Submission of manuscripts in soft (electronic) format is preferred. Author(s) are requested to send an email with an electronic version of the manuscript directly to: AgrSciEd@squ.edu.om
Help to potential authors
To facilitate the preparation of manuscripts that correspond to the Journal structure, the Editorial boards has prepared a series of templates in Microsoft Word and Apple Pages.
Templates for Research Articles, Notes, Perspective and ReviewTemplates for Snapshots submissionWe also provide export style files for Endnotes (.ens) and Zotero, Papers and other bibliographic software that use the .csl citation format files.
The Author's guidelines can also be downloaded as a pdf files.
Preparation of the Manuscript
All papers will be typeset by the editorial team of the journal at publication time. Therefore, the editorial board requests the authors to follow a clear and simple format for their manuscript facilitating the reviewing and editorial process. Templates for Microsoft Word and Apple Pages are provided to assist authors in preparing their manuscripts.
The editorial board recommends the use of a classic typeface (Times, Helvetica, Garamond, Myriad-Pro, …) with 12 point size and at least 14-16 points leading (line spacing) for the text of the manuscript with minimum formatting as most of layout and typographical formats will be applied at the typesetting stage. The manuscript page size should be A4 or Us Letter and the editorial board recommends that a margin of at least 3 cm be included on all sides of the paper.
To facilitate the reviewing process, the text of the submission should have line numbers in the left hand margin restarting at 1 on each page and a page number in the footer of the document. Use standard typographic conventions for the text presentation: italic typeface for species names (not underline), bold face for vectors, true superscript and subscripts when necessary. Emphasis is better marked through italic rather than bold face.
Typography
The journal uses standard typographic convention throughout. The editorial board recommends that you follow these in the preparation of the manuscript.
Italic should be used throughout for the Latin name of species (please do not use underlined text). Emphasis can be placed on some elements of text using bold face.
Abbreviations: Avoid non-standard abbreviations whenever possible, particularly in headings and subheading. If, for the sake of conciseness, the author wishes to use abbreviations, define each abbreviation when they first appear in each section of the manuscript. Standard abbreviation such as RNA, DNA, ATP, ADP, EDTA… do not need to be defined as most readers will be familiar with them. Others such as PAH (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon) or ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) should be defined as most reader may not be familiar with their meaning.
Units: Always use the International System of Units (SI) for all units. For large or small units use the standard multiplier prefix for the units (k for 1000, M for 1000000, m for 1/1000 and µ for 10-6). Prefer whenever possible negative exponents to slash: kg·m-2 rather than kg/m2. To separate units, use either a mid-line point (· =ASCII code 183 – Unicode U+00B7) or a non-breaking space. The abbreviated symbols (k, kg, s, P, W, etc. ) should be used whenever possible and combined with Arabic numbers (5 kg, 2 m2, 5.2 MP, 6.78 MW·h). The only exception is when a number is grammatically placed at the beginning of the sentence. A non-breaking space (Unicode U+00A0 ) should be used between the number and its units to insure that they stay together in the final document. The SI unit of time is s (second), h stands for hora, min for minuta, d for dies (day) and a for annum (year).
When necessary, non-SI units can be added between parenthesis to allow comparison with older literature or traditional systems of measurements. This includes usual units, such as surface of farming units (faddan, acres, ares, hectares), or traditional depth units (fathoms, brasses, Ba’,…) or distance (nautical miles, miles) or other non-SI units (gallons, inch, foot, bushels, etc. ).
Illustrations
For the review process, illustrations should included into the main manuscript document. and numbered consecutively.
After acceptance for publication, all figures should be submitted as individual files, not embedded in the article file.
To ensure compatibility, the journal accepts the following file format JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PDF, EPS and SVG. Although the journal is normally published in black and white, color illustrations can be used when color is clearly necessary to convey the intended message. Although the authors can suggest the inclusion of color figures in the paper, the final decision to include them or not is left to the editorial board. The editorial team will strive to provide the best possible graphic output from the material submitted by the authors and may in some cases decide to redraw some figures to improve readability. They may also request better quality photographs or color figures if necessary. Typically black and white line figures should have a resolution of at least 600 dpi (at the final printed size) and color figures or photographs 300 dpi (at the final printed size) but should not exceed 10 MB. For line graphics, vector based file formats (SVG, PDF, EPS) are preferred as they are resolution independent.
Illustrations should be numbered consecutively and submitted as individual files. Each illustration should have at the bottom of the page a brief identifier such as the name of the first author, the word Figure and the sequential number of the figure. (Al-Oufi, Figure 7 for instance). The full captions of all figures should be presented in numerical order on a separate page at the end of the text manuscript.
In the figures, use Helvetica as the standard typeface for all text (axis, legend, axis legend, equations, labels, etc.) and insure that all text will remain legible even after size reduction for final printing. Figures will be printed either as a single column (7 cm wide) or double column (14 cm) figure
Macro-photographs, micro-photograhs, SEM photographs, anatomical drawings, morphological illustrations, should have a appropriately labeled scale bar. Avoid multiplication factors (x100, x10000) as these will change with the rescaling of the figure when printed.
Tables
Tables should be presented in a clear manner and designed to fit on the width of a page. Exceptionally wide tables may be typeset, sideways, along the height of a printed page. All unnecessary decimals should be removed. Tables should be included at the end of the manuscript on separate pages and the legend/caption of each table should be placed on the same page and above the table.
Equations
Equations should be placed on separate lines and numbered sequentially at the end of the line. They should be typeset using an equation editor. If this is not possible scan or photograph a clear handwritten version of the equation which will be typeset by the editorial team.
The Journal uses the modern scientific number styles recommended by the Council of Science Editors. This styles uses digit numbers (1, 2,4.5, 7, etc.) for all numeric representations, even single digit ones. The main exceptions are when a digit starts a sentence, or when the single digit number is part of an idiomatic expression such as in “one or both”, a “zero-tolerance policy”, a “one-to-one interview”, “one has to agree that”…
References
SQU Journal of Agricultural and Marine Sciences uses a variation of the Author-Date style of references developed by the Council of Science Editors (CSE). Output style files for Endnote and CSL (Citation Style Language) are available for download on the Journal Submission Management Web Page:
http://journals.squ.edu.om/index.php/jams/article/view/2312/2247
In-text citation
Citation in the text should be either Name (date) or (Name date) depending on whether the authors of the cited paper have a grammatical function in the sentence or not. Note the absence of punctuation between the author and the date. When several references are grouped in a single inline citation, the different references are separated by a semi-colon (; ).
- Jones et al. (2007) listed 4 main types of …
- According to Jones et al. (2007), the main reason for….
- The prevalence of coral parasites was considerably lower than that reported in Tanzanian coral reefs (Mwaniki 1996).
Different papers that share the same in-text citation format (same authors and same year of publication) are identified by a small letter (a, b, c) following the date of publication. When used in a single citation, the author’s name is not repeated.
- The ticks collected on camels were not different from that found on goats (Bobade 2004a) or sheep (Bobade 2004b).
- There were no differences in the species of ticks collected on different farm animals (Bobade 2004a; 2004b)…
The family name of the first author is always used. For publications with 2 authors, the 2 family names with the conjunction “and” are used followed by the year of publication. For more than 2 authors, the abbreviation et al. (Latin et alii – and others) is used to replace all but the first author’s name.
- Jones et al. (2007) listed 4 main types of soft coral communities…
- Al-Barwani and Jones (2005) found 3 genetically distinct populations of mussels…
The Omani clownfish has a distribution restricted to a few 100s of km along the Arabian Sea coast of Oman (Simpson et al. 2014).
End of text references
The bibliographic information for all cited references in the articles are listed at the end of the papers under the heading “References”. The list of references is sorted first following the alphabetical order of the authors and if necessary, by the date of publication. Please follow the examples shown below, including punctuation. The Journal names follow a “Title case” capitalization—all words are capitalized except articles (a, an, the); preposition (against, of, in, to), conjunctions (and, for, not, or)—and should NOT be abbreviated. Titles of articles, books, on the other hand follow a sentence case capitalization (i.e. words are capitalized according to the grammar of the language of publication): the first word, the first word that follow a colon or a semi colon, names of geographic locations, or proper nouns, etc. For articles published in non-English languages, provide the original title if the language uses roman characters or a translation of the title for other languages (Arabic for instance) and add the name of language between 2 periods at the end of the reference.
For online references, follow the overall same standard as for print publication, but include a date of access and if possible a DOI number. Volume and issues, if available, follow directly the Title of the Journal with the issue number between parenthesis. Page numbers follow a colon and are separated by an hyphen. For books, the total page number is used with the abbreviation pp. whereas for sections of books, the abbreviation is “p.” followed by the range of pages of the section (p. 25-44). All references ends with a period.
Journal reference with 1 author
Adams NA. 2001. UV radiation evokes negative phototaxis and covering behavior in the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis. Marine Ecology Progress Series 213: 87-95.
Journal reference with 2 authors
Zhou M, Huntley ME. 1997. Population dynamics theory of plankton based on biomass spectra. Marine Ecology Progress Series 159: 61-73.
Journal reference with more than 2 authors
Schlacher TA, Thompson l, Price S. 2007. Vehicles versus conservation of invertebrates on sandy beaches: Mortalities inflicted by off-road vehicles on ghost crabs. Marine Ecology 28: 354-367.
Whole book
Parsons TR, Maita Y, Lalli CM. 1984. A manual of chemical and biological methods for seawater analysis. New York: Pergamon Press. 173 pp.
Book chapter from an edited book
Brooks HA, Probert TH. 1984. Let's ask GMDH what effect the environment has on fisheries. In: Farlow SJ, editor. Self-organizing methods in modeling. Gmdh type algorithms. New York and Basel: Marcel Dekker, Inc. p.169-178.
Report
Stransky C. 2001. Preliminary results of a shape analysis of redfish otoliths: Comparison of areas and species. Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. NAFO SCR No. 4382.
Thesis
Al-Masroori HS. 2002. Trap ghost fishing problem in the area between Muscat and Barka (Sultanate of Oman); an evaluation study [MSc.]. [Muscat]: Sultan Qaboos University. p. 112.
Article not in English
Samimi NS. 2004. Soft-corals and gorgonians of the Iranian shore of the Straight of Hormuz. Iranian Journal of Oceanography 7(2):45-49. Farsi.
Conference proceedings
Campbell AC. 1988. The echinoderm fauna of Dhofar (southern Oman) excluding holothuroids. In: Burke RD, Mladenov PV, Lambert P, editors. Proceedings of the Sixth International Echinoderm Conference; 23-28 August 1987; Victoria, Canada: Balkema. p. 369-378.
Authorship
Authorship must be based on all of the following criteria: (1) substantial contribution to the conception and design of the study, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically and; (3) final approval of the version of the manuscript to be published. Contributors who do not meet all 3 of these criteria should be listed in the acknowledgement section of the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible for taking all necessary actions for reviewing the manuscript, receiving authorization from other authors etc.
Scientific misconduct
According to standard practices in scientific journals, SQU Journal of Agricultural and Marine Sciences follows the recommendations of Council of Science Editors (www.councilscienceeditors.org) and define misconduct as:
1. Data Corruption: falsifying data, inventing data, ignoring part of the data purposefully, or any form of omission, suppression or distortion of data.
2. Plagiarism: using published or unpublished texts, ideas or thoughts of another writer without acknowledgements and presenting them as one’s own. Plagiarism includes duplicate publications or submissions in the same or in another language. The journal will follow COPE guidelines to identify and manage cases of plagiarism.
3. Authorship misconduct: Exclusion of involved researchers, or inclusion of researchers who have not contributed significantly to the work (see section on authors), or publication without the consent of all authors.
4. Ethical misconducts: Failure to follow legal requirements in acquiring the necessary permission to sample, collect, export or import specimens, collect data, use chemicals or obtain ethical permits.
SQU Journal of Agricultural and Marine Sciences takes all forms of misconduct very seriously. It follows the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) recommendations and guidelines (publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines). Final decisions regarding scientific misconducts are taken by the Editor in Chief.
