Author Guidelines

Publishing Conditions and Rules of University of Thi-Qar Journal (UTJ)

 University of Thi-Qar Journal (UTJ) publishes articles/papers in Applied and Technical sciences according to the following conditions:

Type of Papers

Research papers and Review articles are accepted on the understanding that they have not been and will not be published elsewhere without the Editor-in-Chief’s permission. Papers accepted become the copyright of the Journal.

  1. a) Research papers - original full-length research papers that have not been published previously, and should not exceed 7,500 words from introduction to conclusion (not including references) (including no more than five tables and figures combined - additional tables and figures can be submitted as supplementary material). Research papers should not contain more than 40 references.
  2. b) Review articles - will be accepted in areas of topical interest, will normally focus on literature published over the previous five years, and should not exceed 10,000 words from introduction to conclusion (not including references) (including allowance for no more than five tables and figures combined). Review articles should not contain more than 120 references.

 

 Language

Manuscripts to be submitted should be ensured written in clear and comprehensible English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscripts checked by an English-speaking colleague prior to submission. It is the author’s responsibility to pay attention to grammar and spelling.

Preparation of Manuscript

Authors are recommended to follow the Guide to Contributors to prepare their manuscript accordingly. A single word processor containing title page information, manuscript, figure(s) and/or table(s) should be uploaded in a SINGLE file.

Scientific biography

 A brief scientific biography of the researcher should be attached in separated file. It should include full name of the researcher and his institutional information.

Originality

The author must ensure that when a manuscript is submitted to International Food Research Journal, the manuscript must be an original work. The Author should check the manuscript for any possible plagiarism using any program such as Turnitin or any other software before submitting the manuscripts to IFRJ.

All submitted manuscripts must be in the Journal's acceptable similarity index range:

< 20% - PASS;

> 20% - REJECT.

Authorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to 1) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data; and to 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and on 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Any part of an article critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. Editors may ask authors to describe what each contributed; this information may be published. Increasingly, multicenter trials are attributed to a corporate author. All members of the group, who are named as authors, either in the authorship position below the title or in a footnote, should fully meet the above criteria.

Title Page Information

Title – Concise and should be written in the form of lower-case with capitalization of the first word.

Author names and affiliations – Please ensure that all authors’ names are correctly spelled. Authors’ names should be abbreviated and arrange as last name first, followed by given names in initials. Present the authors’ affiliation addresses below the names. Indicate all affiliations with number superscripts, before the author’s name and in front of the appropriate address. Please provide full postal address of each affiliation.

Manuscript Style

Manuscripts should be double-spaced, typed using 11 point Arial of equivalent typeface with a margin of 4 cm (1.5 inch) on all four sides with line numbers.

Request authors to kindly submit your manuscript with continuous line numbers.

The manuscript should be divided into the following sections:

  1. a) Abstract – Provides essential information which includes stating the purpose of the research, the principal results and main conclusions. It should be intelligible without reference to the paper itself. Non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
  2. b) Keywords – A minimum of 3 keywords and maximum of only 6 words allowed indicating the essentials of the research work. Separate the keywords with comma.
  3. c) Introduction – Provides the aim of the investigation and a brief statement of previous relevant work with references.
  4. d) Materials and Methods – Only new techniques need to be described in detail for reproducibility. Known or published methods must have adequate reference. Relevant modifications should be described.
  5. e) Results – Clear and concise. Presentation of results with tables and figures may improve its clarity.
  6. f) Discussion – Explains the significance of the results.

 

Note: Results and Discussion can be separated or combined.

  1. g) Conclusion – Summary of results interpretation with suggested recommendations. The conclusion should not merely repeat points made in the preceding sections.
  2. h) Acknowledgement – Should be kept to the absolute minimum

Headings of the sections are to be bold and not underlined. They should appear clearly on its own. Any subsections should be given a brief heading, italicize and it should also appear clearly on its own separate line. Authors are advised to minimize subsections.

Tables, Graphs, Figures and Photographs

Tables, graphs and figures should be displayed manuscript body. Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Tables are captioned on top of the table body and place any table notes below the table body with proper indications to the contents in the table body (if needed). Figures are captioned at the bottom of the figures. Scanned or digital photographs should be in high resolution, minimum 300 dpi in the PC format. A maximum of 5 Figures and Tables combined only allowed; hence, be sparing.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be kept to a minimum; in most cases, it will be possible to incorporate the information in the text. If footnotes are used, they should be numbered in the text indicated by superscript numbers and kept as brief as possible.

References

Citation in text

References should be cited in the text by the author. All references in the text must be listed at the end of the paper, with the names of authors arranged alphabetically, and titles of papers given.

Reference style

It is the authors’ responsibility to provide the accurate details of the bibliographic citations. Please ensure that all references cited within the text must also be present in the reference list (and vice versa).

Citation in text:

  1. Single author: the author’s name (without initials) and the year of publication
  2. Two authors: both authors’ names and the year of publication
  3. Three or more authors: first author’s name followed by ‘et al.’ and the year of publication. Citation may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed chronologically according to the year of publication.

Examples: “as demonstrated (Son et al., 1996; Duan and Su, 2005). Son et al. (2000) have recently studied…”

Reference List

All references should be arranged alphabetically by authors’ name, listing all authors, the full title of articles and journals, publisher and year. Please note that journal names are not to be abbreviated. The references in text and in the list of the manuscript should be cross-checked to ensure similarity.

Examples:

Journal

Collins, S. J., Bester, B. H. and McGill, A. E. J. 1993. Influence of psychrotrophic bacterial growth in raw milk on the sensory acceptance of UHT skim milk. Journal of Food Protection 56(5): 418-425.

Monograph/Book

Connel, J. J. 1990. Control of fish quality. 2nd ed. London: Fishing News Books.

Chapter in Book

Hart, R. J. 1998. Food Science and the transport of food. In Heap, R., Kierstan, M. and Ford, G. (Eds). Food Transportation, p. 1-21. London: Thomson Science.

Proceedings/Seminars/Conferences

Jinap, S. and Yusof, S. 1994. Development of juice from cocoa pulp. In Jinap, S., Bong, C. L., Tan, K. L. and Wan Rahimah, W. I. (Eds). Proceeding of the Malaysian International Conference, p. 351. Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Cocoa Board.

Internet

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). July 2006. Food Safety Information: Microwave Ovens and Food Safety. Retrieved on August 24, 2014 from FSIS Website: www.fsis.usda.gov/shared/PDF/Microwave_Ovens_and_Food_Safety.pdf

Note: Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should be given.

Report

Lontoc, A. V. 1981. Existing food analytical methods and problems in the Philippines. Report of the ASEAN Workshop on Analytical Techniques. Singapore: ASEAN Subcommittee on Protein.

Thesis

Yusep, I. 1997. The effect of fermentation and soaking times on pyrazines and acidity and concentration of Thai Forastero cocoa beans. Bangkok, Thailand: Kasertsart University, MSc thesis.

Patent

Bell, A. G. 1876. U.S Patent No. 174, 465. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Standards

Standards Australia. 1994. The storage and handling of corrosive substances (AS 3780—1994). Retrieved from http://www.saiglobal.com

Miscellaneous

Do not use ‘&’ to indicate ‘and’.

The Journal does not include any appendices, abbreviations and supplementary materials into publication. Hence, authors are advised to include them in the manuscript text they are necessary. Any abbreviation should be stated in brackets next to the full name at the beginning of the text before proceeding to use the abbreviation. Chemical compounds should be stated with its full name, first and the chemical formulae in brackets.

Standard units – Please follow these examples: 5 g, 1 h, 30 s, 5 min, 10%, 37°C, 2 mL, 2 mg/mL (not 2 mg mL -1)

Submission Checklist

Please use the following list to perform the last checking of the manuscript prior sending it to the journal for review.

Ensure that the following items are checked and present:

 E-mail address for corresponding author only

 Full postal address

 Manuscript compiled in a single file and uploaded

 Manuscript has been ‘spell-checked’ and ‘grammar-checked’

 All figure captions

 All tables (including title, description, footnotes)

 References are in the correct format for this journal

Authors are encouraged to refer to the latest issue of University of Thi-Qar Journal (UTJ)

 for the format of manuscript preparation.

Author Inquiries

Please send any inquiries to utj@utq.edu.iq. Corresponding author will be provided with PDF copy of the manuscript.