General Guideliness for Author

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General Guidelines for JTAFS Manuscript Preparation

The manuscript must be written in English (UK). Proofreading is required prior to submission. The manuscript should use double-space throughout (text, abstract, tables, figures and references). Font: 12 pt, Times New Roman, text should not be justified but aligned left. Length of research articles should not exceed 25 pages (excluding images, tables, figures and references) and review articles should not exceed 75 pages (excluding images, tables, figures and references). Main headings (Introduction, Materials and Method, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgement, References) are set in bold Roman. Minor headings are set in bold italic Roman. The recommended writing style of the manuscript is according to American Psychological Association (APA) version 7.0 guidelines (www.apastyle.org). The template for this journal and other related documents can be downloaded at http://jtafs.mardi.gov.my/index.php/instruction/author.

PLAGIARISM

JTAFS takes plagiarism act seriously and does not engage in any kind of the act, nor do we endorse it.

TITLE: The font size should be 14 pt, bold and sentence case. It should be short (not exceeding 20 words), concise and informative, and should contain keywords necessary to facilitate retrieval by a search engine.

RUNNING HEAD: Suggest a short title suitable for use as running head of not more than 50 characters including spaces (for editorial office use).

NAME OF AUTHORS: Should be written below the title in this format:

Ganesan, A.¹*, Erra Fazira, M.¹ and Lim, S.P.²

AFFLIATIONS: Name of organisation and full address:

Engineering Research Centre, MARDI Headquarters, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

The superscript numbers are used to indicate author(s) institutional or organisational affiliation. The * indicates corresponding author’s affiliation. This information will be provided as footnote at the bottom of the first page. Please clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication as well as post-publication. Kindly ensure that the e-mail address and contact details of the corresponding author provided is accurate as they will be responsible to answer any future queries about the manuscript.

ABSTRACT: Should not exceed 250 words. Manuscript received without an abstract will be returned to the author. It should cover main purpose of the research, methodology, significant findings, major conclusions and/or future recommendation. An abstract is often presented separately from the manuscript, so it must be able to stand alone. References, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations must be avoided.

KEYWORDS: A minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 keywords of your choice from the article to automatically facilitate indexing and online search.

FOOTNOTE: Authors’ full names, corresponding author’s e-mail address as following:

Authors’ full names: Ganesan Adaikalam, Erra Fazira Masruddin and Lim Soo Peng.

Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

INTRODUCTION: State the background, problem statements, hypothesis, objectives of the research and avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

MATERIALS AND METHOD: Should be listed clearly and succinctly, to include, where appropriate, an adequate account of layout, full description of treatments and/or appropriate
statistical design. Published methods should be summarised and/or indicated by a reference. Any modifications to published methods should also be described.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Results should be presented in Tables, Figures (charts, images etc.) and other appropriate means in order to provide comparative information. Discussion should thoroughly explain the results or findings from the study and interpreted with the support of evidence or data and suitable references. Anomalous or unexpected results must be explained. Mathematical equations must be in editable text and not in images.

CONCLUSION: Should be drawn from the presented results that addresses the problems/issues and also suggestion for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Should list all supporting institutions, grant numbers (optional), the names of research contributors (preferably untitled) and their affiliations of those who have assisted and contributed to the study in some way or other.

REFERENCES:  Authors are solely responsible for the accuracy of the references cited.

Citation in text

Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice-versa). Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list. Citation of a reference as 'In press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. The cited references are preferably in the recent five years.

Reference links

Increased discoverability of research and high quality peer review are ensured by online links to the sources cited. In order to allow us to create links to abstracting and indexing services, such as Scopus, CrossRef and PubMed, please ensure that data provided in the references are correct. Please note that incorrect surnames, journal/book titles, publication year and pagination may prevent link creation. When copying references, please be careful as they may already contain errors. Use of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is highly encouraged. A DOI is guaranteed never to change, so you can use it as a permanent link to any electronic article. Please note the APA format of such citations should be in the same style as all other references in the paper (www.apastyle.org).

Web references

As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

Data references

This journal encourages you to cite underlying or relevant datasets in your manuscript by citing them in your text and including a data reference in your Reference List. Data references should include the following elements: author name(s), dataset title, data repository, version (where available), year and global persistent identifier. Add [dataset] immediately before the reference so we can properly identify it as a data reference. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Reference management software

Authors only need to select our journal template when preparing their article and are advised to use reference management tools (EndNote, Mendeley, etc.)

In the text, cite the name(s) of the author(s) and years of publication by year first and then alphabetically.

•  One author – (Rahim 2018; Ahmad 2020; Chan 2021)

•  Two authors – (Rahim and Bakar 2018; Ahmad and Chan 2021)

•  Three or more authors – (Rahim et al. 2018; Chan et al. 2021)

•  Several references by one author in a particular year or different years

•  Same year – (Rahim 2018, a, b, c)

•  Different years – (Rahim 2018, 2019, 2020

In the reference list, authors’ names are listed alphabetically and then according to year sequence (earliest to the more recent) where an author has more than one reference. Arrange in alphabetical sequence of first word or title, where an author has more than one paper published in the same year, then assign letters a, b, c after the year. There is no numbering before each reference cited.

Please refer to the APA guidelines version 7.0 (www.apastyle.org).

TABLES AND FIGURES

• Tabular materials must be kept to a minimum. Only data essential to the understanding of the text should be included in tables.
• Where manuscript are based on extensive analytical data, choose a small section of representative analyses to indicate the unpublished range on which the paper is based.
• Tables should be numbered serially and referred to in the text.
• Title should be written at the top of the table.
• Abbreviations in the tables and figures should be adequately explained in the footnotes.
• Units of measurement should be placed in column heads
• Vertical rules should not be used. Horizontal rules should be inserted only above and below column headings and at the foot of the table.
• Figures should only be used where they are essential to elucidate the text. They should be numbered consecutively and each must be referred to in the text. Title should be in italics and placed at the bottom of the figures.
• Clear patterns away from areas of type and avoid mixing type faces on the same figures, grid marks should point outwards, legends to horizontal axis should run from left to right while for vertical axis legends should run from bottom to top.
• No duplication are allowed to be presented in both tables and figures.
• The style of the figures within any one paper should be as closely matched as possible.
• Suitable electronic formats for photographs are .tiff, .png or .jpg files at a minimum resolution of 300 d.p.i.

AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION FORM

All authors are required to sign the Declaration and Copyright Transfer form to declare the originality of their work and no part of it is plagiarised as to constitute an infringement of the Copyright Act 1987. Completed forms must be uploaded during submission. Please complete the declaration form and submit together with the manuscript. Declaration form can be obtained at http://jtafs.mardi.gov.my/index.php/instruction/author.

COPYRIGHT

Accepted manuscripts become the permanent property of MARDI and may not be published elsewhere without prior permission from the publisher. All authors are required to sign a Copyright Transfer form upon acceptance of the manuscript. Permission must be obtained from copyright owner to reproduce materials published elsewhere in the manuscript.

IMPORTANT: Choose the correct designation for document upload.

1. MAIN DOCUMENT : Blinded Manuscript. Name of author(s), affiliation(s), contact details removed. Tables, figures and images arranged at end of manuscript after references.

2. SUPPLEMENTAL FILE NOT FOR REVIEW : Full Manuscript. All details intact. Tables, figures and images at original positions as how you suggest your manuscript to be. Note: Authors may upload tables, figures and images individually too.

3. SUPPLEMENTAL FILE FOR REVIEW : Rebuttal sheet (for revision stage only)

4. COVER LETTER : Official letter stating the intention to submit a manuscript, highlighting at least three (3) novelties of the research.

5. AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION FORM : Signed off by at least three (3) members of the research team.

Before submission, always check on the documents uploaded by clicking on generate PDF proof. This document should only contain the main document (blinded manuscript), tables, figures and images if uploaded individually, supplemental file for review (rebuttal sheet) for revision stage. This content will be sent for blind reviewing process.

(Revised: January 2024)