Author Guidelines

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].   

The Association of Applied Biologists holds the authors, not the Association, Editors or Referees, entirely responsible for the content of material that is published.

Submission of a manuscript to Annals of Applied Biology implies that all persons listed as authors qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify are listed.

Authors must only submit their own original work to the journal. A submitted manuscript must not contain any material that has been previously published or is under consideration as an article in another journal or book, including self-plagiarism. This includes any type of article, whether published in print or on line. The journal employs a plagiarism detection system. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works.

All previous discoveries and information must be correctly acknowledged with the full original reference clearly cited. Authors should be aware that the unreferenced use of the published and unpublished ideas, writing or illustrations of others, from whatever source (including research grant applications), in the same or a different language, constitutes plagiarism. When necessary, Authors must obtain permission to reproduce any copyright material, and include an acknowledgement of the source in their article.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Wiley requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author’s objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or indirectly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include but are not limited to patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker’s fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication in this journal.

If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and to collectively list in the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief, in the manuscript (in the footnotes, Conflict of Interest or Acknowledgments section), and in the online submission system ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Correction to authorship

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, Annals of Applied Biology will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”

JOURNAL SCOPE

The journal publishes original research papers on all aspects of applied agricultural, horticultural and forestry research on crop production, crop protection and the cropping ecosystem. Annals contribute substantially to the advancement of knowledge and may, among others, encompass the scientific disciplines of: Agronomy; Agrienvironmental sciences; Applied genomics; Biodiversity; Biological control; Climate change; Crop ecology; Entomology; Genetic manipulation; Mycology; Nematology; Pests; Plant pathology; Plant breeding & genetics; Plant physiology; Post harvest biology; Soil science; Virology and Weed biology. Contributions that focus on the description of genetic diversity and genotype analysis without advancing knowledge of applied biology will not be considered for publication. Manuscripts submitted as reports on antagonists, growth-promoting microbes or biopesticides are expected to include results obtained under plant growth conditions (e.g. pot or field experiments). Results based on in vitro experiments only will not be considered for publication.

Review papers in all areas of applied biology are also invited. They should be authoritative and critical surveys of the field and offer new insights. It is recommended that the Editor-in-Chief be contacted in advance to confirm the suitability of the subject.

SUBMISSIONS

Annals will also consider referrals from independent review services such as Axios Review. An independent review service like Axios Review allows authors to choose Annals as one of several “target journals”. The paper will receive anonymous external peer review overseen by Axios and its editorial board. Please note that the service is paid for by the author. An Editor at Annals then decides whether the paper is of sufficient novelty and importance to merit a referral to Annals. If so, the paper and the reviews are passed to Annals for editorial evaluation. Like all manuscripts received by Annals the manuscript is subject to journal’s full evaluation procedures. The process should however, be able to be speeded up by having existing reviews in-hand and offers the ability for the reviews to be used by other journals should Annals be unable to publish the manuscript. If we agree that the paper is a worthwhile submission, we will ask the authors to revise their paper and submit via Research Exchange submission portal, including a detailed 'response to reviewers' as a supplemental file. If the paper is not appropriate for Annals, it can instead be referred to the other target journals. This process helps authors find a journal that is interested in their manuscript, while simultaneously reducing the workload for both reviewers and journals. More details can be found at Axios Review.

ORCID iD

Annals of Applied Biology requires that the submitting author provides an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. Please ensure that this link contains details that are publicly available for the editor to review.

Article Preparation Support:

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence. Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.        

Annals requires online submission at Research Exchange submission portal. This enables the quickest possible review.

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) format. 

If using LaTeX - note that upon acceptance we will require your TeX/LaTeX source files to edit and typeset the article. Figures can be embedded in the native word processor file or uploaded separately as GIF (.gif), JPEG (.jpg), PNG (.png), TIFF (.tif), or EPS (.eps). On acceptance, you will be required to provide high resolution graphics files (TIFF or EPS files only). Full upload instructions and support are available online from the submission site via the Get Help Now button. Please submit your covering letter or comments to the Senior Editor when prompted online.

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTex format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a LaTex Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the LaTex Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.”  

LaTex Guidelines for Post-Acceptance: 

Please check that you have supplied the following files for typesetting post-acceptance:  

• PDF of the finalized source manuscript files compiled without any errors. 
• The LaTeX source code files (text, figure captions, and tables, preferably in a single file), BibTex files (if used), any associated packages/files along with all other files needed for compiling without any errors. This is particularly important if authors have used any LaTeX style or class files, bibliography files (.bbl, .bst. .blg) or packages apart from those used in the NJD LaTex Template class file.  
• Electronic graphics files for the illustrations in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PDF or TIFF format. Authors are requested not to create figures using LaTeX codes. 

 
Revisions

Revised manuscripts must be submitted in their final form, within 2 months of authors being notified of conditional acceptance (pending satisfactory revision). Resubmissions after this time will be considered as new.

Preprints

Annals of Applied Biology will consider for review articles previously available on preprint servers. Authors may also post the submitted version of their manuscript to preprint servers at any time. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article.

PRESENTATION

Text

Text should be divided into the following sections and appear in the order: (1) title page (with short running page heading, title, authors names and affiliations), (2) summary, (3) keywords, (4) introduction, (5) materials and methods, (6) results, (7) discussion, (8) acknowledgements, (9) references, (10) supporting information, (11) tables, (12) figure legends, (13) figures.

Authorities for the latin binomial of every organism are not used in the title or summary, and only on the first mention in the main body of the text. Common names of pests and diseases should follow ‘MAFF Technical Bulletin No. 6’ and the ‘List of Common British Plant Diseases’ compiled by the British Mycological Society.

Gene names and loci should be italic, proteins should be roman.

Virus nomenclature (and acronyms) should follow the guidelines of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). The current report is: van Regenmortel MHV, Fauquet CM, Bishop DHL (Eds) (2001) Virus Taxonomy: Seventh Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy Viruses. San Diego: Academic Press. Authors are also advised to check the ITCV website for the latest information.

Chemical nomenclature should follow the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) definitive rules for nomenclature.

Pesticides and other industrial products should be referred to by their common names (ISO Publications 1831, 2474, etc.). In the absence of a common name, use the full name or a defined abbreviation, in preference to a trade name. At first mention, trade names should be capitalised.

Article types

Original Article
A report of research addressing a specific research question, including the methods used, the results of the research, and conclusions drawn from the research. Papers should be in clear concise English and should not normally exceed 7000 words of text (excluding abstract and references) but longer papers of particular merit may be considered. Papers should be novel and of wide general interest the readership of the Annals.

Synthesis
Synthesis articles include quantitative meta-analyses testing a specific hypothesis, and systematic reviews of the published literature addressing a specific research theme. Synthesis articles should include an exhaustive search of the literature to date, its critical evaluation, synthesis, and ideas for future research. Synthesis articles should not normally exceed 12000 words.

Review 
A review of a highly topical subject area, usually covering the most recent literature on fast moving and important topics that merit rapid consideration and publication. Reviews should not normally exceed 10000 words.

Forum
Essays on new ideas and perspectives that will appeal to a wide audience. Policy forum essays are particularly encouraged, addressing political, social or management aspects of agricultural practice. These should not normally exceed 3000 words.


Editorials
Editorial articles are normally produced by the Editorial team but on occasion may be invited to address a particular topic.

Statistics

The design of all experiments should be explicit and clear. Particular care should be taken to explain what is meant by a replicate; only biological replication from independent units can be used to assess variation within and between treatments. Authors should consult a statistician if they require assistance in making inferences from designed experiments.

Prior to analysis, means and standard deviations (SDs) should be used for summarising data. Biologically meaningful comparisons among treatments must respect the factorial and blocking structures of the experimental design. The use of contrasts in ANOVA and regression for unplanned comparisons is also appropriate.

Results as presented should be derived from and be consistent with the analysis done. For designed experiments in particular, results should be summarised by treatment means estimated from the ANOVA, regression, GLM etc. analysis. The summary should also include the corresponding standard errors of differences between means (SEDs), (or Least Significant Differences (LSDs) or standard errors of means (SEs)) and the degrees of freedom for the residual term from which the SED has been derived. Table 2 of Bithell et al. 159, 252-266 illustrates this approach.

Standard errors used to compare treatments should be derived from the residual or deviance statistics of ANOVA, regression or GLM etc. analyses. When such analyses have been carried out, the inclusion of individual standard deviations or standard errors for every mean, based on the raw data, is prohibited.

Excessive comparisons between treatments, not based on biological hypotheses, are discouraged. In particular, the use of multiple comparison adjustments such as Duncan's or Tukey's is not acceptable, nor is the use of letters to denote treatments which are 'not significantly different from each other'.

Help and advice from the Annals statistical editors is available to authors.

References

References in the text should be inserted in parentheses in full for single and dual authored papers, but using the first author and et al. for multiple authored papers. Reference to personal communications, unedited and un-refereed work, and work that is unpublished should be minimal and should appear in the text only. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain permission from colleagues to include their work as a personal communication.
References in the list should follow the APA system. Refer to a recent copy of the journal for examples.

We recommend the use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager for reference management and formatting.

EndNote reference styles can be searched for here.

Reference Manager reference styles can be searched for here.

Supporting Information

Quantitative biological data too extensive may be presented in supporting information. As such, it will be reviewed as an integral part of the paper. The availability of the supporting information should be indicated in the main manuscript by a paragraph, to appear after the references, providing titles of figures, tables, etc. There are guidelines regarding supporting information here.

Data Sharing

Annals of Applied Biology recognizes the many benefits of archiving research data. Annals of Applied Biology expects you to archive all the data from which your published results are derived in a public repository. The repository that you choose should offer you guaranteed preservation (see the registry of research data repositories at https://www.re3data.org/) and should help you make it findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable, according to FAIR Data Principles (https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples).

All accepted manuscripts are required to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. Authors will be required to confirm adherence to the policy. If you cannot share the data described in your manuscript, for example for legal or ethical reasons, or do not intend to share the data then you must provide the appropriate data availability statement. Annals of Applied Biology notes that FAIR data sharing allows for access to shared data under restrictions (e.g., to protect confidential or proprietary information) but notes that the FAIR principles encourage you to share data in ways that are as open as possible (but that can be as closed as necessary).

Sample statements are available here. If published, all statements will be placed in the heading of your manuscript.

Graphical Abstracts

Annals of Applied Biology can include a graphical abstract that summarizes the key finding of a given article or represents the scope of that paper. This involves the display of an image of your choice and a caption. On submission, authors will be asked to select a suitable figure from the main article to be used as the graphical abstract. They will also be asked to provide a summary of their article in no more than 100 words to accompany the image.

Color figures

Numerical results should be presented either as tables or figures, but not both. The journal welcomes colour figures and plates, when information would be lost if reproduced in black and white. Color figures may be published online free of charge.

Electronic artwork: Annals requires submission of electronic artwork. Vector graphics (e.g. line artwork) should be saved in Encapsulated Postscript Format (.eps), and half-tones in Tagged Image File Format (.tif). TIFF files should be supplied at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size at which they are to appear in the journal. Colour files should be in CMYK mode. CMYK stands for Cyan, Majenta, Yellow and Black – these are the colours displayed by computer monitors. Labelling should be in 10pt Times New Roman. Figure sections should be designated with upper case letters. Magnification bars should be given on electron and light micrographs. Detailed information on our digital illustration standards is available at this webpage.

Tables: Tables should be typed on separate pages, as an integral part the text file. They should have a brief descriptive title and be self-explanatory. Units should appear in parentheses in the column headings, not in the body of the table. Repeated words or numerals on successive lines should be written in full. Footnotes should be minimal. When the precision of data is expressed as standard error (se) or standard errors of differences (sed) the degrees of freedom (df) should be given.

Legends: Table and figure legends should be included within the text file and contain sufficient information to be understood without reference to the text. Each should begin with a short title for the figure. Refer to a recent copy of the journal for the prefered ordering off symbols. All symbols and abbreviations should be explained within the legend.

Cover images: Electronic artwork/original photographs of high quality suitable for the cover of Annals are welcomed. They should be sent to the Editorial Office and be accompanied by a relevant caption. It is preferred, but not essential, that images should be related to submitted papers. Contributors are required to assign copyright to the Association by UK law.

OPEN ACCESS

Open Access is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. With Open Access, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee (APC) to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley Online Library, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

CC-BY FOR ALL OPEN ACCESS AUTHORS

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

For authors signing the COPYRIGHT TRANSFER AGREEMENT

If the Open Access option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:

CTA Terms and Conditions http://exchanges.wiley.com/authors/faqs---copyright-_301.html

For authors choosing OPEN ACCESS

If the Open Access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):

Creative Commons Attribution License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License OAA

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial -NoDerivs License OAA

To preview the terms and conditions of these Open Access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services http://exchanges.wiley.com/authors/faqs---copyright-_301.html and visit http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.

If you select the Open Access option and your research is funded by certain funders [e.g. The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) or the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)] you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC-BY license supporting you in complying with your Funder requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit: http://www.wiley.com/go/funderstatement.

Prior to acceptance there is no requirement to inform an Editorial Office that you intend to publish your paper Open Access if you do not wish to. All Open Access articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

PROOFS

A PDF proof will be available to download from our website. An email with access codes and full instructions will be sent to the corresponding author when the proof is available for collection. Acrobat Reader is required in order to read this file. This can be downloaded (free of charge) from Adobe. 

In your absence, please arrange for a colleague to correct on your behalf.

OFFPRINTS

Free access to the final PDF offprint or your article will be available via Author Services only. Please therefore sign up for Author Services if you would like to access your article PDF offprint and enjoy the many other benefits the service offers. Additional paper offprints may be ordered online. Please click on the following link for more details: www.sheridan.com/wiley/eoc.

AUTHOR MATERIAL ARCHIVE POLICY

Please note that unless specifically requested, Wiley will dispose of all hardcopy or electronic material submitted two months after publication. If you require the return of any material submitted, please inform the editorial office or production editor ([email protected]) as soon as possible if you have not yet done so.

COVER IMAGE SUBMISSIONS

This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page.

ARTICLE PROMOTION SUPPORT

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Effective with the 2020 volume, this journal will be published in an online-only format.

Print subscription and single issue sales are available from Wiley’s Print-on-Demand Partner. To order online click through to the ordering portal from the journal’s subscribe and renew page on WOL.

Last update: November 2019