Submissions

Author Guidelines

Current Topics in Agronomic Science is an international journal, semi-annual, bilingual, open access, edited in electronic format by the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (UACh), which publishes current scientific articles related to the following topics:

Agricultural engineering. Watershed management; irrigation and drainage; wastewater treatment; agricultural mechanization; automation, robotics and control of biotechnological processes; alternative energies; modelling of biological systems.

Agroindustry. Fresh and processed foods; food conservation; functional and innovative foods; agri-food bioprocesses; sensory analysis; food safety; non-food agroindustry; biofermentations; separation processes; metabolomics; food microbiology; metagenomics; appellations of origin; food rheology; active and intelligent packaging; postharvest technology; pharmacognosy; essential oils; natural products properties.

Animal science. Food and management of food resources; evaluation and sustainable use of livestock genetic resources; animal welfare, safety and quality of livestock products; environmental impact of livestock systems; modeling of livestock systems.

Biotechnology and agricultural science: Agricultural biotechnology; plant tissue culture; plant genetic engineering; plant breeding; growth regulators; plant nutrition; plant physiology; plant chemistry; staple and industrial crops; agricultural production systems; bioenergetics; postharvest and culinary quality; plant protection; pest and disease control; digital agriculture; mechanization in agricultural systems; biological control; weed management; food safety; certifications; aquaculture.

Natural resources. Design, management and evaluation of agro-ecosystems; processes for the generation and appropriation of agroecological technologies; organic agriculture; climate change; natural resources and biodiversity; conservation of natural resources; regional analysis of natural resources; sustainable management of natural resources; territorial organization; geography of natural resources; pollution and environmental rehabilitation; territorial organization; geography of natural resources.

Socioeconomic and Educational Sciences. Economy and rural development; economic development of the agricultural sector; administration and development of agribusiness; national and international trade in agricultural and forestry products; innovation management; social theory; producer organization and rural development; agricultural education; agricultural extensión; feminism and gender; Impact of feminism and gender factors in the development of agricultural production systems; bioeconomy; circular economy.

Soil science. Fertility and plant nutrition; sustainable management of production systems; soil physics and chemistry; soil conservation; pollution and environmental rehabilitation; irrigation and drainage.

Manuscript submission

The process of manuscript submission in the journal Current Topics in Agronomic Science is carried out completely online, through the website

https://revistas.chapingo.mx/ctasci

To submit a manuscript, you must have a Username and a Password. If you do not have these data, you must click on the "Register" tab and complete the requested information. If you already have the Username and Password information, you must click on the "Login" tab.

Authors interested in publishing a manuscript in Current Topics in Agronomic Science must necessarily send it in Microsoft Word® format.

The minimum documents required to submit a manuscript are the following:

• Cover letter. Document where authors express their intention to submit the manuscript to Current Topics in Agronomic Science for possible publication. This Letter must explicitly state that the contribution has not been published anywhere, nor is it in the process of being reviewed for possible publication in another journal, except, when applicable, as a simple abstract in a congress memory. Likewise, the Cover Letter must indicate the name of the person, among the authors, who will act as the Corresponding Author and will be responsible for following up on all the observations and guidelines derived from the Review and Editing processes, indicating their full address, email and phone number.
• Frontal page. It is the first manuscript page which contains only the information of Title in English, Title in Spanish, list of Authors, adscriptions, and information of the corresponding author.
• Manuscript without information of authors. Manuscript with Title in English, Title in Spanish, Abstract in English, Key words in English, Abstract in Spanish (Resumen), Key words in Spanish (Palabras clave), Introduction, Materials and methods, Results and discussion, Conclusions, References, Tables and Figures. This document must not contain the information of authors nor their affiliations.

General format

Current Topics in Agronomic Science receives contributions in Spanish or English. In any case, if the contribution is accepted, it will be subject to translation to meet the bilingual publication criterion. The manuscript must be edited in a Word® file, with a “.docx” file extension. The maximum length of a contribution is up to 8000 words including references. Each page must be written with 1.5 line spacing and 12-Times New Roman font, including tables, figures, and references. A letter size format must be used (21.59 x 27.94 cm). Margins will be 2.5 cm on all the sides. Each page must be numbered consecutively and number lines must be showed at left margin, continuously between pages, to facilitate the revision work. The text should not be justified to the right margin and at the end of each line the words should not be divided.

Manuscript structure

Title. It should be concise, brief, attractive, and it should indicate the essence of the study. It should not exceed 15 words. The title must be written in capital letters, bold, centered, and without a period at the end. When the name of a little-known biological organism is included in the title, the respective scientific name must be added between parentheses and in italics. In the case of well-known species, the scientific name will not be placed and this will be considered only among the Key Words. If the general text of the contribution is written in Spanish, the main title will be written in that language, followed by the English translation. On the contrary, if the contribution is written in English, it will begin with a title in this language, followed by its translation into Spanish.

Authors. Names of authors will be written two spaces below title and will be centered on the line. The name of the author or authors must begin with the first name (s), followed by surnames. In the case of two surnames, they must be joined by a hyphen without spaces. In the case of several authors, the names must be separated by semicolons (;). Academic degrees should not be mentioned. When the authors have different affiliation, an Arabic numerical superscript will be included at the end of each name as a call to the note indicating their address. To identify the responsible or corresponding author, an asterisk (*) will be added to the superscript.

Affiliations. The affiliation and full address of each of them should be indicated. The email must be included for all authors. Avoid placing this information at the bottom of the page. In the case of several authors, the affiliation and address of each one will be written starting with the superscript that was indicated for in the list of authors. At the end of the list of affiliations and on a separate line, the email of the author for correspondence will be written with the annotation between parentheses (*Corresponding author).

Abstract. It is a synthesis of the contribution. It must show a structure that allows to clearly identify the importance or justification of the study (written in the form of a statement with an extension of one or two lines), the objective of the work, the methodology followed, the most outstanding results, and the general conclusion. The maximum length is 250 words. It should be written in a single paragraph, without including discussion or bibliographic citations. The mention of tables and figures is not allowed in this section. It should be consistent with the other sections of the document.

Key words. It is a list of up to five simple or compound words, preferably not included in the title, which serve to indicate to the reader the topics to which the contribution refers. A space must be written below the last line of the Abstract, at the left margin of the text, in lowercase letters, separated by commas, and with a period at the end of the list.

Resumen. It corresponds to a literal translation of the Abstract. There must be a clear match between Abstract and “Resumen”. If the manuscript is in general written in English, the “Resumen” must be written in Spanish and it must be placed after the Abstract.

Palabras clave. They are the same words listed in the "Key words" section but in Spanish. They will be placed one space below the last line of the “Resumen”.

Introduction. In this section, the problematic related to the object of study should be mentioned. Specifically, the importance, the state of the art, and the objectives of the work should be clearly described. The objectives must state the purpose of the study. This section must describe clearly the problem statement based on the most related bibliographic background. This section must include the objective of the work. The bibliographic support used to pose the problem should not be older than 10 years and preferably should be located in the period of the last five years.

Materials and methods. The methodology must be sufficiently described to allow the reproducibility of the work. It should include materials and equipment used, the experimental organization, and the statistical design. The procedure followed to determine each variable must be described. In experimental work, the meaning of experimental units, repetitions, statistic test, etc., must be detailed. Likewise, all bibliographic references associated with the different methodologies used should be cited.

Results and discussion. The results obtained, must be recorded in a clear, orderly and complete, concise manner, coinciding with the methodology described. Tables and Figures that support the text may be included. During the document preparation, these tables and figures will be placed at the end of the manuscript, on separate pages, and with the corresponding captions. The information presented in the Tables and Figures should not be repeated in the text. The statistical information must be included. Results must be analyzed and interpreted objectively. They must be explained and confronted with information from previous research and pertinent bibliographic references that support the systematization and analysis of the hypotheses raised in the description of the study problem.

Conclusions. They correspond to statements derived from the results and should not exceed the scope of these, nor be a summary of them. Care must be taken to ensure that they fully agree with the objectives set at the beginning of the study. This section should only include facts verified in the study, in such a way that hypotheses or speculations should not be included, nor should recommendations be made to guide future work.

Acknowledgments (optional). This section will include the acknowledgments to people, institutions, funds, and research grants, among others, who in some way have supported or collaborated in the development of the study.

References. This chapter should include a list of the references cited in the text, in alphabetical order according to the first letters of the last name of the main author. All references included in this section must have been mentioned in the text and all citations in the text must be included here. References should be reported in the original language. The format of references must follow the APA 7 style, which can be consulted at the electronic addresses [http://www.apastyle.org/]. All references must be carefully checked for completeness and correctness. It is recommended to carry out a verification through the Internet to ensure that the data of each one is complete.

Citation of references in text

The mention of references in the text must follow the APA 7 style. When the reference contains one or two authors, the surnames must be mentioned followed by the year of publication within parentheses. When a reference has three or more authors the Latin phrase "et al." will be used after the last name of the first author. In references where two or more authors must be mentioned in a list, the surnames will be written separated by commas. The year of the reference must always appear within parentheses. When several references are cited together, they must be separated by a semicolon. When quoting authors who have published more than one reference in the same year, a differentiation will be made with the letters a, b, c, etc., placed immediately after the year of publication, which will appear in the order of the letters in the References section. Indirect citation of references (“cited by”) must be avoided, except in cases where it is essential to consider the original reference and is impossible to find it. It is not allowed to use personal communications as quotes, or articles or writings in preparation or in the review process in any journal, except when they are already accepted, for which the expression "In press" may be used in the References section. Internet references are not allowed, except in the case of electronic journals and pages of officially recognized national and international institutions. Nor is it allowed to cite theses, brochures, conference proceedings, or any other publication with limited circulation. When a source has a doi (digital object identifier), it must be cited in the reference with the format https://doi.org/10.####. For the case of two authors and the cite is part of the text the conjunction “and” must be used. For the case of two authors and the cite is placed within parentheses, an ampersand symbol (&) must be used. Following are described some examples:

"... which was previously reported by Torres and Fernández (2015), who ..."

“… However, other authors have reported values higher than 80 in similar phenomena (Torres & Fernández, 2015; Pesis & Vega, 2014; Gastelúa et al., 2008; Suástegui et al., 2008), which has been due to ... "

"In this regard, Villalobos-Turin et al. (2016) found that the values can vary between 75 and 88."

“... which can cause a decrease in the freezing point (Ortiz-Placencia et al., 2011) that can affect the cooking properties (Arizmendi et al., 2018)."

“… Which has been reported before by Campbell and Smith (2007a), as a complement to the residence time calculation method (Campbell & Smith, 2007b)."

List of references

The list of references in the final section of the manuscript must follow the format of the APA 7 style. In references such as articles, it is advisable to include the doi (digital object identifier) with the format https://doi.org/10.####. Likewise, a format with a hanging indent of 1 cm must be used. In the case of an article that has already been approved, but it has not yet been published in its final form, the expression "In press" may be used. Following some examples are included:

The case of a periodic journal:

Caldeira, A. C. R., de Franca, W. F. L., Converti, A., Lima, W. J. N., Sampaio, F. C., & de Far, J. T. (2019). Liquid-liquid equilibria in aqueous two-phase ethanol/salt systems at different temperatures and their application to anthocyanins extraction. Food Science and Technology, 39, 711–717. https://doi.org/10.1590/fst.32218

The case of a book:

Rao, M. A., Syed, S. H., Ashim Datta, A. K., & Ahmed, J. (2014). Engineering properties of foods (4th ed.). Boca Raton: Florida: CRC Press.

The case of a book chapter:

Nunes, M. C. N., & Emond, J. P. (2003). Storage temperature. 2nd. ed. In Bartz, J. A. & Brecht, J. K. (Eds.), Postharvest physiology and pathology of vegetables. (pp. 209-228). Gainesville, FL.: University of Florida.

Names

Common names of elements, substances, plants, animals, and things should be written in lowercase. Proper names shall be written in lowercase, with the exception of the initials. In addition to the generic or chemical name, the name of the supplier or manufacturer, along with the country of origin, should be noted in parentheses. Chemical names (those in which the chemical structure of a substance is established) must be written in accordance with the nomenclature of the IUPAC (International Union of the Pure and Applied Chemistry) and the recommendations of the combined commission IUPAC-IUB (International Union of Biochemistry). For example, "2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid”. Scientific names will accompany, in parentheses, the common names of plants and animals the first time they are mentioned; later they will be omitted. They will be written in italics and will consist of a generic epithet (genus), specific epithet (species) and surname (s) of the classifier (s). They will be written in lowercase, except for the initial letter of the genus, the surnames of the classifiers, and the names of the cultivars that are attached to the scientific name. For example: Persea americana Mill.

Equations and variables

All equations must be written centered, on a separate line and will be numbered sequentially in the right margin. While writing the document in the Microsoft Word® program, it is suggested to write the equations using the equation editor of the same software. All the variables used in the manuscript should preferably be fully defined (name, symbology, and units) in a single nomenclature section placed at the end of the document under the title of “Notation”. Symbols should be as simple as possible. In the use of subscripts and superscripts, care must be taken that each one has a unique meaning, which must be defined in the notation section. All Greek letters and special symbols must be inserted clearly. Special care must be taken to ensure the correct relative position of each symbol and number, which especially applies to equations, superscripts, and subscripts. In order to help distinguish them from units, all mathematical symbols should be written in italics.

Units

The International System of Units (SI) will be used. All units must be written in normal text. A format based on the slash character (/) must be used to express complex units. For example, J/kg K or mol/m³. In this composite unit format, a space will be placed between each unit. No other characters should be used to separate units. In all cases, including the symbols for % and temperature units (K, °C), there must be a space between the numerical value and the unit. Below is a list of commonly used units accompanied by the corresponding symbol in parentheses: meter (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), Kelvin degree (K), Celcius degree (°C), ampere (A) , candela (cd), mol (mol), Dalton (Da), Newton (N), Pascal (Pa), Joule (J), Watt (W), coulomb (C), Volt (V), Hertz (Hz), Farad (F), ohm (Ω), Siemens (S), Weber (Wb), Tesla (T), Henry (H), lumen (lm), lux (lx), Becquerel (Bq), Gray (Gy), Sievert (Sv), and radian (rad). When the case warrants it, the use of units such as liter (capital L), minute (min), hour (h), day (d), centimeter (cm), and hectare (ha) is allowed.

Abbreviations

The first time an abbreviation is used in the document, the full meaning must be written in the normal text, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. On subsequent occasions, the abbreviation may be used without further explanation. For example, "... the identification of compounds was carried out by means of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) ...". Alternatively, abbreviations can be included in the Notation section.

Numbers

Arabic numerals should always be used when indicating units, measures, and when designating numbers from 10 onwards. However, when the numbers from zero to nine are mentioned without being associated with units, they must be written in letters. For example, “… there were seven treatments…” and “… the temperature of the refrigeration chamber was 7 °C…”. To separate the integer part from decimals in a quantity, the point will be used. For very large or very small quantities, prefixes or scientific notation should be used. Following are some examples: "…. 3.6 MPa were used…”; “… With a permeability of 1.45 10^-14 kg m/s m² Pa and a thickness of 35 mm…”; "…the pressure losses were calculated over 1.5 km with ...".

Tables and figures

Tables and figures are used to replace the text and when their content cannot be clearly expressed or their use constitutes a significant saving of space. Tables should explain, but not duplicate, data already presented in the text or any figure. They must be clear, simple, concise and, above all, they must be understood independently of the text. For this, it is necessary to select the data so that only those that will be used to emphasize some aspects or that explain others are presented. These data should be arranged in a way that facilitates their interpretation. A caption must be written before the Table, in a short and precise way, starting with the word "Table", followed by the corresponding consecutive Arabic number. The mention in text will be made with the word Table and Figure starting with capital letters, for example, “… is observed in Table 2…”, “… the behavior is shown in Figure 5…”.

In tables, the heading of each column should clearly indicate the information placed below it. All the variation factors, dependent variables, and independent variables must be clearly identified. Units must be placed in parentheses below the variables to which they correspond. If there are too many variables, it is recommended the preparation of two tables. Likewise, when the information is abundant, it is allowed to present a table in landscape form. Any clarification or abbreviation, with the exception of those of universal use, must be specified at the bottom of the table, for which it is suggested to use superscripts from the end of the alphabet in reverse order (z, y, x, w, ...). Indications of statistical significance (when applicable) must be made with lowercase letters from the beginning of the alphabet (a, b, c, d, ...). Likewise, a single asterisk (*) can be used for significance of 0.05 and double asterisk (**) for significance of 0.01.

Tables should only have three main horizontal lines: above or at the beginning of the table, below the column heading, and below the table. Vertical lines are not allowed in tables. The table must be within a Microsot Word® type table and tabs or lines made with the drawing tool must not be used. Tables should present the relevant statistical information. It is suggested that figures do not contain letters, symbols, and lines placed with the drawing tool. If there is a need to do this, the image should be grouped as one.

Figures must be attached separately in the format of Microsoft Excell®, Autocad® or Sigma Plot® programs, indicating the type of program used. The use of licensed software is the sole responsibility of the authors. Figures may also be submitted in .jpg or .tif formats, with a minimum resolution of 600 dpi. Photographs must be attached in a minimum quality of 600 dpi.

All figures and images must be clearly identified in the file name, with the figure number and the abbreviated legend. The scale of photomicrographs and macrophotographs must be clearly indicated in the caption. The legend of figures will be made at the bottom of the same, with the word "Figure" (first letter in capital letter), followed by the corresponding Arabic number in the sequence and a text that contains the information necessary to understand it and, at the same time like the tables, it must be understood on its own without resorting to the text. The title of figures should be included at the bottom of them, as text, and should not be part of the figure. In the body of the figure, the necessary numbers and symbols will be represented, the meaning of which must go in a box (legend) located in a corner. Points, lines, or bars that represent means in the body of the graph must be accompanied by their standard deviations when it comes to experimental information. The experimental points should be visibly marked. Figures related with experimental works must include the statitistical information.

Footnotes

Footnotes are not allowed.

Headers

The headings have different orders and their position indicates the hierarchy of a part or section within the contribution. Below are examples that show the format to use:

FIRST ORDER HEADER (centered)

The only heading in this order is the main title of the manuscript, which must be written in capital letters, in bold font, centered, and without a period at the end.

Second order header

This type denotes the different sections of the contribution: Abstract, Resumen, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results and discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments, References. They must be written starting with a capital letter and the rest with lowercase. They must be in bold font, aligned to the left, and without a period at the end. The text that follows should be in a new paragraph. A free line must be left between the preceding section and this title.

Third order header

It will be written in lowercase, except for the first letter and in bold. In the left margin, without indentation. The text will begin in a separate paragraph on the line following this title.

Fourth order heading. It is similar to the previous one, except that the text begins after this heading using a full stop.

Publication fee (APC)

Current Topics in Agronomic Science does not have any publication fee.