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| Figure 1: Papers submitted and published 2014-16 |
Welcome to Volume 30, Number 7 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 www.mekarn.org/workshops/environ/proenv/lengnew.htm) and Preston (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.
758 papers were submitted to LRRD in 2016; 235 papers were published (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1: Papers submitted and published 2014-16 |
Ethiopia and Algeria are the countries at the head of the list of submitted papers, followed by Nigeria, Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Kenya, Tanzania, Laos, Ghana, Cuba, India, Ecuador and Vietnam (Figure 2). Papers were submitted from 60 countries in 2016, compared with 55 in 2015.
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| Figure 2: Papers submitted to LRRD during 2016 (not listed are papers received from 40 other countries that sent from 1 to 9 papers) |
Daily visits to the LRRD web page in 2016 were close to 4000 (Figure 3). The average time to process the papers published in 2016 was 103 days, divided between the time taken in the review process (69 days) and in final editing and formatting in HTML (34 days).
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| Figure 3. Daily visits to the LRRD web site from 2013- 2017 |
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 three years (Figure 1) the average acceptance rate has fallen from 49% in 2014, to 41% in 2015 and 31% in 2016. This decline in the acceptance rate is because the number of papers submitted has increased steadily from 480 in 2014, to 607 in 2015 and to 758 in 2016. The editorial capacity of LRRD, which is managed on a voluntary basis, is of the order of 240 papers processed per year (20 per month), thus we had to raise the bar on the criteria for acceptance. This has been done by not accepting for processing (in the majority of cases but with some exceptions depending on circumstances) papers that are based only on surveys.
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 email address and the date (in the format: year, month, days; eg: prest170802) 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 "Notestoauthors", paying particular attention to the formatting of tables. figures and references.
- Send the original spreadsheet data when graphs are included in the paper.
LRRD has its own domain "lrrd.org". It is published by the NGO 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
- Héctor Osorio, Colombia (Assistant Editor): hector@fun.cipav.org.co
- Enrique Murgueitio, Colombia (Advisory Editor): enriquem@fun.cipav.org.co
- Alvaro Ocampo, Colombia (Advisory Editor): aocampoduran@gmail.com
- Rogério Martins Mauricio, Brazil (Advisory Editor): rogeriomauricio@ufsj.edu.br
- Julián Chara, Colombia (Advisory Editor): julian@fun.cipav.org.co
- Trevor Wilson, UK (Honorary member): TrevorBart@aol.com
- 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
- E Fallou Guèye, Senegal (Associate Editor): efgueye@gmail.com
- Piedad Cuellar, Colombia (Associate Editor): piedadcb@gmail.com
- María Elena Gomez, Colombia (Associate Editor): mariaegomezz@gmail.com
- John C Moreki, Botswana (Associate Editor): jcmoreki@gmail.com
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 or reg.preston@gmail.com
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 recent issues of LRRD. 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 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 28 years of research in the field of developing world sustainable agriculture.
The HTML version of LRRD is available on the Web at:
www.lrrd.org
Centro para la Investigación en Sistemas Sostenibles de Producción Agropecuaria, Cali, Colombia (CIPAV)
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:
www.new.mekarn.org