Submission of manuscripts
There are no submission / handling / publication charges.
Authors must submit their manuscripts written in English as MS-World file attachments electronically only through the online system at https://agriscitech.eu/online-
For each manuscript the signatures of all authors are needed confirming their consent to publish it and to nominate an author for correspondence. They have to be presented by a submission letter signed by the authors. The form of the submission letter is available on the website of the journal or through the Editorial Assistant. If by some reason the signature of an author is missing, the journal shall be entitled to skip his/her name as a co-author. The corresponding author shall be responsible for informing all co-authors for any possible changes in the text of the paper that might occur at the review and print preparation stage, as well as about the procedure of paper publication.
Papers shall be registered with date of arrival and date of acceptance for publication. If papers sent for corrections are not returned in the editorial office within four weeks, these shall be registered with a new date of arrival.
AST has a zero-tolerance plagiarism policy and all submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism (by Plagiarism Detection software – https://www.strikeplagiarism.
Papers shall be reviewed through the system peer-review (double-blind) by anonymous and independent peer reviewers, nominated by the Editor-in-Chief. Rejected papers shall not be sent back, but the corresponding author shall be notified in writing not later than two weeks after the decisions had been made. The review process lasts approximately 2-4 months.
Manuscripts submitted to this journal are considered if they have submitted only to it, they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication in press elsewhere.
Preparation of papers
Papers shall be submitted (https://agriscitech.eu/
The manuscript should be structured as follows: Title, Names of authors and affiliation address, Abstract, Keywords, Abbreviations (if it is necessary), Introduction, Material and methods, Results and discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements (if any), References, Tables, Figures.
Title
The title needs to be as concise and informative about the nature of research. Avoid inessentials such as „A study on …”, „A research on …”, „Comparison of …”, „Contribution to the issue on …”, etc. The title may contain the study results (e.g.„Omega-3 fatty acids have positive effect on cow fertilization”). A title should contain the most significant words characterizing the study since Internet search sites scan it. It should be written with small letter (bold, 14) without any abbreviations.
Names and affiliation of authors
The affiliation of authors is designated by different signs. For the first author or the one who is going to be corresponding for the editors and readers, an e-mail address and telephone number should be presented at the end of the last page of the manuscript. He (she) will be indicated with (*) on his name.
The names and affiliation of the authors should be presented as follows:
- Pavlov1*, T. Raycheva2, G. Georgiev3
1Department of Plant Production, Faculty of Agriculture, Trakia University, Student’s campus, 6000 Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
2Department of Plant Growing, Faculty of Agronomy, Agricultural University, 12 Mendeleev, 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
3Dobrudzha Agricultural Institute, 9520 General Toshevo, Bulgaria
Abstract
Every paper should have an abstract of not more than 350 words. It should state succinctly the research problem (objective, experimental indices and methods, results and conclusions). It should be clearly stated what new findings have been made in the course of research. Abbreviations and references to authors are inadmissible in the summary. It should be understandable without having read the paper and should be in one paragraph.
Keywords
Up to a maximum of six keywords should be selected not repeating the title but giving the essence of study. These should be appropriate since they will be part of the journal index and used in Internet search.
Abbreviations
Long terms of common usage should be abbreviated for the sake of economy. Their list at the beginning of the paper makes it easier for the reader to find their meaning without seeking their first occurrence where they are defined, in case there is no list at the beginning. It is not necessary to define common standard abbreviations and the ones specified on the journal cover.
Introduction
The objective of introduction is to address the need of the research and not to review the existing works on the issue. Gaps in available knowledge or contradiction of materials published so far are revealed. On the basis of this the work hypothesis and the study objective are outlined. The clear and well-defined objective/aim is an important part of introduction.
The introduction must answer the following questions: What is known and what is new on the studied issue? What necessitated the research problem, described in the paper? What is your hypothesis and goal?
Material and methods
The objects of research, organization of experiments, physical/chemical/ biological/others analyses, statistical and other methods and conditions applied for the experiments should be described in detail. A criterion of sufficient information is to be possible for others to repeat the experiment in order to verify results.
Material and methods that have already been described elsewhere should not be repeated but a reference to the specific publication should be given. However modifications and deviations from methods described elsewhere should be stated. For unique devices used the manufacturer, city and country should be provided in parenthesis. Likewise, the manufacturer of chemicals and materials with special requirements or when their origin is important for the results, should be specified. For enzymes and special products their international code should be provided. Special attention is paid to the description of applied statistical methods and software packages that need to be quoted with the relevant bibliographical data.
Results and discussion
Results are presented in understandable tables and figures, accompanied by the statistical parameters needed for the evaluation. Data from tables and figures should not be repeated in the text. Not only variants (groups) are presented in tables, but also the characteristics of different variants which makes tables understandable without looking for a description of the experiment and details about specific variants/groups in the text. The text in this section is concise and presents the data that outline the basic results from the experiments. Comparison of experimental variants (groups, etc.) for its own sake should be avoided both here and in the discussion part.
The objective of the discussion is to indicate the scientific significance of the study. By comparing the results and conclusions of other scientists the contribution of the study for expanding or modifying existing knowledge is pointed out clearly and convincingly to the reader. To attain that objective the section sometimes needs to be rather comprehensive. In the course of discussion conclusions resulting from the research need to be elucidated and substantiated. The data from the results need to be often referred to, but they shouldn’t be reiterated. The Results and discussion section can be merged, however not at the expense of the profound discussion of results. It is possible this section to be present like two separate sections – Results and Discussion.
Conclusion
The most important consequences for the science and practice resulting from the conducted research should be summarized in a few sentences. The conclusions shouldn’t be numbered and no new paragraphs be used. Conclusions should be substantiated in the discussion part and not appear for the first time here. Contributions are the core of conclusions.
Tables
Tables should be as simple and as few as possible. Authors should refer to the page size of the journal. It is preferable the table to be within the page size in portrait, not in landscape layout. Tables should be numbered consecutively as they are cited in the text with full name (Table 1). Each table should have its own explanatory title which is sufficient to permit it to be understood without reference to the text. Each table should be typed on a separate page. Tables should be outside the main body of the text and an indication should be given where it should be inserted. In tables, levels of significance should be indicated using conventional standard abbreviations. It is recommended for significance levels p<0.05, p<0.01, p<0.001 by *, ** and *** respectively. Differences between treatments to be indicated by letters: a, b, c… Column and row headings should be concise but clear. Explanations are provided below the table using the relevant reference symbols. Example: Different letters in the same row/column indicated significant difference (p<0.05).
Figures
Figures should be sharp with good contrast and rendition. All illustrations should be in a common format such as TIFF, JPES or GIF. They are given separately without sticking onto pages and folding. Graphic materials should be preferred. Photographs should be appropriate for printing. Figures are to be supplied in colour only if they are to reproduce in colour. The figures are to be each in a single file numbered in Arabic numerals in the order in which they are cited in the text with full name (Figure 1). The captions for figures should be typed on a separate page at the end of the manuscript. The location of figures should be given within the text after the places where they have been cited. The size of illustrations has to conform to the print page size. When reduction is possible, lines should be so thick and headings so large as to stand 50% reduction. When the scale of the figure is to be given, a line should to be put limited on both ends with the size indicated. Thus the scale should not be influenced by the figure reduction. Figures should be comprehensible without reading the article text and if possible the significance of differences between variables to be indicated on them.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements to funding institutions and projects, research collaborators who had contributed to the success, scientists who had encouraged experiments or helped towards improvement of the article and other people is an acknowledgement of their contribution.
References
In the text, references should be cited as follows: single author: Sandberg (2002); two authors: Andersson and Georges (2008); more than two authors: Andersson et al. (2010). When several references are cited simultaneously, they should be ranked by chronological order e.g.: (Sandberg, 2002; Andersson et al., 2008; Andersson and Georges, 2010).
References are arranged alphabetically by the name of the first author, and not numbered. If an author is cited more than once, first his individual publications are given ranked by year, then publications with one co-author, two co-authors, etc. Publications of the same author, a team of two persons arranged in the same way and a bigger team with the same first author regardless of the order of the other names, within the same year, should be indicated as 2005a, 2005b, etc.
The names of authors, article and journal titles in the Cyrillic or alphabet different from Latin, should be transliterated into Latin and article titles should be translated into English. The spelling of names and article titles are taken from the English abstract, if any. The same is valid for the journal title, if the front page contains an English version. All texts in Latin alphabet are given as in the original, regardless of the language. If the transliteration and the English translation were made by the author(s) of the paper, it should be specified at the end of the Reference list. With transliteration the aim is not the sound effect according to the rules of English, French or another language, but letters are substituted in the following way: А=А, Б=В, В=V, Г=G, Д=D, Е=Е, Ж=ZH, З=Z, И=I, Й=Y, K=К, Л=L, М=М, Н=N, О=О, П=Р, Р=R, С=S, Т=Т, У=U, Ф=F, X=КН, Ц=ТS, Ч=СН, Ш=SН, Щ=SНТ, Ъ=U, ЬО=YО, Ю=YU, Я=YА, Э=E, Ы=Y.
The original language of articles and books translated into English is indicated in parenthesis after the bibliographic reference (Bulgarian=Bg, Russian=Ru, Serbian=Sr, (if in the Cyrillic), Mongolian=Mo, Greek=Gr, Georgian=Geor., Japanese=Ja, Chinese=Ch, Arabic=Аr, etc.)
The following order in the reference list is recommended:
Journal articles
Author(s) surname and initials (in bold), Year. Title. Full title of the journal (without abbreviations), volume, pages. Titles which cannot be written in Latin characters will be translated in English.
Example:
Simm G, Lewis RM, Grundy B and Dingwall WS, 2002. Responses to selection for lean growth in sheep. Animal Science, 74, 39-50. doi: (if any)
Books
Author(s) surname and initials (in bold), Year. Title. Edition, name of publisher, place of publication.
Example:
Oldenbroek JK, 1999. Genebanks and the conservation of farm animal genetic resources, Second edition, DLO Institute for Animal Science and Health, The Netherlands.
Book chapter or conference proceedings
Author(s) surname and initials (in bold), Year. Title. In: Title of the book or of the proceedings followed by the editor(s), volume, pages. Name of publisher, place of publication.
Examples:
Mauff G, Pulverer G, Operkuch W, Hummel K and Hidden C, 1995. C3-variants and diverse phenotypes of unconverted and converted C3. In: Provides of the Biological Fluids (ed. H. Peters), vol. 22, 143-165, Pergamon Press. Oxford, UK.
Todorov N and Mitev J, 1995. Effect of level of feeding during dry period, and body condition score on reproductive performance in dairy cows, IXth International Conference on Production Diseases in Farm Animals, September 11–14, Berlin, Germany.
Thesis
Author surname and initials (in bold), Year. Title. Thesis for …(MSc, PhD, DSc) , Institution, City, Country.
Example:
Hristova D, 2013. Investigation on genetic diversity in local sheep breeds using DNA markers. Thesis for PhD, Trakia University, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, (Bg).
Internet materials
Website addresses can be used when no other reference is available only. They should be presented as for standard references but in addition they should include the date when the document was retrieved.
Example:
Tello L, 2002. Medical management of septic shock (Proceedings of the 27th WSAVA Congress, Granada, Spain), from http://www.vim.com/proceedings/proceedings.plx
The Editorial Board of the Journal is not responsible for incorrect quotes of reference sources and the relevant violations of copyrights.
Formulae, figures and other symbols
If possible formulae should be typed on a computer. Indices and exponents should be clearly visible. Be careful not to mix up zero and the letter О and the figure 1 and Latin l. The meaning of symbols in formulae should be given immediately after the equation where they are first used. For fractional line the preference should be an oblique (/) instead of a horizontal line. On the right after the formula put a consecutive number if more than one formula appear in the text and these are mentioned several times throughout the paper.
In articles submitted in English use the decimal point, not comma. Digits of long numbers can be grouped in three without using points or commas. In chemical formulae ion valencias should be indicated as follows: Са2+ СО2–, not Са++, СО– –. Isotopes are indicated with a superscript before the chemical sign, 18О, 15Н. Use words for numbers zero to nine. For numbers above 1000 it is advisable to use 10n.
Additional instructions
Latin names
Latin names are indicated as internationally accepted and in italics. These are specified after the Bulgarian (English) name of microorganisms, plants, animals, diseases only after first mentioning in the text. Use italics for especially Latin phrases, e.g. ad hog, ad libitum, in situ, inter alia, inter se, in vitro, post mortem, post partum. It is better to use italics for letters used as symbols for genes or alleles, e.g. TfH, AlbA, PhiB (but not phenotypes or chromosomes). Use italics for Latin names of muscles, e.g. Musculus Longissimus Thoracis.
Numerals
In text use words for numbers zero to nine and figures for higher numbers. Sentences should not, however, begin with figures. Use figures whenever a number is followed by a standard unit of measurement (e.g. 10 kg, 5 days, 3th week). Use figures for dates, pages, class designations, fractions, expression of time (e.g. 10 March 2009, page 6, type 3).
Units of measurement
The International System of Units (SI) should be used for units of measurement. A list of units can be found at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html. Day, weeks, month and year are not abbreviated.
Statistical terms and their abbreviations
Statistical terms are very important for the research papers. The most frequently used of them are: mean, standard error of mean (SEM), standard deviation (SD), coefficient of variation (CV), correlation – sample coefficient (r) and multiple (R), regression coefficient (b), chi square (x2), mean square (m.s.), expection of mean square (e.m.s.), degrees of freedom (d.f.), standard error of estimate (Sy.x), residual standard deviation (r.s.d.) least significant difference (LSD), variance ratio (F), probability (P), non significant P (P>0.05), significant P (P<0.05, in table use *; P<0.01, in table use **; P<0.001, in table use ***)
The request for permit to use illustrations, tables and lengthy quotes from other publications in conformity to Copyright laws and appropriate designation in the article is the author’s obligation. One of the authors shall be obliged to check press proofs and return these in due time to the editorial office.
Ethics and animal welfare
Studies performed on experimental animals should be carried out according to internationally recognized guidelines for animal welfare. Any experimental work must have been conducted in accordance with relevant national legislation (if no, with International or EU legislation) on the use of animals for research. That should be clearly described in the respective section “Material and methods”.
Copyright
As a rule authors are not provided with article off prints. However, they (as well as other riders) can freely and without charge read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in the PDF format at the website of the journal, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.