Submissions

Author Guidelines

From 2017, the Journal of Maize Research and Development (JMRD) requires an ORCID iD for all corresponding authors at the time of manuscript submission and the publisher encourages all corresponding authors to register and to have ORCID iD. All author ORCID iDs will be displayed on published articles both print and online version.

Go to ORCID.org and register to get your personal ID

The Journal of Maize Research and Development (JMRD) publishes original research and review articles related to maize research. The articles from both within and outside the country are considered for publication. Authors interested to publish their article/s in the journal are requested to submit with cover letter providing three copies of each manuscript written on one side of A4 size (8.5- × 11.0-in) paper in single space (New Times Roman, Font Size 12) in MS-Word along with electronic copy of the manuscript. The manuscripts submitted to this journal for publication are not returned. 

Manuscript Format: All contents in article must be written in English. Papers must be an original work and should not be submitted elsewhere for the publication. Before submission, manuscripts should be reviewed critically by two peer reviewers and revised accordingly. Manuscript should be neatly typed, single spaced (along with tables, figures and references) on A4 paper with 1 inch margin at the top, bottom and left side. Manuscripts should generally be organized in the following order of Title and contact information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Methodology), Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgments and finally References. The maximum length of the paper must be limited to 20 pages, including tables, graphs and references. The manuscript should be submitted to the Editors-in-Chief of the Journal.

Title of the paper: The title of the paper should be clear, descriptive and informative. The first page should contain the full title in sentence case not exceeding 15 words. The authors’ identification should include the author’s name (do not use abbreviations), title or designation, organization, address, telephone, fax and email ID.

Abstract: The abstract should be clear, descriptive and not longer than 250 words. It should be citation free and should concisely state the major objective, methodology, major findings and conclusion but should not include diagram, footnotes, equations, or any parenthetical references. The font size of abstract is 10 and font is Times New Roman.

Key words: Key words should normally 4-6 keywords

Introduction: The introduction should be should be succinct and with no subheadings. In this section background information, relevant review of literature and objective of the research should be given. Statements must be supported by citations whenever possible. It should give appropriate background and explain the things that are proposed. It should include short introduction to justify the research and relevant reviews and state the objectives clearly (not more than 300 words).

Materials and Methods: Detail information on relevant materials and methods used including sampling methods, experimental design, treatments, plot size and any other techniques used in research as well as the year and place of conducting the research should be provided. The statistical methods and tools used in study should be clearly mentioned.

Results and Discussion: Results should be presented with clarity and precision. It should be written in the past tense when describing findings in the authors’ experiments. Previously published findings should be written in the present tense.

Discussion should interpret the findings in view of the results obtained in this and past studies on the topic. The results and discussion sections can include subheadings. When appropriate, the two sections can be combined.

Conclusion: All relevant items achieved in the researched area should be mentioned in the conclusion. The conclusion should be given after the results and discussion section

Acknowledgements: Acknowledgements, if any, should be given to funding agencies, organization and key person.

Reference Citation: The references should be arranged alphabetically and should follow the American Psychological Association (APA) style. References should also indicate the differences in styles for books, journals, newspapers and other published and unpublished materials. The references should be cited within in the body of paper; otherwise, these references must not come under the reference list. Visit the link for APA referencing style: i) Style of referenceing ii) Referencing guides, iii) Citation guides. Users of Mendeley Desktop can easily install the reference style for this journal by clicking the following link:
http://open.mendeley.com/use-citation-style/journal-of-maize-resea-nepal/
When preparing manuscript, the author will be able to select this style using the Mendeley plug-ins for Microsoft Word or LibreOffice.

All authors should include the DOIs of article while writing references in articles for JMRD Journal.

Tables: Tables should be self-explanatory. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Tables should be created using the table function. Tables are to be typed  single-spaced throughout, numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and supplied with a title and footnotes. The same data should not be presented in both a table and a graph or repeated in the text.  Symbol like single asterisk  and double asterisks (**) should be used to indicate statistical significance and have priority in this order to show 5 and 1% levels of significance, respectively. Do not repeat information in the text presented in charts or graph. It is preferable to use 10 font size and bold table heading.

Figure legends: Figures should be typed in numerical and Arabic numerals should be used to designate figure numbers and upper-case letters for their parts (Figure 1A). Begin each legend with a title and include sufficient description so that the figure is understandable without reference to the text of the manuscript. Graphics should be prepared with applications capable of generating high-resolution JPEG before pasting into the Microsoft Word manuscript file. Do not repeat data both in table and figures. Either use table, or graph or figure. Each Figure and/or graph with a number and the proper title heading should be drawn or prepared below the graph/figure.

Others: Heading: Center and capitalize the main heading of the paper. Sub heading should be on separate line and capitalize the first letter of the first word.

Scientific names: The scientific name must be given in italic and given with authority. The first letter of the word of cultivar must be capitalized

Trade or brand names: The first letter of trade or brand names should be capitalized.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations for standard units such as gram (g), kilogram (kg), hectare (ha), metric ton (t), milliliter (mL), liter (L), centimeter (cm), meter (m) and kilometer (km) should be used.

Unit of measurement: Units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using System International (SI) units.

Periods: Do not put periods after title and key words. Periods are necessary at the end of table and figure heading.

Formulae: All formulae and equations in the paper should be worked out by means of the programme ‘WORD Equation’.  The meaning of all symbols should be given immediately after the equation where these symbols are first used. Equations should be numbered by Arabic numerals, serially in brackets, at the right-hand side. Each equation must be mentioned in the text as Eq. (1), Eq. (2), etc.

Page setup:
Font: Times New Roman, Size: 12 points,  Paper: A4 size, Margin: width at 2.54 cm. Spacing: Single, Text Size: Not exceeding 5000 words

Reprints: The corresponding (first) author will receive one copy of prints free of charge to be shared with coauthors.

Plagiarism policy: JMRD follows the plagiarism policy. Manuscripts submitted to JMRD should be original and must not be plagiarized. Every submitted article is checked for plagiarism through “iThenticate” software.

Publication Fees:
This journal offers authors no publishing charges, no proofreading charges, no page charges and fast publication times. As soon as a paper is ready, it will appear online.

Peer-review publication policies
All contributions submitted to this journal that are selected for peer review are sent to at least one, but usually two or more, independent reviewers, selected by the editors. Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent reviewers and may also request that the journal excludes one or two individuals or laboratories. The journal sympathetically considers such requests and usually honours them, but the editor’s decision on the choice of referees is final.

Editors, authors and reviewers are required to keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. Unless otherwise declared as a part of open peer review, the peer review process is confidential and conducted anonymously; identities of reviewers are not released. Reviewers must maintain confidentiality of manuscripts. If a reviewer wishes to seek advice from colleagues while assessing a manuscript, the reviewer must consult with the editor and should ensure that confidentiality is maintained and that the names of any such colleagues are provided to the journal with the final report. Regardless of whether a submitted manuscript is eventually published, correspondence with the journal, referees’ reports and other confidential material must not be published, disclosed or otherwise publicised without prior written consent. Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity.

The publisher reserves the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies, journals and the authors’ institutions in cases of suspected research or publishing misconduct.

Peer review process for JMRD journal
This journal follows a “Double Blind Review” where both the reviewer and the author are anonymous. Articles are considered on the basis of the content of papers. Reviewers can often identify the author through their writing style, subject matter or self-citation. Only research and review articles related to maize are considered for journal. Normally review process takes one month. Immediately after getting reviewer comments/ suggestions manuscripts are sent to authors for improvement of their article. Reviewer are invited by editor-in-chief or editors through request made via email. Reviewers come from national or international territory. Reviewers are assigned to review articles in their own particular field of expertise. The general process of review is as below;

1. Authors submit an article (referred as manuscript).
2. The editor-in-chief (EiC) verifies relevance of the manuscript to the journal’s scope, format, quality and its authorship.
3. EiC assign manuscript to associate EiC/ editors who evaluate the technical aspects of the paper fairly and fully.
4. Associate EiC/editors invite three referees to evaluate the technical quality of  the paper.
5. When reviews are received from referees, associate EiC/editors evaluate the reviews and submit the final decision for acceptance/rejection of the manuscript.
6. All rejected manuscripts are permanently closed and authors are informed about the decision.
7.  For accepted papers, authors are asked to revise manuscript according to reviewers comments and submit the final version within the given time period. 
8. All final revised papers are returned to EiC who give final shape of the papers. Finally papers are published on journal website as soon as they become ready after typesetting and proof reading.

Publication Criteria:
Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication and are accepted on the understanding that they have not been published previously, nor are under consideration for publication in any other journal. This policy on redundant publication extends to overlapping or incremental submissions (salami publication) where data from essentially the same experiment is spread across numerous papers: the practice is discouraged, and such submissions are unlikely to be considered for publication.

The criteria for an article to be accepted and published are:

• The article should be written in standard English.
• The article should be written following the “Authors Guidelines.”
• The article should be written in correlation with its title and abstract.
• The results should be supported with adequate and appropriate discussion.
• Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion.
• The article has not been published elsewhere.
• The article should be of interest to the broad community.
• The article should be original research and scientifically effective.
• The article contents must not be plagiarized.

Submission of undertaking: All concerned authors are bound to submit an undertaking duly signed by them, which shows that this paper was not submitted elsewhere and was also not plagiarized.

Copyright and Permissions

© The Authors
Authors retain the copyright of the published articles.

User Rights 
Under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, others than authors can remix, tweak, and build upon author’s work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge the author and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

All articles in the Journal of Maize Research and Development are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This license allows readers to

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

Author warrants
The Author warrants that the Work:

• Has not been published before (except if included in an institutional pre-print server).
• Is not presently being considered for publication elsewhere.
• Does not violate any intellectual property right of any person or entity.
• Does not contain any subject matter that contravenes any laws (including defamatory material and misleading and deceptive material) and
• Meets ethical standards applicable to the research discipline.

They should warrant that the work and all figures, illustrations, photographs, charts, and other supplementary material are original. They declare that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and submitted, nor will be submitted, to any other publication while consideration by the JMRD. There is no any plagiarism in this manuscript and no part of this manuscript (referenced or otherwise) has been copied verbatim. No one who has contributed significantly to the work has been denied authorship and those who helped have been duly acknowledged. All authors reviewed and approved the content and parts of this manuscript as submitted

Publishing Agreement
This is a license agreement under which you, the author, retain copyright in your article, and grant the Journal of Maize Research and Development (hereinafter ‘the Publisher’) a license to allow the publisher to publish your article, including abstract, tables, figures, data, and supplemental material hosted by our publisher, as the Version of Record (VoR) in the Journal for the full period of copyright throughout the world, in all forms and all media.

Grant of publishing rights
The authors should grant the publisher this exclusive license to publish their article, in all forms and all media (whether known at this time or developed at any time in the future) throughout the world, in all languages, where their rights include but are not limited to the right to translate, create adaptations, extracts, or derivative works and to sublicense such rights, for the full term of copyright (including all renewals and extensions of that term), to take effect if and when the article is accepted for publication. The authors confirm that they have read and accept the full Terms and Conditions below including author warranties, and have read and agree to comply with the Journal’s policies on peer review and publishing ethics.

Click below link to download License to publish form;

License to publish Agreement

Please read this above agreement carefully, complete it, and return a copy to us by email, fax, or hard copy immediately, to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

Submission of Paper: When submitting the paper, the authors should provide the contact details (names, affiliations and e-mail addresses) of at least three potential reviewers. The reviewers should be experts in the corresponding field of research, and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the paper. The peer reviewers should not be from the same institutions as the authors of the paper. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. Authors should take responsibility for ensuring that the articles derived from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution. The corresponding authors should submit their manuscript along with cover letter. Cover letter. The paper must be submitted electronically to the following address

National Maize Research Program (NMRP), Rampur, Chitwan,Nepal.
Fax :+977-56-592548,  Phone : +977-56-591001, Cell phone : +977 9845052780
Email : nmrp2012@gmail.com , mail@nmrp.gov.np
Website: http://nmrp.gov.np/