Author Guidelines

SCOPE

Science and Development-the Journal of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences will publish original research articles, reviews and short communications in all scientific fields spanning agricultural, biological, engineering and physical sciences, with strong emphasis on promoting the link between science and development agenda. The journal aims to publish high quality articles rapidly and make these freely available to researchers world-wide through an open access policy.

Instructions to authors for submission of research article

Declarations/Acknowledgement

On submission, authors will be required to agree to the author’s declaration confirming that:

• the work as submitted has not been published or accepted for publication, nor is being considered for publication elsewhere, either in whole or substantial part
• the work is original and all necessary acknowledgements have been made
• all authors have read the submitted version of the manuscript and approve its submission
• all persons entitled to authorship have been so included
• the authors must declare any conflict of interest
• the authors must state the contribution of each author in addition to a statement that each of the authors approved the manuscript before submission
• once manuscript has been considered for publication, it cannot be withdrawn

Title page

The title page should:

• present a concise title that captures the essence of the work presented;
• list the full names, institutional addresses and email address for all authors (names of authors should be presented as e.g. Mercy Ama Opare and Justice Ofori Kuma Mintah)
• indicate the corresponding author and provide his/her email address

Abstract

The abstract should not exceed 300 words and should be one paragraph. The use of abbreviations should be minimized and do not cite references in the abstract. The abstract must provide context and purpose of the study, brief description of methods used and study area (where relevant), the main findings, brief summary and potential implications.

Keywords

Five to eight keywords representing the main content of the article

MAIN PAPER

Introduction

The introduction should explain the background to the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature and why this study was necessary.

Methods

The methods section should include sampling, experimental design and setting of the study, a clear description of all analytical and experimental methods, processes, interventions and the type of statistical analysis used. Where proprietary brands are used in the research, include the brand names in parentheses.

Results

This should comprise the findings of the study, including, if appropriate, result of statistical analysis which must be included either in the text or as Tables and Figures.

Discussion

This section should discuss the implications of the findings in context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study. For study protocols and methodology manuscripts, this sections should include a discussion of any practical or operational issues involved in performing the study and any issues not covered in other sections.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and provide the explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data, human tissue or animals, must:

• include a statement on ethics approval (even where the need for approval was waived) and consent (in the case of human subjects)
• include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate.

Sections numbering

Sections should not be numbered. The subsections may be given a brief heading, with each heading appearing on a separate line.

Presentation

Font, Times New Roman, 12: double spacing, maximum of 5000 words for Reviewed articles, 4000 words for Regular articles, 2000 words for communication articles (excluding References) ,

Number of Figures must be 7, 5, 2 for Reviewed articles, Regular articles and Communication articles respectively,

Number of Tables must be 4, 3, 1 for Reviewed articles, Regular articles and Communication articles respectively,

All “et als” must be italicized.

Referencing

The APA (American Psychological Association) referencing style must be used. For detailed information, please see the publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 6^th edition, http://www.apastyle/org/  and http://blog.apastyle.org/ or the Taylor and Francis summary given here (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/reference/tf_APA.pdf). References should be listed alphabetically and should not be numbered. See examples below

Book

Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Journal article

Kernis, M. H., Cornell, D. P., Sun, C. R., Berry, A., Harlow, T., & Bach, J. S. (1993). There's more to self-esteem than whether it is high or low: The importance of stability of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1190-1204.

Electronic source

Eco, U. (2015). How to write a thesis [PDF file]. (Farina C. M. & Farina F., Trans.) Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/...How_to_write_a_thesis/.../Umberto+Eco-How+to+Write+... (Original work published 1977).

Preparing figures

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below:

• Figures should be embedded in the main manuscript file (maximum five figures)
• All figures should be referred to in the text
• Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration
• Multi-panel figures (those with parts a, b, c, d etc.) should be labelled appropriately
• Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and uploaded in this order
• Figures should be in the correct orientation
• Figure titles (max. 15 words) and legends (max. 150 words) should be provided in the main manuscript
• Figure key should be incorporated into the graphic and not into the legend of the figure
• Individual figures should not exceed 10 MB. IF a suitable format is chosen this file is adequate for extremely high quality figures.
• Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non-open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, the original source included in the references list.

Figure file types

We accept the following file formats for figures:

• TIFF (suitable for images)
• JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphical images)
• PNG (suitable for images)
• BMP (suitable for images)
• CDX (ChemDraw- suitable for molecular structure)

Figure size and resolution

Figures are resized during publication detailed below:

Figures on the web:

• Width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution)

Figures in the final PDF version:

• Width of 85 mm for half page width figure
• Width of 170 mm for full page width figure
• Maximum height of 225 mm for figure and legend image resolution of approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size

Figures should be designed such that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions. All lines should be wider than 0.25 pt when constrained to standard figure widths. All fonts much be embedded.

Preparing Tables

When preparing tables, please follow the formatting instructions below:

• Tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, Table 2 etc.)
• Table titles (max. 15 words) should be included above the table and legends (max. 150 words) should be included underneath the table
• Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files, but should be formatted using ‘Table object’ function in your word processing program
• Tables should be included in the main manuscript file.
• Colour and shading may not be used in the tables. Parts of the table can be highlighted using superscript, numbering, lettering, symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend
• Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values