Agronomía Colombiana

Author Guidelines

The manuscripts submitted for publication to the Editorial Committee must be unpublished. In consequence, those that have been previously published in other journals, technical or scientific publications will be rejected. Contributions to the study and the submitted manuscript and any conflict of interest must be declared by the authors in the sections created for these purposes.

To submit manuscripts, the authors must be registered in our platform (https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/agrocol/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions) and follow the submission instructions. Corresponding authors will be required to use their ORCID Id when submitting a manuscript. After manuscript submission, papers will be screened for plagiarism using a specialized software. In case of finding a significant level of duplication, the manuscript will be rejected

At the preliminary review stage, two aspects, English grammar and scope, will be assessed in order to ensure the minimum requirements of any manuscript to be peer-reviewed. If the manuscript is rejected during the preliminary review because of the English grammar aspect, authors are encouraged to edit their manuscript for language using professional services and submit the manuscript again. When the reason for preliminary reject is a mismatch of the scope between the manuscript and the journal interests, resubmission should be avoided.

Agronomia Colombiana accepts the following three types of original articles:

• Scientific and technological research papers: Those documents presenting detailed original research results. The most generally applied structure has four main parts: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, and conclusions.
• Review articles: Published only at the invitation of the Editor-in-Chief and with the approval of the Editorial Committee of Agronomia Colombiana. The review article should present an unbiased summary of the current understanding of a topic considered as a priority by the Editorial or Scientific Committee of Agronomia Colombiana.
• Scientific notes: Brief document introducing original preliminary or partial results of a scientific or technical research, which usually needs immediate publication.

See model manuscript here.

Format and organization of the text

Research article length should not exceed 5,200 words, whereas scientific notes should have no more than 4,000 words. As review articles contain a large amount of detailed information, their length may be greater than research articles but should not exceed 8,000 words, or 10,000 words including the list of references. For review articles, the list of references (Literature cited section) should include at least 50 references. Tables and figures, that is to say, diagrams, drawings, schematic and flow diagrams, pictures, and maps should be consecutively numbered (Table 1 ...Table n; Figure 1... Figure n, etc.).

Texts and tables should be prepared using the MS Word® processor. Manuscripts including tables as embedded images will not be published.  All text should be double-spaced including table headers, figure captions and cited literature. All pages must be numbered consecutively. Line numbering on each page is mandatory. Tables and diagrams of frequency (bar and circular diagrams) should be included in the mentioned Word file as well as in their original MS-Excel® or other graphic formats but maintaining a high resolution. Other figures, including photographs and drawings should be submitted in digital JPG (or JPEG) compression format, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

See model manuscript here.

Languages, units, and style

The journal's official language is English. Regarding measurement units, the metric system (SI) should be consistently used through the manuscript, unless the need is seen to apply any specific units that are of frequent use by the scientific community. Multiplication followed by negative superscript (e.g., kg ha^-1) can only be used with SI units. The slash (/) is a mathematical operation symbol that indicates “divided by”. Anyway, in sciences it is used as a substitute for the word “per”, and it is used to indicate rates. Use the slash to connect SI to non-SI units (e.g., 10°C/h or 10 L/pot).

Decimal fractions should be separated by a point (.), not a comma (,).

All abbreviations should be explained in full length when first mentioned in the manuscript.

With regard to the tenses, the most commonly used ones are the past, for the introduction, procedures and results; and the present, for the discussion.

Title and authors

The title in English, as well as its corresponding Spanish translation, shall not exceed 15 words. The scientific names of plants and animals shall be italicized and lowercased, except for the first letter of the genus (and of the species author), which must be uppercased.

The authors (including first and second names) shall be listed in order of their contribution to the research and preparation of the manuscript, in completely justified text format (filling the whole line, or, if necessary, the next one below) under the translated version of the title. At the bottom of the article’s first page, only the name and city location of the employer or supporting institution(s), and the e-mail address of the corresponding author should be included.

Abstract, resumen, and key words

The Abstract should be written in English with Spanish translation for the “Resumen” . Both texts should contain brief (no longer than 250 words in a single paragraph) and accurate descriptions of the paper’s premise, justification, methods, results and significance. Both language versions shall be mandatorily provided with a list of (maximum six) key words that have not appeared in the title or abstract, and included in the Agrovoc thesaurus by Agris (FAO).

Introduction

The introduction must include the delimitation and current status of the problem, the theoretical or conceptual basis of the research, the literature review on the topic, and the objectives and justification of the research. Common names must be accompanied by the corresponding scientific ones, plus the abbreviation of the species author surname when mentioned for the first time.

Materials and methods

Besides a clear, precise and sequential description of the materials used for the research (plant or animal materials, plus agricultural or laboratory tools), this section illustrates the procedures and protocols followed, and the experimental design chosen for the statistical analysis of the data.

Results and discussion

Results and discussion can be displayed in two different sections or in a single section at the authors’ convenience. The results shall be presented in a logical, objective, and sequential order, using text, tables (abbreviated as Tab.) and figures (abbreviated as Fig.). The latter two should be easily understandable and self-explanatory, in spite of having been thoroughly explained in the text. The total number of figures in the manuscript may not exceed seven. The charts should be two-dimensional and prepared in black and white, resorting to a tone intensity degradation to illustrate variations between columns. Diagram curves must be prepared in black, dashed or continuous lines (- - - - or ———), using the following conventions: ■, ▲, ◆, ●, □, ◊, ○. The tables should contain a few columns and lines. The following examples can illustrate how to present tables and figures:

TABLE 1. Effects of colchicine concentration and treatment duration on the survival rate of treated Cape gooseberry plants.

(please see Guidelines for a correct display of Figure 3).

FIGURE 3. Pollen grain fertility of haploid and mixoploid cape gooseberry. A) Non-viable pollen grains of haploid genotypes, B) Viable and non-viable pollen grains of mixoploid plants, C) In vitro pollen germination of mixoploid plants (40x magnification).

(Examples from Garcia-Arias, F., Sánchez-Betancourt, E., & Núñez, V. (2018). Fertility recovery of anther-derived haploid plants in Cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana L.). Agronomia Colombiana, 36(3), 201—209. https://doi.org/10.15446/agron.colomb.v36n3.73108)

Averages should be accompanied by their corresponding Standard Error (SE) values. The discussion shall be complete and exhaustive, emphasizing the highlights and comparing them to the literature data.

This section should briefly and concisely summarize the most important findings of the research.

Conclusion (optional)

A short conclusion section is useful for a long or complex discussion. It should provide readers with a brief summary of the main achievements from the results of the study. It can also contain final remarks and a brief description of future complementary studies that should be addressed.

Acknowledgments

When considered necessary, the authors may acknowledge the researchers or entities that contributed - conceptually, financially or practically - to the research: specialists, commercial organizations, governmental or private entities, and associations of professionals or technicians.

Conflict of interest statement

All manuscripts that are submitted to and published in Agronomía Colombiana must be accompanied by a conflict of interest disclosure statement by the authors. Please, include such a statement or declaration at the end of your manuscript, following any acknowledgments and prior to the references, under the heading ‘Conflict of interest statement’.

Example: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Author’s contributions

This information is mandatory for Agronomia Colombiana from 2020 onwards. In order to describe each of the authors’ contribution, please follow the CRediT taxonomy and use the following roles as a guide:

CRediT taxonomy

Contributor roles

Conceptualization: AAA formulated the overarching research goals and aims.

Data curation: AAA carried out activities to annotate scrub data and maintain research data for initial use and later re-use.

Formal analysis: AAA applied statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.

Funding acquisition: AAA obtained the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

Investigation: AAA conducted the research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments or data/evidence collection.

Methodology: AAA developed or designed the methodology; created the models.

Project administration: AAA managed and coordinated the research activity planning and execution.

Resources: AAA provided the study materials, reagents, laboratory samples, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.

Software: AAA implemented the computer code and supporting algorithms/software.

Supervision: AAA oversaw and led the research activity planning and execution.

Validation: AAA verified the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.

Visualization: AAA prepared, created, and/or presented the published work and oversaw its visualization/data presentation.

Writing – original draft: AAA wrote/translated the initial draft.

Writing – review & editing: AAA carried out the critical review, commentary, or revision of the manuscript.

Authors have to keep in mind the CRediT taxonomy is not useful to determine who is eligible as author, but to state the contribution of each author in the study or the article. More information about the CRediT taxonomy is available in: https://casrai.org/credit/

Example: MYD and AFT designed the experiments, AFT carried out the field and laboratory experiments, AFT contributed to the data analysis, MYD and AFT wrote the article. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Citations and literature cited

The system (author(s), year) will be consistently applied to all citations intended to support affirmations made in the article’s text. When the cited reference has three or more authors, the citation shall only mention the name of the first author, accompanied by the Latin expression et al. (which means ‘and others’), italicized and followed by a period, and separated from the year by a comma: (García et al., 2003). Alternatively, you can leave just the year in parenthesis: García et al. (2003). In case of references with only two authors, citations should include both names separated by ‘&’: (García & López, 2012) or García and López (2012).

Tables and figures should be cited in parenthesis as follows: (Tab. 1), (Tab. 2), (Tab. 3), etc., or (Fig. 1), (Fig. 2), (Fig. 3), etc. In the text, each table or figure must be referred to using a capital T or F, for example: ...as shown in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, etc., or in Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, etc.

The complete list of cited references in alphabetical order, according to the authors’ surnames, must be included at the end of the article. When the list includes various publications of the same author(s), they shall be listed in chronological order. When they correspond to the same year, they must be differentiated with lower case letters: 2008a, 2008b, etc.

Agronomia Colombiana has adopted the American Psychological Association (APA) standards (https://apastyle.apa.org/about-apa-style) to elaborate the final list of references cited in the text (“Literature cited” section). This standard will be required for new manuscripts received from March 1^st, 2020 onwards. However, a transition period has been established for 2020, during which manuscripts received and processed before March 2020 may be published with either of the two reference styles, APA or Agronomia Colombiana style.

Basic information about the use of APA for the list of references is available here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references. In order to illustrate these standards, authors can check some examples about how to create each item of the list of references, keeping in mind the type of publication cited as follows (click on each option to open APA web information):Journal article

Example: García-Arias, F., Sánchez-Betancourt, E., & Núñez, V. (2018). Fertility recovery of anther-derived haploid cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana L.) plants. Agronomía Colombiana, 36(3), 201—209. https://doi.org/10.15446/agron.colomb.v36n3.73108  

Published dissertation or thesis references

Example: Franco, C. V. (2012). Efecto de la colchicina sobre el número cromosómico, número de cloroplastos y características morfológicas del fruto en ecotipos de uchuva (Physalis peruviana L.) Colombia, Kenia y Perú [Undergraduate thesis, Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander]. UFPS Library. http://alejandria.ufps.edu.co/descargas/tesis/1610259.pdf

Whole book

Example: Suescún, L., Sánchez, E., Gómez, M., García-Arias, F. L., & Núñez Zarantes, V. M. (2011). Producción de plantas genéticamente puras de uchuva. Editorial Kimpres Ltda.

Edited book chapter

Example: Ligarreto, G., Lobo, M., & Correa, A. (2005). Recursos genéticos del género Physalis en Colombia. In G. Fischer, D. Miranda, W. Piedrahita, & J. Romero (Eds.), Avances en cultivo, poscosecha y exportación de la uchuva Physalis peruviana L. en Colombia (pp. 329—338). Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

For other types of references such as technical reports, conference presentations or proceedings, magazine articles or preprints see https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples. Archival documents, letters, collections and unpublished documents can be referenced using some standards users can find here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/archival. In this link (http://shorturl.at/xGIPZ) authors can find a summary of the APA style for references created by Mendeley.

Authors can also consider the use of some APA list of reference generators such as Reference Management (Mendeley, https://www.mendeley.com/reference-management/mendeley-desktop), Scribbr (https://www.scribbr.com/apa-citation-generator/#/) or MyBib (https://www.mybib.com/).

Whenever possible, please provide a valid DOI for each reference in the literature cited.

See model manuscript here and Guidelines for authors here.