Submissions

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Author Guidelines

Article types

JALF accepts the types below. Authors declare the type at submission, and the manuscript is assessed against the requirements of that type only. Each type's requirements are stated in its section policy.

  • Research Article
  • Technical Note
  • Review Article
  • Case Study

Citation style

CSE name-year. Manuscripts in another style are returned for reformatting before review.

Length

5,000-8,000 words excluding references.

Requirements specific to JALF

  • Scientific names given in full with authority at first mention, italicised thereafter.
  • Experimental design named explicitly (RCBD, CRD, split-plot and so on) with replication stated.
  • Site description: coordinates, altitude, soil or water type, and the season or production cycle.
  • No mean without a measure of variation - SD, SE or confidence interval.
  • Work with live animals requires an animal ethics approval number in Materials and Methods.
  • Unstructured abstract, 150-200 words, stating the system studied, the treatment, and the principal result with its measure of variation.

Language and metadata

Title, abstract and keywords in English. Full text in English. Three to six keywords, separated by semicolons.

Manuscript template

Write your manuscript on the journal's own template — it carries the section headings, the abstract format and the requirements specific to JALF already in place.

Download the JALF manuscript template (.docx)

The template is the anonymised file. Prepare the title page as a separate document.

Files to submit

  1. Anonymised manuscript - no author name, affiliation or self-identifying acknowledgement anywhere in the file, for double-blind review.
  2. Title page, submitted separately: full title, every author with affiliation, e-mail and ORCID iD, corresponding author marked, and CRediT contribution statement.
  3. Statement of originality and copyright, signed by the corresponding author on behalf of all authors.

Declarations

Required at submission: competing interests, funding, data availability, acknowledgements, and use of AI - any generative tool used in drafting, analysis or translation must be named together with what it was used for. AI cannot be listed as an author.

Fees

No submission fee and no publication fee during the journal's founding period.

Submission Preparation Checklist

All submissions must meet the following requirements.

  • This submission meets the requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • This submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.
  • All references have been checked for accuracy and completeness.
  • All tables and figures have been numbered and labeled.
  • Permission has been obtained to publish all photos, datasets and other material provided with this submission.

Research Article

Empirical research with primary or self-analysed secondary data. Full IMRaD. Sample size, sampling procedure and response rate stated in Method; every reported figure carries a measure of variation. Data Availability statement required.

Technical Note

Measurement, modelling or engineering report with technical data. SI units throughout; study area given with coordinates and datum; maps carry scale, north arrow and projection; equations numbered and referred to by number. Raw data and processing code deposited with a persistent identifier.

Review Article

Systematic or structured narrative review. Search protocol stated: databases, keywords, year range. Inclusion and exclusion criteria declared, with the number of records screened and finally reviewed. Primary data is not required.

Case Study

In-depth study of a single case, region or organisation. The reason for selecting the case is stated explicitly; sources of evidence are named (interviews, documents, observation); the limits of generalisation are stated in the Discussion.

Copyright Notice

Authors retain copyright of their work and grant JALF the right of first publication.

Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). Others may share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and derivative works carry the same licence.

Authors may deposit the published version in institutional repositories and on personal or departmental websites, acknowledging first publication in this journal.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.