Journal of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences
Journal / Journal of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences / Submissions

 

The Journal of the Cameroon Academy Sciences (JCAS) is a multidisciplinary publication of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences (CAS) that is devoted to all aspects of fundamental and applied research as detailed below. It also publishes topical reviews on science and technology in development, arts, humanities, and culture.

Scope and Layout:

JCAS will contain sections for various colleges of the Academy but will receive and publish articles from non-members as well, subject to editorial review. The following Sections will appear in regular numbers of the Journal.

- Biological Sciences Section ( Botany/Plant Science, Zoology/Animal Science, Agricultural Sciences, Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Immunology)

- Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences Section (Pure and Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Engineering, Chemistry, Geology/ Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences)

- Arts and Social Sciences Section (Languages, Literature, Linguistics, History, Law, Philosophy, Policy Sciences, Economics, Management Sciences , Sociology, Science of Education )

-Other sections and disciplines may be added after due authorization by the Executive Council of CAS Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in the journal are those of its authors and should not be construed as reflecting the official policy of the Academy. The journal will not publish articles dealing with political or religious advocacy.

Mode of Publication:

From 2017 the JCAS has adopted the open access mode under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/choose/).

JCAS appears both online and in a print edition at the rate of one volume of three issues per year. The issues will appear approximately every four months in April-May, July-August, and November-December.

Copyright Statement: 

The copyright for any article published in JCAS belongs to the author(s) of the

article. The submission of an article to the JCAS means that the same article is not being considered elsewhere for publication. Upon acceptance, the author(s) shall sign a declaration that they understand and accept that their article will be published in the Open Access mode under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/choose/

Vision

The Journal of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences aspires to become an authoritative source of scientific and scholarly information on the African Continent and worldwide. 

Strategic objectives 2023-2026.

The Academy has set the following objectives for JCAS for the years 2023 to 2026:

• To ensure that JCAS appears regularly in at least three issues per year with each issue containing at least 5 articles.
• To publish at least one special issue per year.
• To develop an interactive website for JCAS and render it operational by the year 2024
• To raise the IMPACT Factor of the journal above the median for African journals and towards a full digit.
• To raise enough funds from page charges and advertisements to enable the publication of the printed edition without subsidies. 

Archiving and indexing: The JCAS is indexed and archived by African Journals online (www.jaol.info/index.php/jcas) JCAS is also indexed by the Clarivate-SCOPUS - Web of Science databases.at (www.clarivate.com) and at https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases

All accepted articles will be assigned a DOI number before publication.

The printed hard copies of the journal are archived at the Cameroon Academy of Sciences Library, MINRESI, Yaoundé and at the Central Library of the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation, MINRESI, Yaoundé Cameroon 

Language and style: Articles should be written in English or French and provided with abstracts in both languages. Articles should be written in the passive voice and in the third person. Pronouns such as “I” and “we” should be avoided except in cases where it is customary to do so.

Submission of articles: The manuscripts along with any display items such as tables, figures, photographs, etc. should be submitted online or by email. Hard copy submissions will not be accepted. Photographs should be in black and white. Colour photographs will only be published exceptionally and even then, at considerable extra cost to the author(s). The authors of accepted articles will be required to submit a final version of the manuscript on a CD/ROM or online using the software Microsoft Word or any other computer software recommended by the editor.

All submitting authors must counter-sign against their names on the title page to indicate their approval of the submission. The signed title page should be scanned and sent as an email attachment to the address given below.

The Editor-in-Chief,

Journal of Cameroon Academy of Sciences,

Biotechnology Unit, Faculty of Science,

University of Buea, P.O. Box 63, Buea,

S.W. Region,

Cameroon

Email: jcascameroon@gmail.com; vpk.titanji@yahoo.com

Web site: www.ubuea.cm

Peer-review 

All manuscripts submitted to the journal will be reviewed anonymously by three reviewers and will be accepted only when most of the reviewers recommend it for publication. Authors

of rejected articles will be given an opportunity to reply to the reviewers’ comments.

Page charges and offprints:

Unless otherwise indicated the cost of publishing/printing one typeset page (approximately 500 words in New Romance (12) shall be 10000 (ten thousand) FCFA or 20 (twenty US dollars). The Editor-in-Chief may grant rebates and waivers under exceptional circumstances to authors of accepted articles form least developed countries, provided that authors who benefit from a rebate must pay at least 100 USD or 50 000 FCFA per full length article.

Contributors/authors will receive a pdf copy of their article from which they can make additional copies.

Persons interested in the print edition can place orders directly at the following prices:

120 USD for the Americas.

100 USD for Europe & Asia

50 USD for Africa

and 30 USD for Cameroon per volume of three issues. The price of postage by airmail is not included in the rates given above and will be communicated to the subscriber with the invoice.

Plagiarism

The JCAS does not tolerate plagiarism, defined as using other people’s ideas without citing the authors. The responsibility of avoiding plagiarism resides on the author(s), while the Editor of JCAS reserves the right to conduct an electronic check of submitted articles. A plagiarized manuscript will be rejected outrightly. In the unlikely case that an article is found to have been plagiarized after its publication in the JCAS, the article will be retracted, and notification of retraction published in the next issue of the journal.

Corrigenda

In cases where an article has been published with material errors, the author(s) can petition the Editor-in-Chief for a Corrigendum to be published, and if justified a corrigendum will be published in the next issue of the journal.

Retraction

If after publication an article is found to have been plagiarized, or to be based on fabricated data, the article shall be retracted or withdrawn. The initiative to retract an article shall lie with any of the authors and/or readers who shall file a petition with all necessary justifications to the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief shall act in consultation with the Editorial Board and with due diligence.

Meta-analysis.

Review articles on randomized trials or evaluations must conform to the PRISMA (Preferred

reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis) guidelines at http://systematic

reviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/10.1186/s13643-017-05908.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Length of article: Manuscripts should be typed on A4 paper with double spacing and a 2 cm margin all round. A full-length article should not be less than 1000 and should not exceed 5,000 words. Commentaries and letters to the Editor should not exceed 1,000 words respectively.

Title: The title should not exceed 150 characters and should not contain abbreviations or acronyms. It should be precise and informative.

Title page: The title of the article should be typed on the first page of the manuscript followed by the names of the authors and the respective postal and email addresses of their institutions. The name and address of the corresponding author should be clearly identified in a footnote.

Organization of the article: Depending on the type of communication, the article should be divided into the following sections:

Experimental Work

- Abstract

-Introduction

- Materials and Methods

- Results

- Discussion

- Conclusions

- Acknowledgements

- References: Bibliography followed by webography 

Theoretical Work

-Abstract

-Problem statement

-Approach, definitions, assumptions

-Solutions or proofs

-Discussion

-Conclusions

-Acknowledgements

-References (Bibliography followed by webography)

Reviews, commentary, or articles in the Arts and Social/Human Sciences

- Abstract

- Scope of the review/article

- The review itself with suitable headings

- Conclusions

- Acknowledgements

- References (Bibliography followed by webography)

Layout: JCAS will contain sections for various colleges of the Academy but will receive and publish articles from non-members as well, subject to editorial review. The following sections will appear in regular numbers of the journal:

-Biological Sciences

-Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

-Arts and Social Sciences

-Opinions/Commentaries

Authors should clearly indicate the section to which their manuscript is directed and should, in addition, indicate whether the work is a Research or a Review Article.

Abstract: All articles should be provided with a summary not exceeding 200 words. The abstract should be written in simple language and should highlight the aims of the work, the approach or methodology, the main results obtained, and the conclusion(s) reached. Abbreviations should be avoided, and if used, they should be explained at least once. The summary should be presented in English and French.

Introduction or statement of the problem: This section should give the scientific reasons for doing the work and relate the work to previous knowledge and expected outcomes and impact. Only relevant literature should be cited. The introduction should, therefore, not be transformed into a literature review.

Materials and Methods: This section should describe the materials and methods employed in the work in enough detail to enable a qualified reader to duplicate the work. Previously described methods should be cited and not elaborately described. Statistical methods of data treatment should be mentioned if they have been used. If the work involved the use of human subjects, primates, or the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, it should be stated if ethical clearance from the appropriate authority was obtained. The editor may request a copy of the clearance document or an informed consent form for verification.

Results: This section should describe the results preferably in the same order as predicted by the objectives. Reference should be made to display items such as tables and figures where appropriate. Lengthy discussions should not be undertaken in this section although timely conclusions may be drawn after the presentation of the results.

Discussion: The discussion should highlight what is new in the paper. References should be made to the display items to support the conclusion(s) reached, and to previous publications on the same topic. The discussion should be limited to the results described in the manuscript and any implications this may have.

Conclusions: The conclusion(s) should simply be related to the specific objective(s) of the work.

References:

Bibliography

For a paper with one or two authors the surname(s) is/are referred to in the text. Where the cited paper has more than two co-authors, the surname of the first author is mentioned followed by et al.

Example:

(a) Smith et al. (1997) showed that mosquitoes bite more frequently in the evening than at dawn.

(b) Ngu and Titanji (1981) were the first to describe the use of African patients’ own white blood cells for self-treatment of cancer.

(c) For a journal article, the citation is written as follows: Greenway, P. (1998). Foresight on ageing. Biologist 45, 217-220

(d) For a book, the reference is written giving successively the names(s), the year of publication of the edition of the book consulted or cited, the title of the book, the name of the publisher(s), the city of publication, and the pages cited, e.g : Morris, J. G. (1978). A Biologist’s Physical Chemistry. Edward Arnold Ltd. London

(e) For a thesis or dissertation the reference should be written giving successively the Name of the author, title of the thesis or dissertation, the University of Institute where the thesis was defended, the effective date of defence, the web address of the library or repository where the thesis has been deposited (if available), the number of the pages cited. e.g Lima BK, Evaluation of English 101 and 102. University of Buea.www.ubuea.cm. 2017, pp X- XX

(d) At the end of the manuscript, all the references should be typed in alphabetical order of the first author’s surname giving the full title of the article, the journal, and pages inclusively.

Webography

Articles from websites and from online journals should be listed in alphabetical order of the

surnames of the first authors, followed by the website address (URL) and after the bibliography.

Figures and tables: These should be constructed in such a manner that they can be understood without reading the text. Graphs should preferably be drawn using appropriate computer software and presented on a single page ready for mounting. No writing is allowed on figures directly although the abscissa and ordinates of graphs can be labelled. Appropriate symbols should be used on graphs and explained in the legends.

Legends: Figure and table legends should be typed consecutively on separated sheets at the end of the manuscript. The printer will mount them in the article.

Acknowledgements: These should be presented at the end of the text and before the bibliography. In case of co-authorship of articles, the role of each author should be specified in a brief statement such as “conceived the project, carried out the surveys and drafted the manuscript. Etc. The authors should declare any conflict of interest such as owning stocks in a company whose product has been evaluated and/or tested in the article.

(Last revised 03/07/2023)