Author guidelines

Journal aim and scope

Agraarteadus | Journal of Agricultural Science is open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes papers that are accessible to an international audience and indexed by several abstracting and full-text databases like CABI, DOAJ, EBSCO, SCOPUS etc.

Agraarteadus | Journal of Agricultural Science invites scientific articles for publication in the agricultural field. Particularly welcome are papers presenting multidisciplinary research. We encourage submissions of local interest in the agricultural sector of the Baltic Sea region. Additionally, articles investigating practical applications to improve the efficiency, profitability, sustainability, biodiversity and management of rural life in any of its aspects.

The journal is determined to avoid publication bias by publishing negative studies  if the study is well structured.

Agraarteadus is engaged to preserve and develop scientific vocabulary and terminology in a variety of disciplines in the local language. 

Manuscript types accepted

1. Research articles (template Word 97-2003  or Word 2010- )
2. Review articles
3. Short communications (template Word 97-2003  or Word 2010- )
4. Case studies (template Word 97-2003  or Word 2010- )
5. Letters to the editor
6. Book reviews

Research articles – original research not previously published elsewhere other than in a preliminary form.
  

Review articles – submitted or invited summary of the advances within the subjects covered by the scope of the journal and of general interest in the field.
  

Short communication – original and noteworthy observations or development of methods fitting the journal's scope and not fitting the form of a research article. The communication should be presented in a concentrated form with a minimum amount of references (maximum 20). The format is that of a research article, but the abstract should have a maximum of 150 words, and where the Findings replaces the Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, and Discussion. The maximum length of 1500 words, two tables or figures and a maximum of 10 references.
  

Case studies – interesting cases within the scope of the journal that provide new insights into the research area. The form is similar to that of a short communication where the description of Case or Case Series follows an Introduction and replaces the Methods, Results, and Discussion, a maximum of 2,000 words. An abstract should be a maximum of 150 words and the case a maximum of 20 references. Up to 5 figures or tables can be included.
  

Letters to the editor – addressing published material in the journal or for the aim and scope of the journal giving a useful critique and comments. The letters are to function as a useful exchange of viewpoints that further enhance the journal integrity and usefulness to the readers. Maximum 1500 words.
   

Book reviews – of books not older than three years and within the scope of the journal. At the top of review must be the title of the book being reviewed, author (translator if applicable), publisher, year, the number of pages, price (€), ISBN and reviewer(s) name and affiliation. Content must contain information/background about the author (editor), the field the book covers (agronomy, animal breeding etc). A statement about book placement in the general field – compared with another similar book, other books by the same author, the points of similarity or difference. The main objectives of the book should be stated. Discussion about the strengths and weaknesses with examples should be provided. A conclusion highlighting the main points of the review. Keep references to a minimum, but they can be included if you want to rebut some argument of the author’s or point the reader to alternative arguments or findings. Reviewer(s) should avoid long quotations and biographical information about the author that is not related to the book. The length of the review should be up to 1,500 words. The review should be in either Estonian or English.

ETIS classification

Scientific articles published in Agraarteadus are classified as 1.1. category articles according to Estonian Research Information System (ETIS) classification since 2018. "Scholarly articles indexed by Web of Science Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index and/or indexed by Scopus (excluding chapters in books)".

How to submit a manuscript

All co-authors must agree to the submission of the manuscript. The author must send the following separate files in an email to:

• Manuscript (please use provided templates)
• Cover letter
• Figures (if applicable)
• Tables (if applicable)

An article can also be sent through the online submission form .

Cover letter

A cover letter must be included with the manuscript. In the cover letter the authors must describe:

• A short summary of the novelty of the manuscript.
• How all the listed authors contributed to the international qualifications for authorship:
  A) design/sampling/analysis,
  B) writing of the manuscript, and
  C) editing and approving the final manuscript.
• E-mail addresses and ORCID-numbers of the co-authors.
• Two suitable reviewers (name, degree, email, short reasoning). Please suggest reviewers who are not related to your institution(s) and not working in your country.

Expenses for publishing in the journal

There are no charges for submitting authors.

Language

The journal accepts articles in English, Estonian, and German. If the articles are not written in English an English summary must be submitted in addition to the Abstract, following the References. A summary is not required for Short Communication.

Please use the standard British English spelling of words such as ‘centre’ or ‘colour’. Where British English has alternative spellings of words such as ‘recognize’/‘recognise’, please use the ‘z’ form, e.g. ‘summarize’. But note that in British English ‘analyse’ is spelt with an ‘s’. Please use ‘for example in the text and ‘e.g.’ in lists of tables/figures. There should be no comma after ‘e.g.’ or ‘i.e.’. 

Ethics

Ethical considerations and experimental permits must be explained in the method section if applicable. Cruelty to animals and lack of required ethical permits where required will not be accepted for publication.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Agraarteadus follows the Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement based on Elsevier  recommendations and COPE's  guidelines. More information 

Format of manuscript

Download and use the provided template suiting the format of your submission (see Manuscript types accepted). In case of doubt, the required formatting is as listed below.

• The file should be prepared using Microsoft Word 97 or a later version.
• Set page size to A4 (21 x 29.7cm), all margins at 2.5 cm.
• Use single line spacing and justify the text.
• Use font Times New Roman, size 10 pt.
• Do not use page numbering.
• Use "consecutive" line numbering include tables, figures, references.
• Use italics for Latin biological names.
• Use single (‘……’) instead of double quotation marks (“……”).
• Use SI-units .
• Use full stop (point) for decimals (0.6 ± 0.2).
• For large numbers, groups of three digits separated by spaces instead of using commas (e.g., 1,200,345.67 is represented as 1 200 345.67 to avoid confusion over reading a large number as multiple numbers separated by commas).
• Use 5 °C, 5% (not 5°C, 5 %).
• Use the en dash symbol (–) to represent a range of numbers. There are no spaces between the numbers and the dash (e.g., 5–8 days, 10–15 mL, 40–45%).
• Compound units are represented as exponentials, use ‘kg ha^–1’ (not as fractions ‘kg/ha’). For multiple primary units, please use ‘W m^–1 s^–1’ instead of ‘W/m/s’ or ‘g (kg W^0.75)^–1’ instead of ‘g/kg W^0.75’. In the case of using exponentiation, use ‘kg m^{2 –1}’. Use en dash (–) for ‘^–1’. 
• Use P = 0.05 (not P=0,05).
• Use 0.6 ± 0.2 (not 0.6±0.2).
• Use DD.MM.YYYY date format. For example, 31.01.2021, not 01.31.2021. The name of the month can also be written out – January 31, 2021.
• Use 24-hours time format. For example 15:00, not 03:00 PM.

Order of contents (research article)

• Title – must be short, precise, and descriptive
• Full name(s) of the author(s) – First name1 Last name1, First name2 Last name2, ...
• Affiliation(s) (full postal address(es))
• The address, telephone (and fax if available), email and Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) of the corresponding author.
• ORCID iDs are required for the corresponding author of a submitted paper. Provision of ORCIDs by co-authors is strongly encouraged, but not mandatory.
• Abstract (up to 300 words)
• Keywords: up to six words.
• Introduction
• Material and methods
• Results (and discussion)
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Conflict of interest
• Author contributions
• Summary
• References
• Tables – placed in the text
• Figures – placed in the text

If needed, please consult ICMJE guidelines  for writing a scientific manuscript.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who did not qualify for authorship (design/sample/analyse, write the manuscript, edit and approve final manuscript). Funding sources, language editing, technical assistance.

Conflict of interests

Authors must declare any possible financial or personal conflicts of interest regarding the reported study. If the authors find no conflict of interest they must state so here.

If in doubt, please consult the ICMJE guidelines .

Author contributions

Using initials of the authors should list the contributions for the manuscript:

• study conception and design;
• acquisition of data;
• analysis and interpretation of data;
• drafting of the manuscript;
• critical revision and approval of the final manuscript.

If in doubt, please consult the ICMJE guidelines .

Summary

If the publication is not written in English the authors must provide a summary in English.

Citation

The journal uses the Harvard system of citations. E.g.:

• Smith (2015) noted...; Smith and Jones (2015) noted...; Smith et al., (2015) noted.. (if three or more authors).
• (Smith, 2015); (Smith, Jones, 2015); (Smith et al., 2015) (if three or more authors); (Smith, Jones, 2014; Walker et al., 2015).
• Quotation: (Smith, 2015, p. 76); (Smith, Jones, 2015, p. 76); (Smith et al., 2015, p 76) (if three or more authors).

Referring to the multiple sources, list them in ascending order by publishing year and by separating them with a semicolon. E.g. (Smith, 2015; Jones, 2016).

Author(s) should avoid an excessive self-citation of their own work.

References

The journal uses Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals . Examples of reference formats can be found here on the U.S. National Library of Medicine website . 

Journal names
The names of the journals must be written out in full.

Reference to a journal publication:

Author 1, A.B., Author 2, C. Year. Title of the article. – Journal title, Volume(Issue): Pagination. DOI.

Roasto, M., Meremäe, K., Kramarenko, T., Mäesaar, M., Kuningas, M. 2017. Listeria monocytogenes prevalence in ready-to-eat food products. – Agraarteadus, 28(1):25–31. DOI: 10.15159/jas.17.02.

Note: When providing a DOI, please be sure that the label and full DOI are included at the end of the reference (DOI: 10.15159/jas.17.02). Do not provide a shortened DOI or the URL.
For accepted unpublished articles substitute “In Press” for page numbers and/or DOI.

Reference to a book:

Author1, A.B.; Author2, C. Year. Book title. (1st ed.). – Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Pagination.

Stevenson, W.R., Loria, R., Franc, G.D., Weingartner, D.P. 2001. Compendium of Potato Diseases. (2nd ed.). – American Phytopathological Society: St. Paul, USA, pp. 16–36. 

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Year. Title of the chapter. – In Book Title (1st ed.). Editor 1, A.B., Editor 2, C. (Eds.). Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Pagination.

Lado, B.H., Yousef, A.E. 2007. Characteristics of Listeria monocytogenes important to food processors. – In Listeria, Listeriosis, and Food Safety (3rd ed.). Ryser, E.T., Marth, E.H. (Eds.). – CRC Press: Boca Raton, USA, pp. 157–213.

Reference to a website:

Author, A.B. Year. Title of the document. – https://URL Accessed on Day/Month/Year.

US FDA. 2017. Dietary supplements. – https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm153239.htm Accessed on 30/12/2018.

Note: Web page where no date is identified, the letters n.d. (no date) are substituted in place of a year.
If there is no author, name the company or organization responsible for the content. When there is no author for a web page, the title moves to the first position.

Reference to a dataset:

[dataset] Author1, A.B.; Author2, C. Year. Title of the dataset. – Title of the source. DOI.

Reference to a conference paper or poster presentation:

Author1, A.B.; Author2, C. Year. Title of the presentation. – Poster/oral session presentation at the conference of Name of the conference, Location of the conference, Country.

Reference to conference proceeding:

Author1, A.B.; Author2, C. Year. Title of the presentation. – In Proceedings of the Name of the conference. Location of the conference. Country. Date of the conference. Editor 1, A.B., Editor2, C. (Eds.). Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Pagination.

Reference to a thesis:

Author1, A.B. Year. Title of a thesis. – Level of the thesis. Degree-granting University, Location of University, Date of completion, Pagination.

Kass, M. 2014. Effect of crude glycerol feeding on feed intake, lactational performance and metabolic status of dairy cows. – PhD thesis. Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia, 26/06/2014, 109 pp.

References in non-Roman languages (Russian, Arabic, Amharic, Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Hindi etc.):

Non-Roman language sources in the references must be transliterated. If you are referring to a source that is in another language, please provide the transliterated title (in the other language) and then the English translation in square brackets. If the reference title was automatically translated from a foreign language into English (by Google Translate, Babelfish, etc.), you need to go back to the original source and use the original title in non-English-language, followed by the English title in square brackets.

Author(s). Year. Transliterated title in original language  [Title translated into English]. – Transliterated publication name in original language [Publication name translated into English]. Volume(Issue):Pages. [In ‘language’]

Krenke, A.N., Khodakov, V.G. 1966. O svyasi povercknostnogo tayaniya lednikov s temperaturoy vozdukha [On the relationship between melt of glaciers and air temperature]. – Materialy Glyatsiologicheskikh Issledovaniy [Data of Glaciological Studies], 12:153–163. [In Russian]

Tables

• All tables and figures must be referred to in the text (Table 1; Tables 1, 2).
• For tables, use font Times New Roman, regular, 8 points.
• Use TAB and not a space bar between columns.
• Show only horizontal lines and make vertical lines invisible.
• Primary column and row headings should start with an initial capital, secondary headings without initial capital.
• Tables must be editable. We cannot typeset tables that are graphic objects. Use the table tool in your text editing software to create tables. If necessary, create tables in Excel and insert them into the manuscript. Do not insert textboxes or graphics within your tables.

Example

Figures

• The diagrams with the data table must be submitted as MS Excel files, where each diagram is in a separate worksheet. Sheet numbers must correspond with figure numbers (e.g. Fig. 1).
• For diagrams use font Arial, regular, 8 points.
• Figures must be a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, and maximum dimensions of 15x21 cm. 
• Formats accepted: non-compressed TIFF or JPG.
• Images and graphs are only acceptable with good contrast and intensity.
• Figure legends must be separate in the manuscript, not part of the figure.
• Use 0.2 point lines for line drawings.
• Photographs indicating size must have a scale bar. The scale size must be explained in the legend.
• Text in the figure should be written in Arial font and readable after a 50% reduction of the figure size. Due to the journal being multilingual avoid text on the image but use abbreviations that can be explained in the legend.
• Colour will be accepted but only printed in the online journal. If submitting in colour the figure must be readable in halftone and the figure legend is equally applicable in both colour and halftone. Instead of using references to colour use numbered arrows to mark the area of reference.
• Refer to figures in the text and legend as Figure 1; Figure 1, a, b; Figures 1, 3; Figures 1–3.

Example (Põldaru and Roots, 2012)

Equations

• Use MS Word equation editor to write the equation.
• Equations should be numbered consecutively beginning with (1) to the end of the paper, including any appendices.
• The equation numbers should be enclosed in parentheses and align on the right side of the page on the same line as the equation.
• Use this number to refer to equations within the text. Equations should be referenced within the text as "Eq. (x)." When the reference to an equation begins a sentence, it should be spelt out, e.g., "Equation (x)."

Supplementary material

Will only be available in the online version. Datasets, video, and pictures can be accepted. These should be referred to in the article as „Suppl. Mat., Appendix 1“

Taxonomy

Authors must follow the guidelines dictated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature  for findings in zoology, and guidelines from International Association for Plant Taxonomy  for findings related to the plant, fungi, and algae.

Author rights and copyrights

Authors of accepted articles retain all rights to use, reuse, and distribute the published research as long as the author credits the original publication in this journal. Authors submitting to the journal are expected to follow the general ethical guidelines regarding plagiarism. If in doubt consult the ICMJ guidelines on overlapping publications . Once accepted the journal retains the right to print and distribute the manuscript submitted by the author. For further information please consult ICMJE guidelines .

Agraarteadus publishes open access articles under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution  (CC BY) License which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 

The Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) allows users to

• Read, print and download.
• Redistribute or republish the article (e.g. display in a repository).
• Translate the article.
• Download for text and data mining purposes.
• Reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works.
• Sell or re-use for commercial purposes.

The CC BY license permits commercial and non-commercial re-use of an open-access article, as long as the author is properly attributed. Authors grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified. Use of the article (or part of it) in any medium requires attribution as follows: [Author/Title of Article/Journal Title and Volume/Issue. Copyright (c) [year] [copyright owner as specified in the Journal]. Link to the final article on Agraarteadus website where applicable.

Reviewer report on manuscript

All manuscripts will go through the peer review process, even for invited reviews. The general purpose of a review is to assist the editors in evaluating the worth of a manuscript for publication and to help the author(s) make improvements to the manuscript. We do not release referees' identities to authors or to other reviewers. Our preference is for referees to remain anonymous throughout the review process and beyond. However, the referee may voluntarily sign their comments to the authors. Reviewer report  (RTF)

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