Livestock Research for Rural Development 2011, Volume 23, Number 10

Notes to Authors

The LRRD Vision

The future requirements of society for food and energy can best be met from integrated small to  medium family farm systems in which:

·         most 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.

The LRRD mission

To promote local research on the:

(i)                 use of local resources for live stock production in ways that are non-competitive with human needs;

(ii)               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.       increasing use of draft animal power

(iii)             promotion of indigenous live stock breeds that have high reproductive rates and adaptation to use of local feed resources and local climatic conditions;

(iv)             regeneration of soil fertility through promotion of tree crops and recycling of organic matter

(v)               development of  emerging markets for ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient sequestration.

(vi)             promotion of “farmer“  markets for food produced in environmentally  friendly and socially just, family-oriented small-scale farming systems

(vii)           improving the efficiency of use of water

(viii)    recycling of wastes

 

Guide to Authors

Papers 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. The submission should be accompanied by a message indicating "The authors have read [Notestoauthors] and have formated  the article accordingly".

 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 all the instructions.

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

Titles:

The correct format for the Names of Authors is:

For Cambodia, China, Lao PDR and Vietnam the format is first name preceded by the initials of all other names (eg: N H T Nhan, K Borin). Conversely in the citation the order is Nhan N H T, Borin K).

For other countries the standard format applies (eg: T R Preston for Names of authors and Preston T R in the citation).

To avoid confusion use only initial letters of names (eg: N T H Nhan and not Nguyen Thi Hong Nhan; T R Preston and not Thomas R Preston)

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 R2 only two digits after or before “00... ”
eg: R2 = 0.677 becomes R2 = 0.68

Graphics:

Graphs should be inserted inside a table with 1 (or 2) column(s) and two rows; the first row for the graph(s); the second row for the legend. 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.
- when comparing treatments do not give SE of each mean. SEM of means is more appropriate with the exact probability as given by the statistics program.

Example:

Preparing the table in Microsoft Word:

Table 7: Mean values for gasifier characteristics using coconut shells-husks, cassava stems, mulberry stems and branches of Cassia stamea as feedstock

 

Cassia

Cassava

Mulberry

Coconut

SEM

Prob.

Biomass, kg

         

  Initial

36.7

32.3

33.7

34.4

1.3

0.21

  Final

4.93

1.9

0

3.07

2.19

0.49

  Consumption

36.9

35.1

40

36.4

2.9

0.69

Moisture, %

14

13.3

15.7

14

1.4

0.69

Density, g/litre

348a

97.0c

273b

128c

10.4

0.001

Duration, h

3.91

3.67

4.09

4.02

0.328

0.81

Output, kwh

27.4

25.7

28.7

28.2

2.29

0.81

Conversion#

1.23

1.18

1.18

1.11

0.044

0.42

Efficiency##

0.187

0.204

0.204

0.217

0.0082

0.17

Biochar, g/kg biomass DM

109

128

109

137

16.5

0.58

# kg dry biomass/kwh; ## Assumes 15 MJ/kg biomass DM and 3.6 MJ/kwh of electricity

abc Means in the same row without common letter are different at P<0.05

Creating the final version of the table by eliminating the unnecesary lines and borders:

Table 7: Mean values for gasifier characteristics using coconut shells-husks, cassava stems, mulberry stems and branches of Cassia stamea as feedstock

 

Cassia

Cassava

Mulberry

Coconut

SEM

Prob.

Biomass, kg

         

  Initial

36.7

32.3

33.7

34.4

1.3

0.21

  Final

4.93

1.9

0

3.07

2.19

0.49

  Consumption

36.9

35.1

40

36.4

2.9

0.69

Moisture, %

14

13.3

15.7

14

1.4

0.69

Density, g/litre

348a

97.0c

273b

128c

10.4

0.001

Duration, h

3.91

3.67

4.09

4.02

0.328

0.81

Output, kwh

27.4

25.7

28.7

28.2

2.29

0.81

Conversion#

1.23

1.18

1.18

1.11

0.044

0.42

Efficiency##

0.187

0.204

0.204

0.217

0.0082

0.17

Biochar, g/kg biomass DM

109

128

109

137

16.5

0.58

# kg dry biomass/kwh; ## Assumes 15 MJ/kg biomass DM and 3.6 MJ/kwh of electricity
abc Means in the same row without common letter are different at P<0.05

 

Statistics

Please avoid statements such as "there were significant effects of level of PL on live weight gain". We need to know what was the effect. We can see it in the table if you put the exact P value. The use of P<0.05 or P< 0.01 goes back to days of hand calculators and F and T tables. Computers give us much more power and knowledge. We must use this opportunity. Please see the sample paper at the end of notestoauthors. Also when discussing treatment differences:

Treatment differences are considered significant at P< 0.05 and trends are discussed at P< 0.10 P>0.05

eg:: “Treatment CF1 was greater than treatment CTL” [no need to write (P<0.05) as this is understood and the actual value (eg: P=0.043)  will be in the table of results].

But  ” There was a tendency for treatment CF1 to be greater than treatment CTL (P=0.065)”

In this case the exact value of P is given so that the reader can appreciate the degree of confidence in the expressed difference.

References:

In the text, do not put a ‘comma’ 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:

http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd23/2/sang23021.htm

An easy way to check the reference list is to print it, 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:

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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