Submission Guidelines

DESCRIPTION

Agricultural Engineering Today (AET) publishes success stories, and prominent technical articles of modern contemporary world along with information/ data related to Agricultural Engineering and Technology, industry-driven news & research, Govt. policies, initiatives & accomplishments, scientific innovation & technology outreach covering the emerging areas in agricultural engineering and allied sectors.

AUDIENCE OF AET

Farmers, agricultural machinery manufacturers and industries, policymakers, scientists, engineers, students, youths searching for careers, and academicians associated with agriculture and allied activities.

PREFERENCES IN PUBLICATION

The AET is primarily meant for publishing information in any area of Agricultural Engineering technology and allied fields that may be useful to technology developers and users, manufacturers, farmers and budding entrepreneurs, students, youth searching for careers, planners, and policymakers. A technical article whose content either has been adopted or has potential for adoption is preferred. Articles/ papers from industry and extension agencies are also encouraged. Articles with export and import data and statistics of important areas of relevance available on Government published documents and websites are appreciated as well. Length of manuscript should not exceed 1,500 words (including body text, tables and figures).

TYPES OF MANUSCRIPT

Technical articles should be reports of complete, scientific, and original research work either adopted by stakeholders or has potential to be adopted and aid as new knowledge to the field of agricultural engineering and technologies.

Success stories should be compilations of scientific and technical information about successful agricultural technologies, truly proven by outreach, dissemination, and demonstration with impact at various grassroots and stallholders.

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT

Soft copy of the manuscript in Microsoft (MS) Word, along with a request letter, should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief through e-mail (Email: [email protected];). The manuscript is to be written in English language [English (India)] using MS Word, 1500 words, typed in double space in single column on A-4 size page. The editor-in-chief herself/himself may also invite articles from any eminent personality of repute from Industries, Government/non-governmental organizations, scientists, and engineers on a specific topic for a specific issue.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT

Soft copy of the manuscript should be prepared in MS Word using Times New Roman Font using the specified font size as mentioned below.

  • Title heading: 14 pt. bold upper lower; Author name: 12 pt. bold u/L; Text: 12 pt. normal, Sub-heading: 12 pt. Cap bold, Fig/ table caption: 12 pt. Bld. u/L centre,  References: same as text, Footnote: 8 pt. italics.
  • Use the equation editor or Math Type for equations
  • Use the table function, not spreadsheets to make tables
  • Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar
  • Always use internationally accepted signs and symbols for units (SI units)
  • Manuscript should be ‘spell checked' and 'grammar checked’ using English (India) as proofing language
  • Ensure all references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa
  • Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
  • Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Manuscript should be well structured and arranged as follows

  • Title: The title should be concise and informative. Prime letters of prime words shall be capital. Avoid abbreviations and formulae in the Title.
  • Short title should be avoided, if at all needed should not be of more than 80 characters
  • Author name(s): Provide name, designation and affiliation, full postal and email addresses for each author. Please also indicate who the corresponding author is. The e-mail address of the corresponding author must be mentioned for further correspondence. Corresponding Author acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.
  • Main text: For clarity, this should be sub-divided into different headings/sub-heading depending on the type/content of the article:
    • Introductory paragraph without giving heading of Introduction: This should describe about background, importance, present status, future needs of this development/research work etc.
    • Thereafter heading and sub-headings of articles may be chosen by the authors based on demands of articles. Main headings shall be prime letters capitals and sub-headings in sentence case. Altogether this portion of article should describe fully about the technologies/processes/products and their features, potential of impact on improving life of common people.
    • Third section of the articles should cover performance analysis, results of economic and social impact studies with evidence using actual data/graph etc. The discussion should explore the significance of the performance of the technology and its implication on agricultural growth and society etc.  Any limitations etc. of the present developed technology should also be briefly mentioned and discussed. A small concluding paragraph/ statements synthesising key points should be provided at the end of the manuscript to help the readers to understand the significance of the article.
  • List of symbols: Should be avoided, if at all needed all symbols must be defined wherever used in the text.
  • Acknowledgment: Optional, depending upon the cases.

Units: Only SI units are accepted.  All units should be written as in the style kg.m-2

  • Language: English (India)
  • References: References should be cited as less as possible. If at all needed Authors are encouraged to cite latest and most essential references only (preferably of last five years), and also should include at least two relevant references from the Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India)/ Agricultural Engineering Today. Citations of references in the text should be in the format of surnames of authors, followed by the year of publication of the appropriate reference, separated by a semi-colon. The artifice “Leading author et al.” should be used in the text for multiple (more than two) authorship papers. Each reference should give the names of all authors (or, if anonymous, the abbreviated name of the organization), the year of publication, the title, publisher, volume and issue/ Publication number, page numbers, in that order. Authors are also encouraged to provide Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article in the reference list. Some examples of references are given below.

In the text: “Previous work has shown (Kumar et al., 2014; Modi et al., 2020)...”

In the references list (to journals):

Obeid M; Awawdeh M; Al‐Hantouli F. 2021. Morphometric analysis and prioritisation of watersheds for flood risk management in Wadi Easal basin (WEB), Jordan, using geospatial technologies. J. Flood Risk Manage., 14(2), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12711

Reference list (to books): Kepner R A; Bainer R; Barger E L. 2005. Principles of Farm Machinery. Third Edition, The AVI Publishing Company Inc., USA, 368-382.

Web references: As a minimum, the full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed should be given. Any further information, if known (DOI, author name(s), date, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

  • Figures: All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals; Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order; Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.). Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type. Figure captions should be placed beneath each figure ( 1: Moisture ratio and drying time of onion slices under fluidized drying). Also, identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption. All graphs should be prepared in MS EXCEL (with graph lines in matching colours and axis title units mentioned after the title separated by a comma) and embedded in the Word file of the manuscript. Each figure must be placed on a separate page after References.
  • Tables: Each table must be placed on a separate page after References, and numbered consecutively throughout the text (with Arabic numerals), and referred to as Table 1, Table 2, etc. There must be a caption explaining the components of the table. (Table 1. Performance parameters of bullock drawn sprayer) at the bottom of each Table. Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body

OTHER IMPORTANT GUIDELINES

Cover letter: The corresponding author must state explicitly in a paragraph how the manuscript fits the Aims and Scope of the AET while submitting the manuscript. The ISAE membership number of the FIRST AUTHOR may be mentioned.

Maintaining transparency and integrity: The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one places l for simultaneous consideration. The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid concerns about text-recycling/ ‘self-plagiarism’. Self-duplication and similarity index of any other’ manuscripts should not be more than 30% and 15%, respectively.

Publishing Ethics: All parties [author(s), editors, peer reviewers, publisher (ISAE)] involved in publications are expected to follow the publication ethics and practice the same. This includes all parties treating each other with respect and dignity and without discrimination, harassment, bullying or retaliation. The AET is committed to maintain the highest level of integrity in the published content. While submitting a manuscript to the AET, the authors will give an undertaking for maintaining transparency and integrity and practicing publishing ethics by submitting the “ AET Publishing Agreement Form” (Click here to download).

Authorship: Authorship should be limited to those who have (1) made a significant contribution to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software/ model used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; (2) approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author's contribution to the study); and (3) agreed to be personally accountable for their own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature. All those who have made substantial contributions should be listed as co-authors. Those who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the manuscript (e.g., language editing, etc.) should be recognised in the acknowledgements section. contributions For transparency, authors are encouraged to submit an author statement outlining their individual contributions to the paper using the relevant CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing.  The submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at submission

Changes in authorship: Authors should carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Request for any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made before the manuscript is accepted, and only if approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the AET on submission. To request such a change, the Editor-in-Chief must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the requested change in author list, and (b) written confirmation (e-mail/letter) from all (original submission and proposed) authors that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement without any conflict of interest.

Preprint Policy:  The authors are required to include details of a preprint posting, including DOI or other persistent identifiers while submitting their manuscript. Upon receipt of acceptance of a manuscript for publication in the AET, the corresponding author must agree to the terms of the relevant publishing agreement. After the final version of the work is published in the AET, the preprint shall be immediately linked with the published version (the ‘Version of Record’) by the corresponding author(s).

Submission of revised manuscript: While submitting the revised manuscript, the authors should submit a list of changes or a rebuttal against each point raised by the Reviewers/ Editorial Board along with the revised manuscript. Authors are also advised to use the “track change option” of MS WORD to indicate the changes made in the revised manuscript, and submit a revised manuscript in track change mode along with a corrected version without track change corrections/edits, and all corrections written in RED COLOUR.

Print proof: The corresponding author will be notified via email when proofs are ready, and he/she is responsible for carryout proofreading very carefully within given time frame to avoid errors in the final published article. Any corrections marked with annotations must be returned within given time and should only cover typesetting errors/minor corrections. No new additions of text / major changes are allowed at this stage. 

Copyright Information: Upon acceptance of an article for publication in the Agricultural Engineering Today (AET), authors will be advised to complete a “Copyright Transfer and Publication Ethics Agreement Form” (Click here to download). An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming acceptance of the manuscript together with a “Copyright Transfer and Publication Ethics Agreement Form” or a link to the online version of this agreement.

Authors have the rights to reuse their research work reported in the AET, share, disseminate, and maximize the impact of their research under our publishing agreement. Subscribers may reproduce the Table of Content or prepare a list of articles, for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included in the manuscript, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) suitably in the article.

Appeals and Complaints: Any complaint and appeal on editorial decisions, long procedural delays and publication ethics are handled by the Editor-in-Chief and/or the Editor who handled the manuscript. On receiving an appeal against rejection, the Editor-in-Chief or handling Editor considers the authors’ argument, the reviewer reports / Editorial Board comments, and decides whether (a) the appeal should be considered; (b) the decision to reject should stand; or (c) another independent technical opinion of a subject-matter expert is required. The complainant, if appropriate, is informed of the decision with required explanation. On receiving complaint about publication Ethics, the Editor-in-Chief or handling Editor decides on a course of action and provides feedback to the complainant as per the AET  policies and guidelines.