Types of articles

Research article: A research paper provides a complete account of the experimental work. The text should represent the research process and foster its cohesive understanding and a coherent explanation regarding all the experimental procedures and results; and must provide the minimal information necessary for an independent reproduction of the research. The length of a research article manuscript should not exceed 5000 words, including all sections except figures and tables.

Short communication: A succinct article of the final results of an experimental work, which has full justification for publication, although with a volume of information which is not sufficient to be considered a full-length research article. A short communication must not be understood as an article of preliminary results or preliminarily analysed results. Hence, the results used as the basis to prepare the short communication cannot be used subsequently, either partially or wholly, for the presentation of a full-length article. The length of a short communication should not exceed 3000 words, including all sections except figures and tables.

Technical note: A technical note is an evaluation report or proposition of a method, procedure or technique that falls within the scope of RPZ. Whenever possible, the advantages and disadvantages of the new method, procedure or technique proposed should be shown. The length of a technical note should not exceed 4000 words, including all sections except figures and tables.

Reviews: A review is an article that presents the state-of-the-art or critical view of issues of interest and relevance to the scientific community. The review can be purely narrative, systematic or supported by meta-analysis. Before preparing and submitting a review article, authors are encouraged to discuss the topic with the Editor-In-Chief. The length of a review manuscript should not exceed 8000 words, including all sections except figures and tables.

Editorial notes: The editorials will be drafted by or at the invitation of the editorial board of RPZ, and should not exceed 600 words.

 

Guidelines to prepare the manuscript

Structure of a full-length research article

The article is divided into sections with centered headings, in bold, in the following order: Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion (or Results and Discussion), Conclusion, Acknowledgements (optional), References, List of Figure Captions and List of Table Captions. Headings must not be followed by punctuation. Figures and Tables should be prepared as separated files and not as part of the body of the manuscript. They should be numbered consecutively.

Manuscript format

The text should be typed by using Times New Roman font at 12 points, double-spaced (except for Abstract and Tables, which should be set at 1.5 space), and top, bottom, left and right margins of 2.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 2.5 cm, respectively. Pages should be numbered in Arabic numbers at the bottom. The file must be edited by using Microsoft Word software.

Title

The title should be precise and informative, with no more than 20 words. It should be typed in bold and centered.

Authors names and affiliations

The list of authors must contain all authors’ full name with no initials. Below the list of names, the authors’ affiliation addresses must be presented, and indicated with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country. This list of authors must follow the same authorship order presented in the Assurance of Contents and Copyright file.

• Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author.

Abstract

The abstract should contain no more than 300 words in a single paragraph. The information in the abstract must be precise, summarising the objective, material and methods, results and conclusions. It should not contain any introduction. References must not be cited in the abstract.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of six (6) keywords, avoiding plural terms and multiple concepts. They should be separated by commas, and typed in lowercase. There must be no period mark after key words.

Introduction

Provide an adequate background or justification for the research, and clearly state its objectives. Avoid a long or detailed literature survey.

Material and Methods

Whenever applicable, describe at the beginning of the section that the work was conducted in accordance with ethical standards and approved by the Ethics Committee of the institution.

Please provide ethics committee number as follows: “Research on animals was conducted according to the institutional committee on animal use (protocol number). As for the location of the experiment, it should contain city, country, and, if possible, geographical coordinates. Names of universities, laboratories, farms or any other institutions must not be mentioned.

Any modifications to standard procedures or methodologies must be explained in detail. The presentation of the statistical model as a separate subsection is mandatory whenever the research is about designed experiments, observational studies, survey studies or modelling studies. All terms, assumptions, and fitting procedures must be fully described.

Results

In the Results section, sufficient data, with means and some measure of uncertainty (standard error, coefficient of variation, confidence intervals, etc.) are mandatory, to provide the reader with the power to interpret the results of the experiment and make his own judgment. The additional guidelines for styles and units of RPZ should be checked for the correct understanding of the exposure of results in tables.

Discussion

In the Discussion section, the author should discuss the results clearly, and integrate the findings with the literature published to provide the reader with a broad base on which they will accept or reject the author's hypothesis.

Conclusions

This section should highlight the findings and the most important inferences that can be drawn from the observations. The broader implications of the results must be summarised.

Acknowledgments

This section is optional. It must come right after the conclusions.

Use of abbreviations

Author-derived abbreviations should be defined at first use in the abstract, and again in the body of the manuscript, and in each table and figure in which they are used.

Tables and Figures

Tables and Figures should be numbered sequentially in Arabic numbers, presented in two separate editable files to be uploaded (one for the tables and one for the figures), and must not appear in the body of the manuscript. They may be uploaded separately and in a higher number of files if the size of the files hampers the upload.

Table and figure captions should be short and informative, and the descriptions of the variables in the body of the table should be avoided. In the graphs, designations of the variables on the X and Y axes should have their initials in capital letters and the units in parentheses.

Non-original figures (figures published elsewhere) are only allowed to be published in RBZ with the express written consent of the publisher or copyright owner. The source from where they were extracted must be cited.

The units and font (Times New Roman) in the body of the figures should be standardised.

The curves must be identified in the figure itself. Excessive information that compromises the understanding of the graph should be avoided. Use contrasting markers such as circles, crosses, squares, triangles, etc. (full or empty) to represent points of curves in the graph.

The decimal numbers presented within the tables and figures must contain a point, not a comma mark. Mathematical formulas and equations must be inserted in the text as an object by using Microsoft Equation or a similar tool.

References

Reference and citations should follow the Name and Year System (Author-date).

Citations in the text

The author's citations in the text are in lowercase, followed by year of publication. In the case of two authors, use “and”; in the case of three or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author, followed by the abbreviation “et al.”

Examples:

Single author: Carvalho (2017) or (Carvalho, 2017)

Two authors: García and López (2018) or (García and López, 2018)

Three or more authors: O’Sullivan et al. (2019) or (O’Sullivan et al., 2019)

The references should be arranged chronologically and then alphabetically within a year, using a semicolon (;) to separate multiple citations within parentheses, e.g.: (Carvalho, 1999; Britto, 2017; Carvalho et al., 2017).

Two or more publications by the same author or group of authors in the same year shall be differentiated by adding lowercase letters after the date, e.g., (Silva, 2004a;b).

Personal communication can only be used if strictly necessary for the development or understanding of the study. Therefore, it is not part of the reference list, so it is placed only as a footnote. The author's last name and first and middle initials, followed by the phrase "personal communication", the date of notification, name, state and country of the institution to which the author is bound.

References section

References should be written on a separate page, and by alphabetical order of surname of author(s), and then chronologically. Type them single-spaced, justified, and indented to the third letter of the first word from the second line of reference.

All authors' names must appear in the References section.

The author is indicated by their last name followed by initials. Initials should be followed by period (.) and space; and the authors should be separated by commas. Ampersand (&) should precede the citation of the last author. As in text citations, multiple citations of same author or group of authors in the same year shall be differentiated by adding lowercase letters after the date. In the case of homonyms of cities, add the name of the state and country (e.g., Gainesville, FL, EUA; Gainesville, VA, EUA).

Sample references are given below.

Reference to a journal publication:

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2010). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.Sc.2010.00372.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number:

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2018). The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon, 19, e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00205.

Reference to a book:

Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style. (4th ed.). New York: Longman, (Chapter 4).
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). New York: E-Publishing Inc.

Reference to a website:

Cancer Research UK. Cancer statistics reports for the UK. (2003). Available at: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/statistics/cancerstatsreport/. Accessed on: 13 March 2013.

Reference to a dataset:

[dataset] Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., Nakashizuka, T. (2015). Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions. Mendeley Data, v1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Reference to a conference paper or poster presentation:

Engle, E.K., Cash, T.F., & Jarry, J.L. (2009, November). The Body Image Behaviours Inventory-3: Development and validation of the Body Image Compulsive Actions and Body Image Avoidance Scales. Poster session presentation at the meeting of the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, New York, NY.

Structure of the article for short communication and technical note

The presentation of the title should be preceded by the indication of the type of manuscript whether it is a short communication or a technical note, which must be centered and bold.

The structures of short communications and technical notes must follow guidelines set up for full-length papers, limited, however, to the maximum number of words. Processing and publishing fees applied to communications and technical notes are the same for full-length papers.

 

Guidelines to submit the manuscript through the Open Journal Systems online system

The journal editorial office of Revista Portuguesa de Zootecnia is now using an online system, The Open Journal Systems, to manage the submission and peer review the manuscripts. Open Journal Systems is a product of the open source journal management and publishing software developed, supported, and freely distributed by the Public Knowledge Project under the GNU General Public License.

Manuscripts are submitted online by accessing the Journal page (http://www.rpz.apez.pt/index.php/rpz).

Those who are not registered must proceed by Creating an Account. RPZ allows their users to create their own accounts. You will see a Create Account link on the top right corner of the page. Follow the step-by-step instructions for creating your account. To keep your account information up to date, use the Edit Account link on the upper right corner (Create Account changes to Edit Account after your account is created). There you can also change your User ID and password.

Please retain your new password information. Open Journal Systems will not send your password via email. After completing the registration process, the user will be notified by e-mail and immediately will have the access to the author center and can then proceed to submit a manuscript.

Authorship

The name and institutions of authors will be asked to be filled in the step 3 of the submission process. The corresponding author should provide co-authors' information. Open Journal Systems will help the corresponding author to check whether an author already exists in the journal's database, just by entering the author's e-mail address and clicking "Find". If the author is found, their information will be automatically retrieved.

The cover letter

It is expected that the corresponding author writes a letter that explains the reasons why the editor would want to publish your manuscript.

See an example of what should go in this letter:

• Inform the title of the manuscript and the last name of the author;

• If there is any novelty on your work, please report this to the editor. It is also important to stress the originality of the research, if it is the case.

• What is the main finding of the study?

• What is the implication of the findings of the study?

• If any part of this study has already been published, tell the editor that this is the case of preliminary result, or only partial. Also inform the location, the event and the date of such publication. Otherwise, state that this is an original study that has not been published either in part or as a whole.

In the step 5 (Details & Comments) the corresponding author will be asked to upload a file containing the Cover letter.

In the step 6 (File Upload) of the submission process the corresponding author will upload files.

Files that must to be submitted apart from the Main body: Figures, Tables and Appendices should be sent as separate files and not as part of the body of the manuscript.

The corresponding author will sign the Assurance of Contents and Copyright on behalf of all authors and email the document. Manuscript will not be considered for peer reviewing without this form. A period of 15 days after manuscript submission will be given for the delivery of the Assurance of Contents and Copyright form. If not received, the editorial office will withdraw the manuscript and inform the authors.