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| Figure 1: Papers submitted in the period 2009-2014 |
Welcome to Volume 27, Number 2 of Livestock Research for Rural Development
LRRD is fully OPEN ACCESS, with no publication charges, on the principle that research findings related to sustainability of farming systems should be freely available in the public domain.
Papers may be copied and reprinted freely.
The Editorial committee of LRRD have long recognized the unsustainable basis of "industrial" live stock production systems, the development of which was facilitated, and is still sustained, by readily available fossil fuels (which until 2008 were also of very low price). As has been stated by many commentators and analysts (see recent reviews by:
Leng http://www.mekarn.org/workshops/environ/proenv/lengnew.htm) and Preston (http://www.mekarn.org/workshops/environ/proenv/pres.htm),
this situation must change as resources are finite and climate change is inevitable. Systems of live stock production must also change to meet the challenges of food and energy production in a warming, resource-depleting world. The mission of LRRD is to promote research which will respond to these challenges by developing farming systems which are: "localized, multi-crop, energy and water efficient, with a negative carbon footprint, are socially just and self-sustaining".
The future requirements of society for food and energy can best be met from integrated small to medium family farm systems in which:
· all resources are produced locally,
· the direct and indirect use of solar energy is maximized,
· all wastes are recycled;
· the carbon footprint is negative;
· there are overall environmental and social benefits.
To promote research on:
1. use of local resources for live stock production in ways that are non-competitive with human needs;
2. development of systems for producing renewable energy by:
a. biodigestion of animal and human organic wastes;
b. gasification of dry fibrous residues from crops grown primarily as food/feed for humans and live stock;
c. solar voltaic panels
3. promotion of indigenous live stock breeds that have high reproductive rates and adaptation to use of local feed resources and local climatic conditions;
4. regeneration of soil fertility through promotion of tree crops and recycling of organic matter
5. development of emerging markets for ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient sequestration.
6. promotion of “farmer“ markets for food produced in environmentally friendly and socially just, family-oriented small-scale farming systems
7. improving the efficiency of use of water
8. recycling of wastes
9. documentation, use and research into more effective use of indigenous knowledge of farming and food
10. better use and conservation of dry grasslands.
472 papers were submitted to LRRD in 2014; 235 papers were published (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1: Papers submitted in the period 2009-2014 |
Ethiopia and Nigeria are at the head of the list of submitted papers, followed by Tanzania, Colombia and Algeria (Figure 2). Papers were submitted from 55 countries in 2014, compared with 57 in 2013.
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| Figure 2: Papers submitted to LRRD during 2014 (n = 472) (not listed are papers received from 32 other countries that sent from 1 to 3 papers) |
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| Figure 3. Daily visits to the LRRD web site in 2013 and 2014 |
Daily visits to the LRRD web page averaged 3214 in 2014 compared with 2649 in 2013, an increase of 21% (Figure 3).
The average time to process the papers published in 2014 was 106 days, divided between the time taken in the review process (79 days) and in final editing and formatting in HTML (27 days).
It is not possible to compute a true annual rejection rate as papers submitted towards the end of a year may not be reviewed until the following year. On the basis of the papers received and published over the past two years (Figure 1) the average acceptance rate is about 40%.
The rapid growth in papers received and published during the last 5 years has put considerable pressure on the editorial team which, as we have often pointed out, is composed of professional scientists (most of them self-employed), who give their time freely to promote the mission of LRRD. The journal does not receive financial support from any quarter and does not employ secretaries or technical assistants. All activities are done online by electronic mail or through the Web pages of LRRD (http://www.lrrd.org). In this medium, constantly under pressure from Spam and viruses, papers and communications to and from authors may be mislaid or lost permanently. The editorial team take all possible precautions to avoid disruption of the editorial process, but mistakes are inevitable.
Authors are therefore requested to:
- Ensure that the reference to their paper (first four letters of their surname and the date) is always typed on the subject line of any communication
- Send a message to the Chief Editor if there has been no response, within a period of 14 days, to their queries or communications. The editorial team welcomes such reminders, which facilitate the efficient processing of papers through the reviewing, editing and formatting stages.
- Read carefully the "Notes to authors", paying particular attention to the formatting of tables and references.
- Send the original spreadsheet data when graphs are included in the paper.
LRRD now has its own domain "lrrd.org". It will continue to be published by CIPAV, but the independent web site is in keeping with its role as an international medium for research in sustainable livestock-based agriculture. The change also facilitates the gathering of statistics on access to the site.
The list of Editors and Associate-editors is as follows:
- Reg Preston, Colombia (Senior Editor: preston@lrrd.org)
- Rene Sansoucy, France (Assistant Editor: rene-sansoucy@wanadoo.fr)
- José Segura, México (Assistant Editor: jose.segura52@hotmail.com
- Enrique Murgueitio, Colombia (Advisory Editor: enriquem@fun.cipav.org.co)
- Alvaro Ocampo, Colombia (Associate-editor, aocampoduran@gmail.com)
- Rogério Martins Mauricio (Associate-editor: Brazil, rogeriomauricio@ufsj.edu.br
- Trevor Wilson, UK (Honorary member, TrevorBart@aol.com)
- Julián Chara, Colombia (Associate-editor: julian@fun.cipav.org.co)
- Raúl Botero, Costa Rica (Associate Editor: rbotero@earth.ac.cr)
- Emamnuel Swai, Tanzania (Associate Editor: esswai@gmail.com)
- Sangkhom Inthapanya, Lao PDR (Associate Editor: inthapanyasangkhom@yahoo.com)
- Christian Meyer, France (Associate Editor: christian.meyer0059@orange.fr)
- George Matete, Kenya (Associate Editor: george.matete@gmail.com)
As most contributors and readers of LRRD are aware, all activities relative to LRRD are done voluntarily. The steadily increasing number of papers submitted to the journal has put a lot of pressure on the Chief Editor and Assistant Editors. An important component of the work load is the formatting of papers to the HTML language. Previously this task was done almost exclusively by René Sansoucy. However, since early 2011 René has had other commitments which have necessitated a reorganization of this important feature of LRRD activities. The solution has been to invite young researchers from developing countries, all of whom have contributed papers to the journal, to help in the HTML formatting. We are pleased to present this group of “junior editors” and extend the invitation to other scientists especially in Africa and India, the continent/country that submits most papers to LRRD.
The LRRD Editorial Committee is extremely grateful to these young researchers who are helping to make LRRD as sustainable as the farming systems that LRRD promotes.
Inthapanya Sangkhom inthapanyasangkhom@yahoo.com Lao
Sisomphone Sothavong sisomphone.southavong@gmail.com Lao
Trinh Thi Lan ttlan@agu.edu.vn Vietnam
Piedad Cuélla piedadcb@gmail.com Colombia
Receipt of papers is usually confirmed the day they arrive and almost always they are sent to reviewers the same day. We expect reviewers to send recommendations to the Assistant-editors (or Chief Editor), as to acceptance of papers for publication in LRRD, and comments, within two weeks of receiving the paper.
If authors do not receive confirmation of receipt of their papers within two weeks of submitting them, they should remind the chief editor on: preston@lrrd.org
It will also decrease our work load and speed up publication, if authors follow carefully the style and format of LRRD by consulting published papers in earlier issues. Attention is drawn to the style of references and tables which is where most mistakes are made.
Please read the section on "Norms for preparation of papers for LRRD" for details. Failure to observe the LRRD norms for editing papers will inevitably lead to delays in publication, because of the additional work load this causes for the Editors.
A paper written for LRRD in "html" has a number of supporting files including the "style" of headings and the images of graphs and photos. This creates some difficulties for editors and authors for the final "proof-reading" of the papers when these are sent by E-mail, as the editors have to ensure that the supporting files are attached along with the paper; and the author, when she / he receives the paper, has to put all the files in the same folder to be sure that when the paper is opened it will appear complete on the screen. To avoid these inconveniences, 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.
The correct citation for LRRD is now shown in the link "Citation of this paper" at the top of the first page of each article.
HTML is the native language for publishing documents on the World Wide Web and is understood by all Web browsing software. The journal, as the principal means of publication of developing world sustainable agriculture, needs to be easily available to the widest possible audience of interested people. Using HTML as the on online publishing format has three principal advantages. The first is that everybody who finds the journal can read it with their Internet browser (Firefox, Chrome, Yahoo and Internet Explorer are amongst the most common). Secondly, the Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo will index the pages. Thirdly, articles can be posted on the Web as soon as they are formatted in HTML, thus increasing tremendously the speed of communication of information.
All previous issues of the journal have now been converted to HTML format (thanks to CIPAV staff in Colombia), thus there is available on the Internet through the CIPAV web pages a library of 26 years of research in the field of developing world sustainable agriculture.
The HTML version of LRRD is available on the Web at:
http://www.lrrd.org
preston@lrrd.org in Colombia
rene-sansoucy@wanadoo.fr in France
jose.segura52@hotmail.com in México
hector@fun.cipav.org.co in Colombia
Details of this network, financed by SidaSAREC, and
involving research and training institutions in Cambodia, Laos and
Vietnam, can be found on the Web site:
http://www.mekarn.org/Mekarn II/Mekarn-1.html