Printed copy of the instructions, download here
Icelandic Agricultural Sciences
(Icel. Agric. Sci.) that until 2002 also was named Búvísindi, is published annually, or more frequently.
The journal is in English and is refereed and distributed internationally. The journal is sent to all major agricultural university libraries and is since 2009 it is listed as an ISI journal in the Thomson database.
IAS publishes Original articles, Reviews, Short communications and Letters to the Editor written by researchers throughout the world on any aspect of applied life sciences that are relevant under boreal, alpine, arctic or subarctic conditions. Relevant subjects include e.g. any kind of environmental research, farming, breeding and diseases of plants and animals, hunting and fisheries, food science, forestry, soil conservation, ecology of managed and natural ecosystems, geothermal ecology, etc.
Original research articles must cover new and original research that has not been published before in a medium with peer reviewing and after publication in IAS will not be republished elsewhere. They should generally not exceed 12 printed pages, or ca. 5.000 words + tables and figures.
Short communications focus on studies with more limited coverage than original articles, unique observations or research techniques. The absolute maximum length is 4 printed pages, or ca. 2000 words. Short communications do not need an abstract.
Review articles should generally not exceed 15 printed pages or ca. 7.000 words + tables and figures. Letters to the Editor are reserved for comments on articles published in the journal and are not reviewed except for necessary language corrections. They should not exceed one printed page or ca. 450 words.
Publication charges.
Publication charges. Original articles or review articles not exceeding 12 or 15 printed pages, respectively, are free of charge. For additional pages the authors will be charged 100 € per each additional page. Supplements that may be provided with an article shall be made available on our homepage and will be charged 50€ per page.
Manuscript submission.
Authors submitting a paper do so on the understanding that the work has not been published before, is not considered for publication elsewhere and has been read and approved by all authors.
Send manuscript as electronic files in Word format to the editor-in-chief (editor@ias.is).
Please, give names and e-mail addresses of 4-6 possible reviewers in the same field of research as the submitted manuscript. Editor may or may not choose to accept those proposals.
When the manuscript has been reviewed and found acceptable to publication in IAS, you will have the possibility to improve your text and then send it back to the editor.
Preparation of manuscripts.
Manuscripts should be prepared in Word using A4 size page format, with 2.5 cm margins and 1.5 line spacing.
Text should be in Times New Roman, font size 12 and left justified. Tables should use font size 10. Figures and tables should be located at the end of the manuscript.
Please use the following simple guidelines when preparing your electronic manuscript::
1. Please be consistent. The same elements should be keyed in exactly the same way throughout the manuscript.
2. Do not break words at the end of lines. Use a hyphen only to hyphenate compound words.
3. Enter only one space after the full-stop at the end of a sentence.
4. When emphasising words, please use the italic feature of your word processor software.
5. Do not justify your text, use a ragged right-hand margin.
6. Do not use the lowercase l for 1 (one) or the uppercase O for 0 (zero).
7. The space bar should only be used as a word separator. Use TAB when indenting paragraphs or separating columns in tables.
8. Writing dates: 13 May, not 13th of May or May 13.
9. When referring to tables or figures in text start the word with capitals: Table 1, Figure 2, Equation 3.
Manuscripts should be in correct English and consist of:
Title which should be concise and informative but as short as possible. Include also a short running title at the top of the first page.
Authors’ names and name(s) and addresses of department(s)/institution(s) to which the work is attributed. Include the e-mail addresses of all authors.
Abstract, English and Icelandic “Yfirlit”, should not exceed 150 words each. Non-Icelandic speaking authors will get help from the editor with translation to “Yfirlit”.
Keywords in alphabetical order, up to 6 words, preferably not used in the title.
Text should normally be divided into: Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References.
Use capitals in first headings, use italic in second heading (and title of Icelandic “Yfirlit”) and use bold and italic in third headings, if needed.
The Introduction should provide a general orientation of the subject and present reasons for and aims of the study and be concisely written. Text references should be written: Smith & Jones (1988) or Hansson et al. (1990).
Materials and methods must provide sufficient information to permit exact replication of experimental work or statistical analysis.
Results should be clear, concise, and as objective as possible. No discussion of the results is permitted in this section.
Discussion should not repeat results, but in a logical way interpret the main results with reference to relevant figures, tables and references.
The Discussion should be concisely written and as brief as possible. A separate chapter of Conclusions may be used.
Abbreviations, numberical symbols and style.
1. Use only international standard abbreviations, according to the guidelines from Caltec Library Service (http://library.caltech.edu/reference/abbreviations/).
2. In decimals, use the decimal point, not the comma (use comma in Icelandic “Yfirlit”).
3. When presenting units, do not use slash (t/ha year), use negative exponents (t DM ha-1 year-1). DM = dry mass.
4. When presenting concentrations, quantitative units (e.g. mg N g-1 DM) are preferred to relative units (e.g. % N).
5. Use no Roman numerals.
6. Foreign words, Latin names of genera, species, mathematical symbols, etc. should be italicized. Personal names after Latin names should not be italicized.
7. Indicate the Latin binomial and authority names of species when they are first mentioned in the text, but not in the title or the abstract.
References should be kept to a pertinent minimum. Primary publications in English are recommended. In the text, references are identified by the name(s) of the author(s) with the year of publication in parenthesis. If both are in parenthesis, no punctuation separates the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication. Consecutive citations in the text are placed in chronological order and separated by commas. If there are two authors the names are separated with the symbol &. If there are more than two authors, only the first author’s name is given, and this is followed by the phrase et al., which should not be in italic (e.g. Kramer 1986, Day et al. 2002). Do not cite web-addresses directly in the text, instead use the name of the responsible institute and year and enter the web-based reference in the reference list.
The reference list should be arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the first author, see examples below. Titles of articles in other languages than English, French or German should be translated to English in brackets and the language of the original source should be indicated in brackets at the end of the reference. Names of authors and publication year should be in bold, separating authors with commas but apart from that without commas or dots. Name of journal or books should be italicized.