ISSN 2305-0683
online version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Sending of manuscripts

The Investigación Agraria Journal is published by the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the National University of Asuncion, is arbitrated and has 2 issues per year. It is open to national and international scientific community and serves to transfer the results of scientific studies and knowledge in the area of Agricultural Sciences.

In the journal, original scientific articles, review articles, research notes and letters to the editor are published.

The articles submitted must be original, that is, those were not previously published or were nominated to another journal during analysis process by the Editorial Board. They must be written in Spanish, Portuguese or English.

The articles must be accompanied by a letter signed by the main author (see Annex), which is evidence that all authors are responsible for the content of the article, that it was not sent to another journal for publication and the major contributions of the article for the development of knowledge in the area of Agricultural Sciences for which it is presented are explained.

All submitted articles will be reviewed first by the Editor, considering the relevance, depth of work and fulfillment of the rules of publication. If the assessment is positive, the Editor will notify the authors that their manuscript has been received and will be submitted to the editorial process.

In the editorial process, the Editor will submit the manuscript to the evaluation of two expert reviewers in the area. The review will be conducted anonymously, reviewers will determine whether the article will be published unchanged, with modifications or rejected. In case of disagreement between reviewers, the Editor will send the article to a third reviewer. The comments of the reviewers will be communicated to the corresponding author.

Concepts, information and conclusions stated in the papers are the sole responsibility of the authors. The Editorial Board of the journal reserves the right to make changes in the received articles to suit the standards of publication, with the commitment of do not alter the meaning of them.

FORMAT

The text should be written in pages A4 size (210 mm x 297 mm) with margins in the upper part, bottom and left of 3.0 cm and of 2.0 cm in the right. All pages should be numbered in the lower right margin, justified alignment, with 1.5 spacing between lines and font type Verdana, size 11, maximum 16 pages, including tables and figures inserted in the body of the manuscript. The electronic document must be sent in MS Word® format. Photographs should be sent preferably in JPEG or JPG format.

MANUSCRIPT STRUCTURE

The names of the sections must be aligned to the left, written in bold capital letters and accented with no endpoint, separated by two spaces below the last line of previous text and one space of the subsequent line. It should have the following sequence: SUMMARY, ABSTRACT, INTRODUCTION, MATERIALS AND METHODS, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and REFERENCES.

TITLE: It should be clear, concise and contain less than 80 characters or 25 words. The title should be centered at the top of the page in all its breadth, with initial capital letter, bold, and without using endpoint. Should not contain calls to footnotes, asterisks, or indexes. If it contains subtitle, it should be written after the title, separated by a point, with the first letter capitalized.

Scientific names in the title should be used when strictly necessary, but it is advisable to use them as keywords and in other sections of the manuscript, following the international nomenclature code.

Below, two spaces from the Spanish title, it will be written in English with the same standards.

Example:

Germinación de Bletilla striata (Thunb.) Rchb. f. en medio líquido y evolución de plantas en medio semisólido

Germination of Bletilla striata (Thunb.) Rchb. f. in liquid medium and plant evolution in semi-solid medium

Author(s): It is accepted up to 10 authors per article. The names of the authors should be written below the title, they will be written in capital letters only in the first letter of the names, centered across the width of the page, in bold, in the following order: first name, middle name, if any, last name, mother's maiden name. If there are two or more authors, the same system is used to identify each one. In the case of two authors, the names are separated by the conjunction "and"; while in the case of three or more authors semicolon is used to separate the names between the first and second, and the conjunction "and" between the penultimate and last name. Example: Karina Elizabeth Rasche Álvarez, Andrés José Armadans Rojas y Carlos Andrés Leguizamón Rojas.

The way in which a female author is identified in her writings is a personal decision, although it is suggested to use the full maiden name.

At the end of each name progressive numerical indices will be added, one of the authors should be identified as a correspondent, adding an asterisk next to the index number.

Below the line of the author(s), it will specify, for each index, the name of the institution and the official address. When two or more authors work in the same institution and dependence, a single index (in each name) will suffice.

Under the clarification of the indices, * Corresponding author will be written, followed by the email address in brackets.

ABSTRACT. It must be written in a single paragraph with a maximum of 250 words. It must contain a brief introduction with a rationale based, objectives, methodology of work, the most important results and conclusions. When possible, it should present the main results quantitatively; it is better to write "The Curiyu genotype presented 587 seeds per fruit, followed by Kambuchi and Hohenau with 489 and 482 seeds respectively" that "Curiyu genotype had a higher number of seeds per fruit than Kambuchi and Hohenau".

In the subsequent line of the summary, there should be written three to five keywords that identify the content of the work and enable indexing. It is recommended to start the key words with the scientific name of the species and continue with others in alphabetical order. Example:

Palabras clave: Lycopersicon esculentum, Rhizoctonia solani, damping-off.

Key words: Lycopersicon esculentum, Rhizoctonia solani, damping-off.

The ABSTRACT and the Key words contain the English translation of the Summary and the key words.

Regardless of the language of the text, it is mandatory the presentation of the summary in English (Abstract). If the language of the article presented was not Spanish, the Spanish version of the summary should precede the Abstract.

The INTRODUCTION should be clear and concise, and contain background or foundation with relevant and updated references so that the reader can understand and evaluate the study results without need to consult previous publications. In the final paragraph it is recommended to clearly state the objectives of the investigation.

Citations must be relevant and updated. When authors are the subject of the sentence the system Author (year) will be used; example: Brenes (2008), Rodriguez and Salas (2009). When the citation is not subject of the sentence, the author and the year is written in parenthesis,  in cases that in brackets are include more than one citation, they will be separated by semicolon; example: (Brenes, 2008; Rodriguez & Salas, 2009). Note that in each sentence, the citations are presented chronologically by year of publication.

MATERIALS AND METHODS should contain information and required details so the work can be repeated and referred by another researcher. Instruments and equipment used must be identified if they are known or described in other cases. Information on the used study design and details of work in the field are recommended and, when appropriate, a brief description of the analysis of the data obtained. In some cases it will be necessary to include references that expand or detail the information of some method.

The methods provided in this chapter must be complete and match the objectives of the work and the analysis presented in the chapter Results and Discussion.

Mathematical and chemical formulas should be written according to the international nomenclature. Chemicals in general must be submitted by technical names or referring to the active principle. The use of trade names of any product will not be allowed; however, if it were essential, it will consist as footnote page.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results should contain concise presentation of data, including statistical information necessary to evaluate the validity thereof. When presented as tables will not be submitted as figures, or vice versa.

Tables and Figures are self-explanatory, contain titles that are understood without resorting to the text and should define the symbols used in them. Table and Figure terms are written in bold with the first letter capitalized and the rest in lower case, the numbers must be in sequence with Arabic numerals with a point at the end. The title text is written with the first letter capitalized and the rest lowercase, except when uppercase should be naturally. The second and subsequent word line must be aligned below the first letter of the word in the title and single spaced lines. The title of tables is located at the top of the table, while the title of the figures placed at the bottom. All tables and figures should be cited in the text.

Example:

Table 4. Average final height of sesame plants treated with various chemicals. San Lorenzo, Paraguay, 2009.

It is recommended that the discussion follows the presentation of each result. A good discussion interprets and compares the results with relevant and updated references or with the original purpose of the investigation; it is concise and does not deal with irrelevant issues, exposes theoretical consequences of the work and its possible practical applications or limitations.

CONCLUSIONS should be based on the evidence presented and interpret the work in the context of the original problem. It should not repeat results points and discussion or include irrelevant material; the conclusion is not a summary of the results. The verb tense should be the present tense.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, where appropriate, they should be succinct, direct and not mentioned in any other part of the job.

REFERENCES should include only works cited in the text. They should be ordered alphabetically. Where possible you should avoid citations of personal communications, abstracts and papers already accepted but not yet published.

The presentation of citations and drafting of the references shall be according to the APA rules, 6ta. Ed. (2017), available on the site: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mwl-iXqIimXzEvPhCql7GcD9rFpzLFqb

Write each reference, according to the type of publication (article, book, etc).

Clarification: Until 2018 the journal used by the IICA References Preparation Standards and as of 2019 adopts the rules APA Style 6 th Ed. (2017) for the writing of the bibliographical references.

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES must be limited to a maximum of sixteen pages, and must be governed by the structure of the manuscript of the journal. The manuscript must be a report that communicates for the first time the results of new studies and investigations on aspects that have not yet been properly investigated. 

RESEARCH NOTES should be limited to a maximum of ten pages, do not need the subdivisions of the scientific article as a methodology, results and discussion, conclusions. However, they must adhere to the presentation of the preliminary pages as title, authors, abstract, keywords, introduction and references.

REVIEW ARTICLES will be accepted when they are entrusted by the Editorial Board to competent professionals in the field and follow the rules of presentation of a scientific paper, replacing however methodology, results and discussion, by the commented development on the review, without alter other parts.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR may be addressed on communications or related issues to agricultural sciences or critical comments on work published in previous issues. They must be signed and not exceed three pages.

GENERAL RECOMENDATIONS

Writing numerals should be done with Arabic type. Numbers from zero to nine, tens and whole hundreds must be written in full, example: seven treatments, sixty foci. Arabic numerals will only be accepted in the sequences of numbers less than nine when representing levels of studied factors such as dose, timing or alike, for example, 2, 5 and 8 min. Fractions shall be indicated in Arabic numerals, for example, 14/19, except when they are from one to ten, for example, three quarters.

Use the International System of Measurement Units (ISM) and their abbreviations, whenever possible. It lists some of the most common. Volumes in cubic meters (m³) and the liter (L). The unit of mass is the kilogram (kg) or gram (g), although the ton (t) is accepted. The unit of area is the square meter (m²), although hectare (ha) is used without restrictions. For measurement units containing numerator and denominator, use negative exponents in the denominator.

For example kg ha^-1 instead of kg/ha. The time unit is second (s), but minute (min), hour (h) and day (d) are accepted. The unit of force is the Newton (N), the temperature indicated by Kelvin (K) in the International System of Units, while Celsius degree (°C) is accepted. The mole to the material is recommended, avoiding gram equivalent (e), Normal (N) and normality. Part per million (ppm) and parts per billion (ppb) are not part of the ISU, use mg dm^-3 or g dm^-3 and atmosphere, pound per square inch (psi), mm Hg and bar as the ISU unit for pressure is pascal (Pa). Separate values ​​of measurement units for one space: 25 kg and not 25kg; except when percentage or °C is used, 25%, 25°C. In the notation of numbers in Spanish-language publications, use periods to separate thousands, example 2.000. Decimals are separated from the whole by a comma (,), for example: 1962,78. No point is used in abbreviations: IICA and not I.I.C.A., UNA and not U.N.A.

Anexo - CARTA DEL AUTOR
Señor
Editor de la Revista Investigación Agraria
Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias
Universidad Nacional de Asunción
Me dirijo a usted para solicitar la publicación del trabajo titulado: _______________________________________ La principal contribución del artículo es ________________________________________________________________________________
Por la presente manifiesto que este manuscrito es de mi autoría y de ________________________ (mencionar los nombres de los coautores, sí los hubiere) y que no ha sido publicado, ni se encuentra actualmente sometido a ningún arbitraje en ningún otro medio de difusión científica ni de otro tipo y que los datos que en él se consignan, son originales y fueron obtenidos de fuentes fidedignas.
De igual manera manifiesto que entre los coautores (en caso de haberlos) no existe ningún tipo de conflicto y han otorgado su pleno consentimiento para la publicación, aceptando todo lo establecido dentro la Política Editorial y de Publicación de la Revista Investigación Agraria. Nos comprometemos a respetar el veredicto del Cuerpo Editorial.
Atentamente,
Firma
Nombre completo: _______________________________
Institución: _____________________________________
Correo Electrónico: ______________________________
Teléfono (incluir código de área): ___________________
Fecha de remisión: ______________________________

Submissions the online manuscripts: http://www.agr.una.py/revista/index.php/ria/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions