Submissions

Author Guidelines

Scope and editorial policy

The journal Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira (PAB) is an annual continuos and open access publication of Embrapa, which edit edits and publishes original scientific papers, in English, resulting from researches of agricultural interest. The main type of paper is Articles but PAB also publishes Scientific Notes and Review papers at the Editor's invitation.

Analysis of the manuscripts

The Editorial Board performs an analysis, before submitting the manuscripts to the referees. This analysis considers aspects such as scope, preparation of articles according to the journal's instructions, originality of the objectives, style of the composition, theoretical basis, an updated literature review, consistent and accurate methodology, results containing useful contributions, discussion of the observed facts in relation to the facts described in the literature, quality of tables and figures, and originality and consistency of the conclusions. Rejected papers will be returned to authors, and accepted ones will be submitted to the technical referees’ analysis.

Form and preparation of manuscripts

Papers submitted to PAB must be original (must not contain data - tables and figures - wholly or partially published in any other technical or scientific publishing medium, such as institutional bulletins, annals of events, technical communications, scientific notes etc.), and may not have been simultaneously submitted to or previously published in any other scientific or technical journal. Data previously published in abstracts containing more than 250 words must not be included in the paper.

- Scientific Articles, Scientific Notes, and Review Articles (this last one only by the Editor’s invitation) are the formats accepted by PAB.

- Papers published are grouped in technical areas according to their main subject. The major technical areas are Entomology, Plant Physiology, Plant Pathology, Crop Science, Pomology, Genetics, Microbiology, Mineral Nutrition, Soil Science, and Animal Science.

- Originals - The text should be typed in the Microsoft Word, double spaced, using Times New Roman font 12, paper A4 format, and with 2.5 cm margins, and have numbered pages and lines.

Organization of the paper

The article organization should be as follows:

- Title, authorship, institutional and electronic address; Abstract; Index terms, in English; title, abstract, index terms in Portuguese; Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, References, tables and figures, in English.

- The scientific paper should have at most 20 pages, including illustrations (tables and figures), which should be limited to six.

Title

- It should portray the work content and objective, and should comprise 15 words at most, including articles, prepositions and conjunctions.

- It should be written in bold lowercase, except the initial letter.

- It should begin with key words, avoiding words such as “effect of” or “influence of”.

- It must not contain scientific names, except that of little known species; in that case, use only the binomial nomenclature (genus and species).

- It must not contain subtitles, abbreviations, formulas, and symbols.

- Words should facilitate the retrieving of indices developed by data bases which catalogue literature.

Authors’ name

- The names of the authors must be written using the initial letter in uppercase, in full, divided by commas; the two last ones are separated by the conjunction “and”.

- The last surname of each author should be followed by Arabic numerals, superscripted, in brackets, relating to the indication of the author’s address.

Authors’ address

- The name and the full postal address of the institution as well as the electronic mail of the authors are presented below the author’s name and indicated by Arabic numerals, in brackets, superscripted.

- They must be grouped by the address of the institution.

- Commas must separate electronic mails of authors from the same institution.

Abstract

- The word Abstract must be spelt in lowercase, except for the initial letter, on the left margin, and separated from the text by a dash.

- It must comprise 200 words, at most, including numbers, prepositions, conjunctions and articles.

- It should be presented in short sentences, containing the objective, the materials and methods, as well as the results and conclusions.

- It must not include bibliographical citations or abbreviations.

- The end of the text must present the chief conclusion, and the verb to be used in the simple present tense.

Index terms

- The expression Index Terms, followed by a colon, must be spelt in lowercase, except the initial letter, which must be capitalized.

- Terms must be separated by commas and in lowercase, including the first one.

- There must be at least three and at most six index terms, considering that a term may contain two or more words.

- They must not be the same as words used in the title.

- They must contain the scientific name (only the binomial nomenclature) of the studied species.

- Preferably, they should be terms included in AGROVOC: Multilingual Agricultural Thesaurus or in SciELO Subject Index .

Introduction

- The word Introduction must be centered, in bold, lowercase, except the initial letter, which must be capitalized.

- It must clearly provide a reason for the work, emphasizing the scientific problem to be solved and presenting its relation with other published works on the subject.

- The last paragraph must express the objective according to the described in the Abstract.

Materials and Methods

- The names Materials and Methods must be centered, in bold, lowercase, except the initial letter, which must be capitalized.

- It should be arranged chronologically.

- It must present the description of the locale, the date, and the delineation of the experiment, as well as indicate treatments, number of repetitions and size of the experimental units.

- It should describe the treatments and variables.

- The discussion of the treatments and variables should avoid abbreviations and acronyms.

- Materials and Methods should be described in such a way that another researcher may reproduce the experiment.

- Long descriptions of ordinary techniques as well as needless details should be avoided.

- The author must describe the statistical analyses used and any data transformations used.

- Subtitles should be avoided; in the case that they are essential, write them in bold lowercase, except the initial letter, which should be capitalized, on the left margin of the page.

Results and Discussion

- The expression Results and Discussion should be centered and written in bold, in lowercase, except the initial letters, which must be capitalized.

- All data presented should be discussed based on the mention of each table and figure.

- Tables and figures are mentioned consecutively, in numerical order.

- The text should not only present the data on the figures and tables, but discuss them, i.e., compare them to the data presented by other authors.

- Treatment and variable abbreviations should be avoided.

- Data not presented should not be discussed.

- The results and discussion cannot contain assertions that can not be supported by the data obtained in the actual work or by other mentioned works.

- The references to tables and to figures must be done at the end of the first sentence of the text; if the other sentences of the paragraph refer to the same table or figure, a new indication is not necessary.

- Do not present the same data, simultaneously, in tables and figures.

- The discussion should be limited to the obtained data.

- New findings should be compared with knowledge previously obtained.

Conclusions

- The word "Conclusions" must be centered, written in bold, in lowercase, except the initial letter, which should be capitalized.

- Sentences should be short, without further comments; the verb must be in the simple present tense.

- They should be organized according to the objective of the work.

- They can not be a summary of the results; they must present new findings of the research.

- They must be numbered and cannot exceed five at most.

Acknowledgements

- The word "Acknowledgements" must be centered, written in bold, in lowercase, except the initial letter, which must be capitalized.

- They must be brief, beginning with “To the” (persons or institutions).

- It must explain the reason of the acknowledgement.

References

- The word References must be centered, written in bold, in lowercase, except the initial letter, which must be capitalized.

- They must be up-to-date sources. At least 70% of references must be from the last 10 years and 70% of them must be periodical articles.

- As an exception references can comprise older classical works related to the subject studied.

- They must be normalized according to the ABNT current guidelines.

- They must be presented in alphabetical order of authors’ names, divided by semicolon, and unnumbered.

- All authors of each work must be listed in the references.

- Titles of periodicals must be written in bold.

- All references must record a publication date, even if not precise.

- There should not be more than thirty references. Examples:

- Events (only complete works are accepted)

SOUSA, A.B.O. de; SOUZA NETO, O.N. de; SOUZA, A.C.M. de; SAMPAIO, P.R.F.; DUARTE, S.N. Trocas gasosas e desenvolvimento inicial de mini melancia sob estresse salino. In: INOVAGRI INTERNATIONAL MEETING, 2., Fortaleza, 2014. Anais. Fortaleza: Inovagri, 2014. p.3813-3819. DOI: 10.12702/ii.inovagri.2014-a510.

- Periodical articles

SILVA, T. P. da; VIDAL NETO, F. das C.; DOVALE, J.C. Prediction of genetic gains with selection between and within S2 progenies of papaya using the REML/Blup analysis. Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira, v.52, p.1167-1177, 2017. DOI: 10.1590/s0100-204x2017001200005

- Book chapters

SHAHZAD, A.; PARVEEN, S.; SHARMA, S.; SHAHEEN, A.; SAEED, T.; YADAV, V.; AKHTAR, R.; AHMAD, Z.; UPADHYAY, A. Plant tissue culture: applications in plant improvement and conservation. In: ABDIN, M.Z.; KIRAN, U.; KAMALUDDIN, ALI, A. (Ed.). Plant Biotechnology: principles and applications. Singapore: Springer, 2017. p.37-72. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-2961-5_2.

- Thesis

SAMUEL-ROSA, A. Análise de fontes de incerteza na modelagem espacial do solo. 2016. 278p. Tese (Doutorado) - Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Seropédica.

- Electronic Sources

Citations

- References of summaries, documents in the press, or of any other source, whose data have not been published yet will not be accepted.

- Self-quotations should be avoided.

- They must be normalized according to the ABNT current guidelines. Citations written in brackets

- With just one author: surname written with the first letter capitalized, followed by a comma and the year of publication.

- Two authors: surnames written with the first letter capitalized, divided by an ampersand (&), followed by comma and year of publication.

- More than two authors: surname of the first author written in upper and lowercase, followed by the expression et al., in a normal font, comma and year of publication.

- More than one work: they must follow a chronological order, and, after that, an alphabetical order of authors, and must be divided by semicolon.

- More than one work by the same authors: do not repeat the name of the authors; commas divide the years of publication.

- Citation of citation: surname of the author and year of publication of the original document, followed by the expression “cited by”, as well as the citation of the work regarded.

- Citation of citation must be avoided because there is a chance of misinterpretation; if it is essential, only the regarded work must comprise the references. Citations out of brackets

- With name of authors included in the sentence: they follow the previous guidelines, with the years of publication in brackets; they are divided by commas.

Formulas, expressions, and mathematical expressions

- They must begin on the left margin of the page in a standard size of Times New Roman font.

- They must not be in italics or in bold. Exceptions to the use of italics would be formula symbols conventionally written in italics.

Tables

- Tables must be sequentially numbered, with Arabic numerals, and presented in separated sheets,at the end of the text, after the references.

- Tables should be self-explanatory, without the necessity to return to the text to understand them.

- Essential elements: titles, headings, grid (columns and rows/lines) and column indicating treatments and variables.

- Complementary elements: footnotes and bibliographical source.

- The title, followed by a period, must come after the word Table, in bold, numbered sequentially in Arabic numerals. It must be clear, brief and comprehensive; it must include the species name (general or scientific) as well as the dependent variables.

- In the headings, the names of the variables must be written in full; if this is not possible, explain the meaning of the abbreviations in the title or footnotes of the table.

- Measure units of all variables must be presented using the International System of Units.

- The columns of the data, numerical values must be aligned by the last numeral.

- No table cell (crossings between lines and columns) may be empty. The lack of numerical data should be represented by a hyphen (-), followed by an explanation footnote. To indicate the minimum significant difference, lowercase or uppercase letters are used in the columns or in the lines, at the right of the data, with indication in the footnote of the test and probability used.

- In order to separate headings from titles and from the table, use horizontal borders; use them also on the base of the table to separate the content from the complementary elements. Additional horizontal borders may be used inside the headings and tables; do not use vertical borders.

- Tables should be assembled in Word files, using the menu Table; do not introduce spaces using the space bar of the keyboard, but the indentation on the menu format paragraph.

Table footnotes

- Source notes: they indicate the origin of data on the table; sources must be in the references.

- Indication notes: specific pieces of information about parts of the table, in order to form an opinion about the data. They are indicated in Arabic numerals, superscripted, in brackets, on the right of the word or number, on the title, on the headings, on the table, or on the column. They are continuous, without changing lines, separated by a period.

- To indicate significance, the indications ns (nonsignificant); * and ** (significant at 5 and 1% probability, respectively) will be used.

Figures

- Charts, graphs, drawings, maps and photographs will be considered figures to illustrate the texts.

- They should only accompany the text when necessary to explain the described facts.

- The title of the figure, without bold, must come after the word Figure, the number in Arabic numerals, and the period, in bold.

- Figures should be self-explanatory, without the necessity to return to the text to understand them.

- Legends (key to the adopted conventions) must be included in the figure, in the title, or between the figure and the title.

- On the graphs, the indications of the axes X and Y must have initials in uppercase, and must be followed by the units in brackets.

- After the figure title, non-original figures must include the source from which they were taken; sources must be in the references.

- Copyright to the author of photographs is mandatory, as well as the copyright to the authors of drawings and graphs, which have required creative action in their construction.

- To standardize units, font (Times New Roman) and size of letters in all figures.

- Dots of curves must be represented by contrasting markers, such as: circles, squares, triangles or diamonds (full or empty).

- Numbers that stand for the measures and respective signs must be out of the quadrant.

- Curves must be identified in the figure, avoiding excess information that interferes with the understanding of the graphs.

- Figures can not present data included in tables.

- They must be organized in such a way as to present the necessary quality for good reproduction and measure 8.5 or 17.5 cm width.

- The figures must be saved in Word, Excel, or Corel Draw, in order to make editing and corrections possible.

- Use borders with, at least, ¾ width.

- In the case of a graph of bars and columns, use a scale of proportional gray (e.g.: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% for five variables).

- Do not use bold in figures.

- Photographs must have a resolution of, at least, 300 dpi and be saved in TIF files, separated from text files.

- Avoid using colours in the figures; photographs, however, may be coloured.

Scientific Notes

- Scientific notes are brief communications, which justify immediate publication, due to the fact that the finding is original and important, but the content is still not enough to constitute a complete scientific article.

Presentation of Scientific Notes

- The organization of a scientific note must be the following: Title, authorship (with respective indication to authors’ address), Abstract, Index terms, title in English, Abstract and Index terms in English, the text itself (including introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, as well as conclusion, without division), references, tables and figures.

- The guidelines to the presentation of a scientific note are the same as for a scientific article, except in the following items:

- The abstract must not exceed 100 words.

- The note must not be longer than eight pages, including tables and figures.

- It may have up to 15 references.

- It may have, at most, two illustrations (tables and figures).

Review papers

Review papers are, in general, less formal than full articles. They should present a non-exhaustive summary of already published knowledge, including the most relevant scientific articles and enough literature review to be used as a base for understanding and interpreting the theme under consideration, showing its state of the art. However, these papers cannot be limited to a description of existing knowledge.

These papers should offer new points of view or concepts that have not been previously presented in the literature or, at least, not in the same level of detail, showing the evolution of knowledge in the area. Therefore, these papers should present a relevant contribution of the author in the critical analysis and interpretation of the topic under consideration, pointing out and discussing knowledge gaps, challenges, possible solutions, and research perspectives.

The authors should have an academic background with experience in research and a reputable knowledge in the study area of the manuscript, confirmed by their publications. The review paper cannot be derived from a student’s post-graduation paper.

Organization of the review papers

The review paper should be organized as follows:

Title, Abstract, Index terms, Título, Resumo, Termos para indexação, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Body of the article with topics defined by titles and subtitles, Conclusions or Concluding Remarks, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, Figures.

The manuscript should have, at the most, 40 pages (including tables and figures, which should come after the references) and 150 references, using double spacing.

The norms for the presentation of the review paper are the same ones used for the scientific article, except in the following cases:

Introduction

- Should present the theme of the review, its relevance, and its context.

- Should define the objective and scope of the review.

- Should present the overall structure of the paper.

Materials and Methods

- Should describe the criteria used for the selection of the studies included in the review.

- Should detail the used database, research terms, and research strategies.

- Should explain the process used for the critical analysis of the selected studies and the criteria for the inclusion or exclusion of articles.

- Should describe the type of analysis used, how the data were synthesized, and the applied statistical methods.

Body of the paper

- Should be organized in topics (sections), with subtitles to describe the main focus of each one. The subtitles should be aligned to the left and written in bold, in lowercase letters, except for the first letter, which should be capitalized.

- Should present a critical and comprehensive analysis of the selected studies, which should be organized in a logic and coherent form, showing the relationship between them.

- Should discuss the main findings, controversies, and gaps in the literature.

- Should use tables and figures to summarize and present data in a clear and objective way. The data in the tables and figures should not be repeated in the body of the paper, but should be discussed in relation to those presented by other authors.

- In the discussion, the authors should: interpret the results of the review, relating them to the objective and scope defined in the introduction; discuss the implications of the findings for research and practice; point out the limitations of the review and highlight future perspectives for the research field; and only give statements that can be supported by the reviewed literature.

Conclusions or Concluding Remarks

- Should summarize the main conclusion of the review in line with the objectives and issues presented in the introduction, highlighting the contribution for the area of knowledge.

- Should reinforce the relevance of the theme and the importance of the review.

References

- Should be, at the most, 150. At least 70% of the references should be from the last 10 years and 70% from articles from journals.

Further information

- There are no charges for publication.

- Manuscripts accepted for publication are double reviewed by experts.

- The editor and the referees have the right to request changes in the articles and to decide about their publication.

- Opinions and concepts developed in the manuscript are of the authors’ exclusive responsibility.

- The accepted articles cannot be reproduced, even partially, without the expressed consent of the editor of PAB.

Contacts can be made by phone: +55 61 3448-2461; or e-mail: sct.pab@embrapa.br