ISSN 2011-2173
printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

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

The Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas seeks to disclose unpublished work developed by researchers from different universities and research centers in the country; and disseminate and discuss scientific advances, in order to contribute to the consolidation of an academic community centered on the disciplines related to horticulture. The journal is geared toward horticultural science researchers, extension workers, and all professions related to the development of science and technology needed for the benefit of rural productivity and horticultural producers. Original and unedited papers must be submitted according to the rules laid out in the instructions to authors.

The Editorial Committee reserves the right to accept or reject contributions to the journal. The manuscripts will be sent to two peer reviewers, who are experts in the specific area of knowledge, and they will decide whether the manuscript has the necessary scientific standards for publication. If there is a difference of opinion regarding the concepts for the approval for publication, the manuscript will be sent to a third reviewer, who will deliver the final decision. If the article is accepted for publication, the author must make the suggested corrections within the time indicated by the editor.

The articles published in the journal will be sent on magnetic media to different databases and indexing systems for disclosure of its content; and will be accessible via the Internet. After publication, a pdf file of the paper will be sent, free-of-charge, to the corresponding author.

The editors of the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas are committed to the scientific community in ensuring the ethics and quality of published articles. The journal has as a reference, the code of conduct and good publishing practices for editors of scientific journals, defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); and furthermore, is dedicated to ensuring an adequate response to the needs of readers and authors, ensuring the quality of the publication, protecting and respecting the content of the articles and the integrity thereof. The Editorial Committee will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

The authors of the articles submitted to the journal Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas must be aware of and avoid scientific misconduct related to: scientific fraud in all or part of the data of the study and data falsification and manipulation; dishonesty due to fictitious authorship or gifting or exchange of co-authorship, duplicate publications, partial or complete, in different journals and self-plagiarism by reusing portions of previous writings; citation omission, citation copying without consultation and excessive selfcitation, among others. The authors have the following rights: fair and impartial evaluation of articles done in a reasonable amount of time, correspondence shall be taken seriously and requests for changes and corrections shall be respected, subject to review by the evaluators, and articles shall remain unaltered.

The contents of articles/manuscripts submitted to the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas must not have been previously published in a refereed publication and submission to the Revista implies no concurrent submissions to other journals. Manuscripts already published in other journals or technical or extension reports will not be accepted. The Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas publishes articles of the following types, according to the program: Publindex, Colciencias (Colombia):

• Scientific and technological research papers: those documents presenting detailed original research results. The most generally applied structure has four main parts: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, and conclusions. At a minimum, 18% of the total text should correspond to the cited references, 60% of which must have been published in the last 10 years.

• Review articles: documents written for a general, albeit well-informed audience. The review article should analyze, systematize, or summarize the published or non-published results of an area of science or technology for the purpose of providing information on the current state and perspectives of development of a particular research. The review article should be supported by not less than 50 references.

• Reflection paper: document presenting research results analyzed from an author's interpretative and critical perspective about a specific subject, resorting to original sources. This type of article must always have a clear contextual introduction coupled to a pertinent objective within the topic. The development of said objective should include a broad and updated perspective on the topic and a hypothetical statement or proposal backed up by recognizable references (no article will be accepted without references). The reflection article should include suggestive and pertinent subtitles.

• Scientific note: brief document introducing original preliminary or partial results of a scientific or technical research, which usually need immediate publication.

Format and organization of text

Research papers should not exceed 5,200 words (including literature and tables), except for review articles, which can contain up to 6,500 words: in letter size, double-spaced, Times New Roman font size 12, margins of 3 cm at the top, 2 cm at the bottom and 2.5 cm in the left and right side margins. Tables and figures (graphs, drawings, diagrams, flow charts, pictures and maps) must be submitted on separate pages and numbered consecutively (Table 1 ... Table n. Figure 1... Figure n, etc.) in the order cited in the text.

Texts and tables should be prepared using an MS-Word® processor. Tables and diagrams of frequency (bar and circular diagrams) should be included in the mentioned Word file, as well as in their original MS-Excel® or other format. Other figures, including photographs and drawings, should be submitted in digital JPG (or JPEG) compression format, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. As a general rule, tables and figures should only be submitted in black and white, or when the costs of color publication are covered by the authors. Articles with the relevant files in Word, Excel and JPG should be sent by email to: gerfischer@gmail.com (editor Gerhard Fischer).

Languages, units, and style

The official languages of the Journal are Spanish, English and Portuguese. In the case of English manuscripts, British or American English spelling and terminology may be used, but either should be consistently used throughout the article. The metric system (SI) should be consistently utilized throughout the manuscript. All abbreviations should be explained when they first appear in the manuscript. The style of writing should be impersonal, in the past tense for the introduction, procedures and results.

Title and authors

The title should be accompanied by the English translation if the article's text is in Spanish or Portuguese and vice-versa. The scientific name of plants and animals should be italicized and written in Latin with the generic name starting with a capitalized letter and including the descriptor's name. Under the titles, the authors' names (first and last names) should be listed in the order in which they contributed to the investigation and preparation of the manuscript. On the bottom of the first page (footnote) of the article, the current affiliations and addresses (including city, state, and institutions) of each author and the corresponding author with his/her e-mail should appear.

Abstract, "resumen", and additional key words

The abstract should briefly describe the problem, the methods used, the justification and the relevant results obtained; and should not exceed 250 words written in a single paragraph. The "resumen" should be written in Spanish (or Portuguese) and the "abstract" should include an English translation. It's obligatory to accompany the abstract with a maximum of six key words, which have not been used in the title. Equally, when translated into English, the additional key words may not appear in the English-version of the title.

Introduction

The text should contain the current situation of the problem, its definition and review of the studied area, the objectives and justification for the research. Common names of plants and animals must be accompanied with the corresponding scientific ones, plus the abbreviation of the species author surname when mentioned for the first time.

Materials and methods

Besides a clear, precise and sequential description of the materials used for the research (plant or animal materials, agricultural or laboratory tools), this section illustrates the procedures and protocols followed, and the experimental design chosen for the statistical analysis of the data.

Results and discussion

The results shall be presented in a logical, objective, and sequential order, using text, tables and figures. The latter two should be easily understandable and self-explanatory, regardless of a thorough explanation in the text. The graphics should be two-dimensional and prepared in black and white, using varying tones to illustrate variations between columns. Diagram curves must be prepared in black, dashed or continuous lines (- - - - or ______), using the following conventions: ■, , ◆, Δ, etc. The tables should contain few columns and lines.

Averages should be accompanied by their corresponding standard error (SE) values. The discussion shall be complete and exhaustive, emphasizing the highlights and comparing them to the literature.

Conclusions

This section should summarize in a brief and concise form the most important findings of the research, such as those containing the most significant support in the studied area.

Acknowledgements

When considered necessary, the authors may acknowledge the researchers or entities that contributed - conceptually, financially or practically - to the research: specialists, commercial organizations, governmental or private entities, and associations of professionals or technicians.

Bibliographic references

For short citations located in the text, use the system: author(s), year uniformly. When the publication cited has three or more authors, please mention the name of the first author accompanied by the Latin phrase et al., with the year (e.g. Garcia et al., 2012). The complete list of the references listed must be included at end of article. The initials of the first names and the surnames of all authors must be written in alphabetical order for the last names; when several publications are cited, the author(s) should be listed in chronological order, from most recent to oldest. Examples of literature citations are given below:

• For books: Author(s), year. Title of the book, edition, publisher and the place of publication, pages consulted (pp. # - #). Example: Taiz, L. and E. Zeiger. 2006. Plant physiology. 4^th ed. Sinauer Associates Publishers, Sunderland, MA.

• For book chapters: Author(s), year. Title of the chapter, pages consulted (pp. # - #). In: Last name(s) and initial(s) of first name(s) of contributors or authors (eds.), title of the book, publisher and the place of publication. Example: Bernal, H. 1996. Evapotranspiration. pp. 112-125. In: Gómez, G. (ed.). Phytopathology. 2^nd ed. Editorial Limusa, Mexico D.C.

• For journal articles: Author(s), year. Title of the article, journal number, volume, pages. Example: García, S., W. Clinton, L. Kukshin, and R. García. 2004. Inhibitory effect of flowering and early fruit growth on leaf photosynthesis in mango. Tree Physiol. 24(3), 387-399.

• Electronic journals: Author(s). Year. Title of the publication (online). Abbreviated name of the journal. Volume (number), URL; consultation date. Example: Cannarella, C. and V. Piccioni. 2007. Innovation, diffusion and territorial inertia (online). Int. J. Rural Manag. 3, http://irm.sagepub.com/content/vol3/issue2/in01.pdf; consulted: March, 2009.

• Internet citations: Author(s). Year. Title of the article. In: name(s) of the electronic publication, and/or of the website, portal or page, URL; consultation date. Example: Arafat, Y. 1996. Siembra de olivos en el desierto palestino. In: Agricultura Tropical, http://agrotropical.edunet.es; consulted: November, 2003.

• For citing proceedings: Author(s). Year. Name of the dissertation. pp. #-#. Title. Publisher, City (and country, if the city is not a capital). Example: Peet, M. 2008. Physiological disorders in tomato fruit development. p. 101. In: Book of abstracts, International Symposium on Tomato in the Tropics. Sociedad Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas. Villa de Leyva, Colombia.

• For theses: Author(s). Year. Title. Thesis degree. Academic institution, city (and country, if the city is not a capital). Example: Hernandez, M. 2001. Conservación del fruto de arazá (Eugenia stipitataMcVaugh) durante la poscosecha mediante de aplicación de diferentes técnicas. Doctoral thesis. Faculty of Agronomy, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.

International unit system (SI) or metric unit system

The Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas requires the use of SI units (Système international d'unités). The numbers of multiplication and the negative numbers of the superscripts should be used only in conjunction with SI units (for example, kg ha^-1). Do not place non-SI units in SI units, because the units are mathematical expressions. Reorganize the phrase respectively, for example:

The slant line (/) is a symbol of mathematic operation that means "division"; in science, it may be substituted by the word "per" in the meaning of "per each" and indicates rates or degrees. Use the slant line to connect SI units with non-SI units (for example: 10°C/h or 10 L/plant). Never use the raised period and slant line in the same expression. If you mix SI and non-SI units, use the slant line first and then the word "per" in the second terminus. Never use two or more slashes (/) or the word "per" more than once in the same phrase to avoid redundancy, for example: irrigation/day per plant should be changed to: each plant was irrigated two times per day. For the totally verbal units, use one slash, such as: three flowers/plant or 10 fruits/branch.

To cite units based on names, use lowercase, such as: "one siemens represents...". However, Celsius units should be written with the first letter capitalized.

Use the same abbreviation or symbol for the singular and plural forms of a unit (for example, 1 kg and 25 kg). Leave a blank space between the numerical value and the symbol (for example, 35 g, but not 35g), except for a percentage or ºC, such as: between 14 and 20°C or growth up to 3, 6, and 9 m, but 14%, 16%, and 18%).

The style adopted by the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas for some units of measurements refers to the table of abbreviations and symbols of ASHS Publications Style Manual, http://www.ashs.org/downloads/style_manual.pdf, accessed June 2011 or can be consulted in Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas 4(1), 2010, pp. 181-184.