Author Guidelines
The journal publishes papers covering the areas of focus. Manuscript in English should be prepared with Times New Roman (Font 12) in 1.5-spaced typing with margins of 1 inch right round on A4 paper. The title of the paper should be short and concise (preferably < 20 words) and should be reflective of its content. Author’s name (surname, followed by initials) should be written below the title. This should be followed by the author’s affiliations with full address. Papers should contain an Abstract that is not more than 250 words. Key words not exceeding five (5) words different from those in the title should be written below the Abstract. Thereafter, papers should be subdivided into the following headings: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion (or Results and Discussion), and Conclusion(s). Sub-headings and sub-sub-headings, where applicable, should also be in bold fonts but without having the first letter of key words capitalised unless when such words are proper nouns; they should be differentiated by normal and italicised fonts, respectively. Units of measurement of variables (including compound units) should be separated from numeric values and compound units should not be written as t/ha or tha–1 but as t ha–1, for example. Please note in this unit the use of minus sign instead of hyphen sign. Conversely, a range should be written as, for example, 7-10 g and not as 7g-10 g or 7 – 10 g. Tables should be neatly prepared using an inserted Table template of Microsoft Word with the caption of the table and footnote (if any) occupying the first and the last merged rows, respectively of the inserted table. Figures (including photographs) must be well edited to be legible in black and white, and should have its caption placed below it. Numbering for tables/figures should be in Arabic numerals with a colon (in bold font) introducing a short descriptive caption of the table/figure (not in bold font), e.g., Table 1: Yield of okra as …, Figure 3: Live weight of pigs fed conventional diets containing …, etc. Any footnotes to tables/figures should be 1.0-spaced typing. Tables and Figures should be supplied at the end of the text and/or as separate files depending on their format. For example, figures that are prepared as JPEG/TIF files should, in addition to being placed at the end of text in Word file, be supplied as such. Literature cited in the text must be given by the author’s name with the year of publication and must be well punctuated, e.g., Uguru et al. (2003) noted that cucumber …. The responses of grain sorghum to soil and water management practices have been reported (Chiroma et al., 2006; Obalum et al., 2011). After Acknowledgments (if any), all retrievable References should be listed alphabetically (by the authors’ names) with indentation. Please note that only standard abbreviations of titles of journals are accepted. Some examples of formatting for the References are as follows:
Articles in Journals:
Chiroma A.M., Folorunso O.A. and Alhassan A.B. (2006). Soil water conservation, growth, yield and water use efficiency of sorghum as affected by land configuration and wood-shavings mulch in semi-arid northeast Nigeria. Exp. Agric., 42, 199-216
Book Chapters:
Thomas G.W. (1996). Soil pH and soil acidity. In: D.L. Sparks, A.L. Page, P.A. Helmke et al. (Eds.), Methods of Soil Analysis, Part 3: Chemical Methods (pp. 475-490). Madison WI: Soil Science Society of America Book Series No. 5
Books:
Leopold A.C. (1989). Plant Growth and Development (2nd ed.), Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi, (followed by page or page range written, for instance, as p. 37 or pp. 55-60, respectively)
SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT
Manuscripts duly prepared should be submitted electronically (as confirmed attachment to email) to michael.uguru@unn.edu.ng and/or sunday.obalum@unn.edu.ng with a processing charge of N4000, $30 and $40 to be paid on submission by contributors from within Nigeria other parts of Africa and outside Africa, respectively. Also, there will be a publication charge of N20,000 and $150 for accepted articles from within and outside Nigeria, respectively. All payments are made in cheque, bank draft or by money transfer. Galley proofs of accepted papers typeset by the publisher will be sent to authors for final correction and re-submission.
