Editorial policy
Manuscripts submitted for publication should contain no materials that violate any copyright. Submission of a manuscript to JBE involves the tacit assurance that no similar paper has been or will be submitted for publication in other journals. Manuscripts that have been published in a conference or meeting proceedings without peer review may be submitted to JBE.
It is the responsibility of the authors, not the KSAM, to determine whether disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties and to obtain that consent. Statements and opinions given in work published by JBE are the expressions of the authors. Responsibility for the contents of published papers rests upon the authors, not the KSAM.
Publication type
JBE accepts the following types of manuscripts: original research articles, review articles, and technical notes. An original research article represents an original, important contribution to agricultural, food, and biological systems engineering. The manuscript should clearly state the scope and purpose of the research work. The information presented must be objective and well organized, and the conclusions should be adequately supported. Review articles should be a critical evaluation of the existing state of knowledge on a particular aspect of agricultural, food, and biological systems engineering. Simple literature surveys will not be accepted for publication. Technical notes should be brief descriptions of the development of devices, equipment, techniques, or applications that offer definite advantages in research or practice over those already available.
Peer-review process
All manuscripts are subject to peer review for the validity of the experimental design and results, significance, and appropriateness for JBE.
When manuscripts are submitted successfully to the journal online system, they are initially subjected to a pre-screening step by the Editor-in-Chief. Manuscripts that are poorly written or fail to meet the required format will be rejected in the pre-screening step without further review. Manuscripts that pass this step will be reviewed by three anonymous reviewers selected by the Editor-in-Chief or associate editors. The corresponding author is notified as soon as possible regarding the decision to accept, reject, or request revision of a manuscript. The manuscripts evaluated as “accept” or “request minor revision” by all of the reviewers are considered to be accepted for publication, although some revisions may be required to address the concerns of the reviewers and Editor-in-Chief. In cases where a manuscript is evaluated as “make major revisions” or “reject” by at least one of the reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief will analyze the reviewers’ comments thoroughly and make a decision on acceptance or rejection. If there are major flaws in the results of the research or the methodological design, the Editor-in-Chief may ask the author to clarify and resubmit or may reject the manuscript. If a manuscript is classified as “accept with revisions,” the author is expected to respond within 3 months, addressing all the comments raised by the reviewers, making appropriate corrections or stating why the comments are unreasonable. The responsible editor or a reviewer will consider the revisions, and recommend that the Editor-in-Chief either accept the manuscript for publication or reject it. The author will be informed by the Editor-in-Chief of the final decision on the publication of the manuscript.
When the final revised manuscript meets all JBE content and format requirements and has been accepted for publication without additional revisions, it is scheduled for publication in the next available issue.
Page proofs
Page proofs and reprint order forms are sent to the corresponding author, together with instructions on the payment of page charges and reprint costs. This proof stage is not a time for extensive corrections, additions, or deletions. It is advised that editing be limited to the correction of typographical errors, incorrect data, and grammatical errors, and for updating information on references that had been in press. The corrections to page proofs should be sent immediately by e-mail or a fast mail service, preferably within 2 business days.
Ethical Considerations
Research ethics
If the work involves experimentation on living animals, the authors must provide evidence that it was performed in accordance with ethical guidelines. In the case of work involving human beings, the procedures should be in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s institution and with the 2000 revision of the Helsinki Declaration of 1975. For issues on research and publication ethics not stated in this guide, the “Responsible authorship quick guide (http://ori.hhs.gov/)” or ”International Standards for Authors (http://www.publicationethics.org/)” should be consulted and followed.
Authorship
Manuscript authorship should be restricted to those who meet any of the following conditions: 1) substantial contribution to the conception and design of the study; 2) acquisition, interpretation, and analysis of data; 3) drafting the article or revising it critically for the important intellectual content. In addition, all listed authors must approve the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Conflict of interest
All authors are asked to inform the Editor-in-Chief of the any actual or potential conflict of interest possibly influencing their interpretation of the data. Such conflicts may include but are not limited to financial support or personal relationships with other people or organizations, political pressure from interest groups, or academic problems.
Copyright policy
All copyright and other intellectual property rights related to the content of the journal are licensed to KSAM. Hence, a completed “Copyright Transfer Agreement” form should accompany any original material when it is first submitted to JBE. Once a manuscript is accepted, KSAM asserts its copyright and applies it to an open access policy. Articles may be reproduced and distributed only for non-commercial purposes, as detailed in the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0. In other words, through the Creative Commons license, KSAM allows others to reproduce and distribute the works it publishes, as long as the authors are properly attributed and the content is not plagiarized, misrepresented, or used for commercial purposes. Duplicate publications should not be represented as original publications; rather, JBE should be cited as the original site of publication. Apart from these misuses, anyone is free to read, download, copy, share, store, print, search, link, and crawl the full-text of the work.
Organization of the Manuscript
The manuscript should be organized in the following sequence.
Title and Authorship
Abstract and Keywords
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
Conflict of Interest
Acknowledgements (optional)
References
Appendix or Nomenclature (optional)
1. Title and Authorship
The title should communicate key information about the article’s content. The list of authors should include the full names and institutional affiliations of all the authors. The name of the corresponding author should be marked with an asterisk. The telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address of the corresponding author should be provided in a footnote.
2. Abstract and Keywords
The abstract should summarize the most important points from the text of the article. It should include the purpose of the research, a brief description of the experimental methods, a summary of the significant results, and major conclusions or implications of the findings for research or practice. The method and results should be presented as specifically as possible within the constraints of the word limit. The abstract must be no more 300 words. Five keywords should be listed for indexing purpose.
3. Introduction
The introduction should be used to review the published literature and issues related to the topic. A thorough introduction will help the reader recognize how the research contributes to the current knowledge in the subject area. Thus, the introduction should include a literature review, a description of the problem addressed by the study or the gap in current research findings, and the purpose of the study.
4. Materials and Methods
Information about materials and methods should be provided in enough detail to allow a competent researcher to repeat the experiments and verify the results. In the materials section, material preparation, specification of the materials, and equipment used in the experiments should be described. The source company of materials, equipment, and software should be stated parenthetically along with the model name, the city, the state or province, and country of the company. The experimental procedure and the data analysis methods should also be stated in this section.
5. Results and Discussion
A solution to the problem stated in the introduction should be provided in the results and discussion section. Tables and figures are commonly used to visually show the results. Rather than restating the entire content of tables and figures, only the critical data can be restated in the text to emphasize evidence on which the conclusions are based. The data should also be interpreted in this section. Because the results and discussion are combined, the author may choose to address each finding and then discuss it before moving on to the next point, or present the results followed by the discussion. The discussion should include a comparison with previous findings by identifying how and why there are differences and where there is agreement. Any limitations of the study should be addressed.
6. Conclusions
The main findings of the research should be summarized in the conclusions section. This section should not contain extensive repetition of the Results and Discussion section or reiteration of the Introduction section.
7. Conflict of Interest
The author(s) of the manuscript should mention any potential conflicts of interest related to the paper. If there are none, the following statement may be used: “The authors have no conflicting financial or other interests.”.
8. Acknowledgments
The sources of financial or material support can be listed in the acknowledgements section. Also, any individuals whose contributions were significant but not deserving of authorship should be described.
9. References
There must be a text citation for each reference and vice versa. The required method for giving references in the text is the last name-publication year system as in Kim (1966) or (Kim, 1974), depending on whether the author is mentioned in the sentence or not. For two authors, the format of Kim and Smith (1976) or (Kim and Smith, 1976), and for three or more authors, Kim et al. (1966) or (Kim et al., 1966) should be used. When more than two references are cited for the same content, they should be arranged chronologically from oldest to most recent. The references cited in the text should be listed in the reference section in alphabetical order of the last name of the first author. The references published by the same author in the same year are indicated by placing a, b, and so on, next to the publication year (e.g. 1999a, 1999b, etc.).
The most common types of references are as follows:
1) Journal Article
Waladi, W., B. Partek and J. Manoosh. 1999. Regulating ammonia concentration in swine housing: Part II. Application examples. Transactions of the ASAE 43(4): 540-547.
Kim, H. J., J. W. Hummel and K. A. Sudduth. 2006. Sensing nitrate and potassium ions in soil extracts using ion-selective electrodes. Journal of Biosystems Engineering 31(6): 463-473.
2) Journal article not in English
Kim, Y. J., S. O. Chung, S. J. Park and C. H. Choi. 2011. Analysis of the power requirements of agricultural tractors by major field operation. Journal of Biosystems Engineering 36(2): 79-88 (In Korean, with English abstract).
3) Book
Allen, J. S. 1988. The Complete Dictionary of Abbreviations. New York: MacMillan & Sons Inc.
Coombs, T. R. and F. C. Watson. 1997. Computational Fluid Dynamics. 3rd ed. Wageningen, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science.
4) Part of a Book
ASAE Standards, 36th ed. 1989. S352.1: Moisture measurement: Grain and seeds. St. Joseph, MI: ASAE.
Sudduth, K.A., J.W. Hummel and S.J. Birrell. 1997. Sensors for site-specific management. In: The State of Site-specific Management for Agriculture, eds. F. J. Pierce and E. J. Sadler, pp. 183-210. Madison, WI: ASA-CSSA-SSSA.
5) Bulletin or Report
Centers for Disease Controal and Prevention. 2000. Infection vectors for E. coli and intervention strategies. CDC Reference No. 9923. Atlanta, GA.: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jesperson, D. 1995. United States fruit and vegetable harvest projections: 1996. USDA-1007. Washington, D.C.: GPO.
6) Conference proceedings
Anthony, W. S. 1998. Performance characteristics of cotton ginning machinery. ASAE Paper No. 981010. St. Joseph,MI: ASAE.
Lund, E.D., K.L. Collings, P.E. Drummond, C.D. Christy and V.I. Adamchuck. 2004. Managing pH variability with on-the-go pH mapping. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Precision Agriculture, pp. 120-132, Madison, WI: ASA-CSSA-SSSA.
7) Software
SAS. 1990. SAS User’s Guide: Statistics. Ver. 6a. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc.
SPSS. 2000. SigmaPlot for Windows. Ver. 3.2. Chicago, IL: SPSS, Inc.
8) Dissertation or Thesis
Campbell, M. D. 1991. The lower limit of soil water potential for potato growth. Unpublished PhD diss. Pullman, WA: Washington State University, Department of Agricultural Engineering.
Lawrence, D. J. 1992. Effect of tillage and crop rotation on soil nitrate and moisture. MS thesis. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University, Department of Soil Science.
9) Online Source
USDA. 1999. Wheat Production in the Upper Plains: 1998-1999. National Agricultural Statistics Database. Washington, D.C.: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Available at: www.nass.usda.gov.
NSC. 2001. Injury Facts Online. Itasca, IL: National Safety Council. Available at: www.nsc.org.
10) Patent
Moulton, R. K. 1992. Method for on-site cleaning of contaminant filters in livestock housing facilities. U.S. Patent No. 32455986.
Richarde, J. 1983. Process for protecting a fluid product and installations for the realization of that process. French Patent No. 2513087 (in French).
For additional reference information, refer to the rules used by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), available at http://www.asabe.org/media/59251/asabe_guide_for_authors.pdf
10. Appendix or Nomenclature
This optional section can include lists of nomenclature or abbreviations, data, or tables that are too long to include in the body of the article.
Format and Style of Manuscript
Formatting may be simplified by using the downloadable template available at http://www.jbeng.org.
1. General Style
Manuscripts must be 1.5-line-spaced on a recent version of a word processor such as Microsoft Word or Hancom Hanword. Line numbers and page numbers should be included on each page, including the title page. The manuscript should be typed in English in Times New Roman font. The article title should be in bold 16-point font. Any first level headings should be in bold 14-point font with their first letter capitalized. Any second level headings should be in bold 12-point font with their first letter capitalized. Any third level headings should be in italic 12-point font, and the font of the text should be plain 12-point. All units of measurement should be expressed in SI (metric) units. A space should be left between the measurement and unit (e.g., 25 mm) but no space is needed for temperature degrees (e.g., 25°C) and percentages (e.g., 35%).
2. Tables
Tables should be used for reporting extensive numerical data in an organized manner. They should be self-explanatory. The data presented in the tables should neither be duplicated in figures nor discussed exhaustively in the text, but instead, only key findings should be highlighted and discussed. Each table should be specifically referenced and explained in the text. Tables should be placed within the main text. Table titles should be brief, but must sufficiently explain the data included. Tables should be consecutively numbered and referred to in the text as Table 1, Table 2, etc. Table titles should be located above the tables.
3. Figures
Figures, including graphs or charts, should be designed to improve the general presentation of technical information and should be of publishable quality. The type of charts or graphs should be chosen based on the key message the author wishes to deliver. Information on and explanation of the figures should be provided in the figure caption or in the text. Figures should be numbered consecutively in the text and referred to as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. The word “Figure” should be abbreviated when enclosed in parentheses (e.g., Fig. 1).
4. Equations
For new equations, all assumptions and initial boundary conditions should be stated, and a sufficient derivation should be provided for the reader to understand its development. Only those mathematical steps required for comprehension should be shown. All important equations should be displayed on separate lines with consecutive numbers enclosed in parentheses (1) and positioned at the right margin to facilitate their reference within the manuscript. |
