Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines

General Considerations

  • Short-communication manuscripts should comprise:
    • Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.
    • Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Topic, Discussion, Conclusions (optional).
    • Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.
  • Research manuscripts should comprise:
    • Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.
    • Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional).
    • Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.
  • Review manuscripts should comprise:
    • Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.
    • Review sections: a literature review organized logically within specific sections and subsections (optional).
    • Back matter: Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.

    Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and should ensure they conform to the PRISMA guidelines.

Writing Standard

  • Title: The title of your manuscript should be concise, specific and relevant. It should identify if the study reports (human or animal) trial data, or is a systematic review, meta-analysis or replication study. When gene or protein names are included, the abbreviated name rather than full name should be used. Please do not include abbreviated or short forms of the title, such as a running title or head. These will be removed by our Editorial Office.
  • Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, and country. At least one author should be designated as the corresponding author. The email addresses of all authors will be displayed on published papers. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that consent for the display of email addresses is obtained from all authors. If an author (other than the corresponding author) does not wish to have their email addresses displayed in this way, the corresponding author must indicate as such during proofreading. After acceptance, updates to author names or affiliations may not be permitted. Equal Contributions: authors who have contributed equally should be marked with a superscript symbol (†). The symbol must be included below the affiliations, and the following statement added: “These authors contributed equally to this work”. The equal roles of authors should also be adequately disclosed in the author contributions statement. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools and other large language models (LLMs) cannot be listed as authors as these tools do not meet MDPI’s requirements for authorship. Please read the criteria to qualify for authorship.
  • Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and species and strains of any animals used; 3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
  • Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.
  • Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
  • Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes. Where applicable, authors are required to disclose in this section details of how GenAI has been used in the paper (e.g., to generate text, data or graphics or assist in study design or data collection, analysis or interpretation). The use of GenAI for superficial text editing (e.g., regarding grammar, spelling, punctuation and formatting) does not need to be declared.
    The authors need for a subsection in the materials and methods on experimental design and statistical description. The authors should report enough details of the experimental design and statistical analyses so that an independent researcher could reproduce their research. Relevant information could include yet it is not limited to: experimental design, factors and levels, listing of fixed and random terms (with justification), number of replicates with experimental units clearly identified, correlation structure for repeated measures, as well as software with version and procedures or packages used.
  • Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
  • Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
  • Conclusions: This section is not mandatory but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.
  • Supplementary Materials: Describe any supplementary material published online alongside the manuscript (figure, tables, video, spreadsheets, etc.). Please indicate the name and title of each element as follows Figure S1: title, Table S1: title, etc.
  • Author Contributions: Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND has approved the submitted version (and version substantially edited by journal staff that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND agrees to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.
    For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; Methodology, X.X.; Software, X.X.; Validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Formal Analysis, X.X.; Investigation, X.X.; Resources, X.X.; Data Curation, X.X.; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, X.X.; Writing – Review & Editing, X.X.; Visualization, X.X.; Supervision, X.X.; Project Administration, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.”, please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. For more background on CRediT, see here. "Authorship must include and be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work. Please read the section concerning the criteria to qualify for authorship carefully".
  • Funding: All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate grants that you have received in support of your research work and if you received funds to cover publication costs. Note that some funders will not refund article processing charges (APC) if the funder and grant number are not clearly and correctly identified in the paper. Funding information can be entered separately into the submission system by the authors during submission of their manuscript. Such funding information, if available, will be deposited to FundRef if the manuscript is finally published.
    Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]” and “The APC was funded by [XXX]” in this section. Check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding, any errors may affect your future funding.
  • Data Availability Statement: In this section, please provide details regarding where data supporting reported results can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. Please refer to suggested Data Availability Statements in section “MDPI Research Data Policies”. You might choose to exclude this statement if the study did not report any data.
  • Acknowledgments: In this section you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments). Where GenAI has been used for purposes such as generating text, data or graphics, study design, or data collection, analysis or interpretation, please add “During the preparation of this manuscript/study, the author(s) used [tool name, version information] for the purposes of [description of use]. The authors have reviewed and edited the output and take full responsibility for the content of this publication”.
  • Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Any role of the funding sponsors in the choice of research project; design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. Agronomy does not publish studies funded partially or fully by the tobacco industry. Any projects funded by industry must pay special attention to the full declaration of funder involvement. If there is no role, please state “The sponsors had no role in the design, execution, interpretation, or writing of the study”. 
  • References: References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including table captions and figure legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. We encourage citations to data, computer code and other citable research material. If available online, you may use reference style 9. below. To ensure scientific transparency, if the data in your paper was accessed through the GBIF network, please ensure that you express the DOI as a URL.
  • Citations and References in Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the main text and in the reference list.

In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105).

The reference list should include the full title, as recommended by the ACS style guide. Style files using "Agriculture".

References should be described as follows, depending on the type of work:

  • Journal Articles:
    1. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.
  • Books and Book Chapters:
    2. Author 1, A.; Author 2, B. Book Title, 3rd ed.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Year; pp. 154–196.
    3. Author 1, A.; Author 2, B. Title of the chapter. In Book Title, 2nd ed.; Editor 1, A., Editor 2, B., Eds.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Year; Volume 3, pp. 154–196.
  • Unpublished materials intended for publication:
    4. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Title of Unpublished Work (optional). Correspondence Affiliation, City, State, Country. year, status (manuscript in preparation; to be submitted).
    5. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C. Title of Unpublished Work. Abbreviated Journal Name year, phrase indicating stage of publication (submitted; accepted; in press).
  • Unpublished materials not intended for publication:
    6. Author 1, A.B. (Affiliation, City, State, Country); Author 2, C. (Affiliation, City, State, Country). Phase describing the material, year. (phase: Personal communication; Private communication; Unpublished work; etc.)
  • Conference Proceedings:
    7. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D.; Author 3, E.F. Title of Presentation. In Title of the Collected Work (if available), Proceedings of the Name of the Conference, Location of Conference, Country, Date of Conference; Editor 1, Editor 2, Eds. (if available); Publisher: City, Country, Year (if available); Abstract Number (optional), Pagination (optional).
  • Thesis:
    8. Author 1, A.B. Title of Thesis. Level of Thesis, Degree-Granting University, Location of University, Date of Completion.
  • Websites:
    9. Title of Site. Available online: URL (accessed on Day Month Year).
    Unlike published works, websites may change over time or disappear, so we encourage you create an archive of the cited website using a service such as WebCite. Archived websites should be cited using the link provided as follows:
    10. Title of Site. URL (archived on Day Month Year).
    11. GBIF Occurrence Download. Available online: URL (accessed on Day Month Year).