± 2.09^a
Shank length, cm	10.8 ± 1.23^a	8.90 ± 1.13^b
*^ab* means in the same row for each parameter with different superscripts are different at P<0.05

References:

In the text, do not put a ‘coma’ between the name and the date. Do not put a ‘dot’ after ‘et al’. “et al” should be in regular font, not in italics.

Example: (Gueye et al 1998)

They should be set up with minimum punctuation but maximum detail of the actual citation. Abbreviations, in particular of journal titles should not be used. In the list of references, citations should include the appropriate "URL" for the article, when this URL is freely accessible. For example:

Cerón-Muñoz M F, Tonhati H, Costa C N, Rojas-Sarmiento D and Solarte Portilla C 2004 Variance heterogeneity for milk yield in Brazilian and Colombian Holstein herds. Livestock Research for Rural Development, Volume 16, Article #20 Retrieved June 1, 2004, from http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd16/4/cero16020.htm

Many Journals are at present accessible on the Web (do not indicate the URL of Journals that need a subscription or a payment!!). Here is a list (not limitative) of some Journals freely available:

Livestock Research for Rural Development: http://www.lrrd.org/

Tropical Animal Production: http://www.utafoundation.org/tapindex.htm

Journal of Animal Science: http://jas.fass.org/ (for issues appeared more than one year earlier!)

Journal of Dairy Science: http://jds.fass.org/ (for issues appeared more than one year earlier!)

Annales de Zootechnie (accessible through Animal Research site)

Animal Research: http://animres.edpsciences.org/

Pakistan Journal of Nutrition: http://www.pjbs.org/pjnonline/

Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=1516-3598&lng=en&nrm=iso

Revista Brasileira de Saúde e Produção Animal: http://revistas.ufba.br/index.php/rbspa/issue/archive

Archivos de Zootecnia: http://www.uco.es/organiza/servicios/publica/az/php/az.php

Most of FAO (http://www.fao.org) publications and
FAO/IAEA (http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/index.html) publications

Check that this URL is complete (it means that it leads directly to the article, not to the Journal Home Page), correct and functioning by clicking on it: it should lead you to the Web site.!

PLEASE:

- Use the Spell-Check tool in order to correct any spelling mistake, and

- Ensure that references in the text are in the reference list and vice versa.

An easy way to check this latter point is to print the reference list and then from the beginning of the text to use the "FIND" command and type "19" and then "20". This will locate all the references assuming you have cited correctly the source including the date.

The reviewers appreciate the pressure put on academics to publish in order to maintain their positions. This very pressure should, however, encourage authors to be more rigorous in their presentation. If they evince a lack of interest in accuracy they should not expect that increasingly frustrated referees, giving freely of their time and experience, should contain their frustrations and make the paper accurate for them.

Proof reading of papers:

Each paper as it is edited is being made available as a provisional "url" which is communicated to authors when the final version of their paper is ready in html format. Authors can then check the paper for possible errors or last minute corrections and inform the editors accordingly. Queries on the proofs made by the editors are indicated in "red" (suggested rejection) or "blue" (suggested additions or changes).

Authors sending corrections to the proofs should send an email to the Chief Editor in the following format:

data / text to be replaced should be written in "red" font
new data / text should be written in "blue" font

Do not send a copy of the whole paper as this would require the editors repeating the whole process of conversion to HTML format, which can be quite time-consuming.

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