About the Journal

Aims and Scope of Journal

The Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India) [JAEI] is an English language, peer-reviewed journal.  The journal publishes interdisciplinary basic and applied research manuscripts of engineering and technology to address the problems of agricultural, food, and biological systems. JAEI publishes papers of both theoretical and applied nature, with a special focus on experimental research, new design approach, mathematical modelling, and innovative approaches relating to all fields of agricultural engineering and technology. Manuscripts describing engineering innovations in the fields of natural resource management, farm mechanisation, post-harvest management, conventional and non-conventional energy-uses in agriculture, and application of engineering principles in management of crops in field and under controlled environment, horticulture, livestock, dairy, fishery, and those reporting research seeking to understand and model the physical processes underlying agricultural systems are considered. JAEI covers a wide range of topics related to the following categories:

  • Farm Machinery and Power Engineering with focus on design / development of geographical and land size-based farm tools and machines; application of new and emerging cutting edge technologies such as sensor controls, variable rate applicator, IoT, robotics and drone-enabled technology for production agriculture; solutions for precision agriculture, conservation/ sustainable agriculture, climate resilient technology, crop residue management; efficient power sources for agricultural production system; agricultural mechanisation, energy, carbon footprint assessments of agricultural production system; agriculture machine system modelling, predictive models, system engineering approach for strategic planning; application of ergonomics and work-environment control systems, technology for safety of operators.
  • Soil and Water Engineering with focus on agricultural water management, crop- water relations and water productivity, irrigation scheduling, agricultural land drainage, management of degraded lands including ravine land, rainwater harvesting and recycling, watershed management, hydrology and hydrological modelling, precision irrigation methods, IoT-based smart water management, automated irrigation systems, groundwater management and conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water in agriculture, crop water footprints, water-energy-food nexus, use of poor/marginal quality water in agriculture, climatic change impact on hydrology and water resources, institutional and socio-economic aspects of agricultural water management.
  • Processing, Dairy, and Food Engineering focussing on post-harvest engineering and technology; food quality and safety with large throughput non-destructive and bio-sensing methods; food processing and engineering, packaging, storage and distribution; structures and facilities for livestock, handling and processing of produce of animal origin including milk, meat, and others; indoor environmental control; modelling, simulation and automation of processes; emerging technologies including food bio-processing, bio-manufacturing, secondary agriculture, nanotechnology, membrane processing, engineering aspects of non-thermal processing technologies.
  • Energy and Other Areas covers the research topics related to the application of science and technology for conventional/ non-conventional / alternate fuel production, conversion, application, fuel/energy storage; impacts on environment and sustainability of agriculture; bio-processing. It includes articles covering solar energy conversion and photovoltaics, solar fuels and artificial photosynthesis, fuel cell, fuels from biomass, bio-hydrogen production, biofuels; energy conservation, energy-use analysis, modelling, demand prediction, integrated energy systems, planning and management of energy resources in agriculture.

The journal also encourages articles covering emerging technologies related to micro/macro-controlled agriculture, smart farming, micro- and nano-agriculture, artificial intelligence, analysis and applications of big data in the field of agricultural engineering, decision support system and case studies. JAEI aims to publish highly notable original articles to advance and disseminate scientific and technical knowledge in the field of agricultural engineering. This journal uses double-blind review process.

The Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India) accepts only original research manuscripts and review manuscripts, and submission of a manuscript will be considered to imply that no similar manuscript has been or is being submitted elsewhere. The following three types of manuscripts are invited for publication:

  • Original research manuscript: Report materials and methods used, results and significant findings of an original research. Such materials should not have been previously published elsewhere. ‘Original Research Manuscripts’ are the majority of the manuscripts published. They should not normally exceed 15 journal pages.
  • Review manuscript: Intended to be in-depth study of the state-of-the-art subject that provide new insights or interpretation of the subject through exhaustive and systematic evaluation of available evidences. They should not normally exceed 20 journal pages.
  • Research Note: Reports a concise, but complete, description of a limited or preliminary investigation, enabling important scientifically proven findings to be speedily communicated, and facilitate the reporting of work not meriting a full-length research manuscript. They should not exceed 8 journal pages.

The Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India) is a subscription-based journal, and is published quarterly. The publisher (ISAE) does not charge any article submission and processing fee (ASPF), or any other surcharges based on the length of an article, colour illustrations, or supplementary data. To attract and publish high-quality manuscripts, and peer reviewer recognition, the Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers annually confers Best Paper Awards and Best Reviewer Awards. These awards are announced in the Annual Convention of Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers.

Submission of Manuscript

Submission Checklist

  • Read the Aims & Scope to get an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;
  • Refer to the “Guidelines for Authors” for writing the manuscript. Use Microsoft (MS) Word to prepare your manuscript and submit the MS Word file with main text, Figure, table, and any other supplementary materials;
  • Ensure that one author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details (E-mail address; Full postal address, mobile number). The affiliations of all authors must be mentioned.
  • The manuscript is to be written in English language [English (India)]  and typed in double space in single column on A-4 size page.
  • Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript.
  • Make sure that the issues on publication ethics, copyright, authorship, plagiarism, conflicts of interest are duly satisfied. While submitting online on ISAE website, the “Journal Publishing Agreement Form” must be submitted.

Submission of Manuscript

Soft copy of the manuscript in Microsoft (MS) Word, along with a request letter, should be submitted to the online editorial systems of JAEI at https://pub.isae.in/index.php/jae/about/submissions.

Preparation of Manuscript

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

  • Language: English (India)
  • Font size: Title heading: 18 pt. bold upper lower; Author name: 11.5 pt. italic bold u/L; Abstract heading: 11pt bold cap, Abstract text: 9 pt. normal, Text: 10.5 pt. normal, Sub-heading: 9 pt. Cap bold centre, Fig/ table caption: 10.5 pt. Bld. u/l centre, Conclusion and 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). Only SI units are accepted.  All units should be written as in the style kg.m-2
  • 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. Avoid abbreviations and formulae in the Title.
  • Short title of not more than 80 characters
  • Author name(s) and Affiliation(s): Provide name, designation and affiliation, full postal and email addresses for each author. All authors’ affiliations related to the work should be indicated. The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may also be stated.  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.
  • Abstract: The Abstract of not more than 200 words should state the problem investigated specifying the aims of the work, outline the methods used and summarise the main results obtained and the conclusions drawn. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. Citations should not be included in the Abstract.
  • Keywords: Up to 6 keywords in alphabetical order should be given to enable subsequent abstracting or information retrieval systems to locate the paper. Words used in title should not be used as keywords.
  • Main text: For clarity this should be sub-divided into:
    • Introduction: This should explain the problem investigated and provide an adequate background, review earlier work to identify the research gap etc, and clearly state the objectives of the work and the intention of the present manuscript.
    • Theoretical considerations: It may be appropriate to explain or develop a theory to shed light on a problem or to correlate experimental results. Authors should not repeat the background to the article already dealt with in the Introduction Section, but should lay the foundation for further work.
    • Materials and Methods: This section should provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarised, and indicated by a reference. Any modifications to the existing methods should also be described. Authors should briefly describe the place of study and year, detail experimental layout, equipment/ instrument and models, major specifications, make and settings of instruments used during experiments etc.
    • Results and Discussion: Results should be presented and discussed with reference to appropriate figures and tables. The most appropriate presentations should be chosen, and tabulated data should not duplicate that is shown graphically or vice-versa. Results should be clear and concise. The discussion must include the comparison of findings with the previous work done, and should explore the significance of the results of the work. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature. Any limitations etc. of the present study should also be briefly mentioned and discussed.
    • Conclusions: Research and Review papers must have this final section, but it is optional in Research Notes. Conclusions emerging from the work should be succinctly summarised. These conclusions must have been discussed in the manuscript, and new material must not be introduced at this stage. The contents of the Abstract and Conclusions should not be repetitive.
  • List of symbols: Optional, but all symbols must be defined wherever used in the text.
  • Supplementary Materials: Optional, depending upon the cases. Supplementary material such as figure, tables, video, spreadsheets etc can be published with the article to enhance it. Describe any supplementary material published online alongside the manuscript (figure, tables, video, spreadsheets, etc.). Please indicate the name and title of each supplementary element as Figure S1: title, Table S1: title, etc.
  • Funding: All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate funding that you have received in support of your research work. Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]” etc.
  • Authors Contribution: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization: X. and Y; Methodology: X; Software: X; Validation: X, Y. and Z.; Formal Analysis: X; Investigation: X.; Resources: X.; Data Curation: X; Writing – Original Draft Preparation: X; Writing – Review & Editing: X. etc.
  • Acknowledgment: Optional, depending upon the cases. In this section Authors can acknowledge any support given which is not covered in the author contribution or funding sections.
  • Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest."
  • Data Availability Statement: Please provide details regarding where data supporting reported results can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. Authors may state “Data will be made available on request” or “The authors do not have permission to share data” or “The data used in this study are available from the links provided in this article or upon request from the authors” or “No data was used for the research described in the article” as the case may be.
  • References: Author are encouraging to cite latest references (preferably of last ten years) as far as possible, except for some basic/fundamental research papers/books etc, and also should include at least two relevant references from the Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India). All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa.  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 organisation), 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; ` of Farm Machinery. The AVI Publishing Company Inc., USA, Third Edition, 368-382.
  • Web references: As a minimum, the title of the cited reference, 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.
  • Appendices: It may be appropriate to place detailed mathematical derivations in appendices, rather in the main body of the text.
  • 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 ( Fig. 1: Moisture ratio and drying time of onion slices under fluidised 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 journal, while submitting the manuscript.

Maintaining transparency and integrity: Manuscripts submitted to the journal should not be submitted to more than one journal 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 a previous work. Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling/ ‘self-plagiarism’. Self-duplication and similarity index of any other’ articles should not be more than 20% (with cross-referencing) and 15%, respectively.

Publishing Ethics: All parties [author(s), journal 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 journal is committed to maintain the highest level of integrity in the published content. While submitting a manuscript to the Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India), the authors will give an undertaking for maintaining transparency and integrity and practicing publishing ethics by submitting the “Journal 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. For transparency, authors are encouraged to submit an “Authors Contributions” 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 corresponding/ submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at the time of 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 should be changed only if approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the JAEI 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 identifier, while submitting their manuscript. Upon receipt of acceptance of a manuscript for publication in the JAEI, the corresponding author must agree to the terms of the relevant publishing agreement. After publication of the final version of the work in the JAEI, 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 a revised manuscript, the authors should submit a list of changes or a rebuttal against each point raised by the Reviewers/ Editor/ Editor-in-Chief 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 the revised manuscript in track change mode along with a corrected version without track change corrections/edits, with 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 to carryout proof reading 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 Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India) (JAEI), 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 JAEI, share, disseminate, and maximise the impact of their research under our publishing agreement. Subscribers may reproduce the Table of Content or prepare a list of articles, including abstracts, 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 is handled by the Editor-in-Chief and/or the Editor who handled the manuscript. On receiving an appeal against a decline to publish, the Editor-in-Chief or handling Editor considers the authors’ argument, the reviewer reports / Editorial Board comments, and any other relevant information to decide whether (a) the appeal should be considered; (b) the decision to decline publication 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 the required information. 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 policies and guidelines of the journal.