The Journal of Phytopathology and Plant Health (JPPH) publishes the results of scientific research and other information relevant to plant pathology and plant health, as articles, notes, disease reports, and special topics, including reviews. Articles are reports of research in any field of plant pathology / plant health and must be original new contributions to science. Notes may be brief reports of work that is largely confirmatory, or advances in knowledge arising as by-products of broader studies, or descriptions of research techniques or developments in instrumentation. Notes should normally not be longer than 15 manuscript pages (4 printed pages). Like articles, they should have an abstract and be divided into titled sections. Results and Discussion sections may be combined. Disease reports are brief, previously unpublished accounts of diseases occurring on a new host or geographic region. Special topics are invited papers on novel topics dealing with diseases, techniques, or emerging technologies in disease control. Reviews are focused and of general, current interest, but they provide a somewhat more comprehensive, although not exhaustive treatment. Reviews should contain a carefully selected bibliography; they are subject to the usual editorial process (see below). Normally, observational and experimental results will be considered as inappropriate if based upon a single experiment or only one season’s data. Scientific merit and originality are the two most desirable qualities of any paper. In addition, papers must be clearly and concisely written in good English and must be suitable for a readership interested in plant pathology and plant health. Papers will be published approximately one to two months after acceptance.

Electronic submission of manuscripts as e-mail attachment to the Editorial Office at: npphjournal@gmail.com and jpph.managingeditor@gmail.com is strongly encouraged, provided that the text, tables, and figures are included in a single Microsoft Word file (preferably in Arial font). A manuscript number will be mailed to the corresponding author same day or within 72 hours.

A covering letter should formally submit the paper for publication in the Journal and should confirm compliance with the requirements given below. The cover letter should include the corresponding author's full address and telephone/fax numbers and should be in an e-mail message sent to the Editor, with the file, whose name should begin with the first author's surname, as an attachment. Authors may suggest the names of two to four potential reviewers of the manuscript who are not in a conflict of interest (JPPH may designate other reviewers).  Authors are strongly encouraged to have their manuscript proofread by a colleague for grammar, style, and clarity before submission. Publication is facilitated if the authors very carefully check the symbols, abbreviations, and technical terms for accuracy, consistency, and readability. The Phytopathological Society of Nigeria maintains the right to preserve the technical quality of the Journal. The manuscript and illustrations must meet the requirements outlined below to avoid delay in publication.

Review Process

All manuscripts are reviewed by an editor and members of the Editorial Board or qualified outside reviewers. Decisions will be made as rapidly as possible, and the journal strives to return reviewers’ comments to authors within 3 weeks. Members of the editorial board will re-review manuscripts that are accepted pending revision. It is the goal of the JPPH to publish manuscripts within 6 weeks after acceptance.

The manuscript

Format and organization of text

All portions of the manuscript must be typed double-spaced and all pages numbered starting from the title page.

The title page of the manuscript should have only the title, the authors’ names with their respective affiliations (names and addresses not separated), and any necessary footnotes. The title must be clear, concise, and informative of the paper. When the common name of a disease appears in the title, it should be associated with the scientific name of the pathogen when possible, and the host should be specified when applicable. Contribution numbers from institutions should be inserted as footnotes to titles when required. The authors’ addresses must be the institution(s) where the work was done. All authors’ present addresses, if different, should be footnoted along with their e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers. The corresponding author must be indicated in a footnote.

Authorship recognition is reserved to individuals who were involved in the intellectual process. An author should have made a substantial contribution to the overall design and execution of experiments; therefore, all authors are considered equally responsible for the entire contents of the paper. Those who merely provided assistance such as strains or reagents, should be recognized in the Acknowledgements section.

Footnotes to the main text should be used only if unavoidable, but their use in tables is encouraged. In the text, footnotes should be designated by superscript Arabic numerals in serial order (for tables, see proper section). Each footnote should be placed at the bottom of the page where it is referred to.

An abstract of not more than 250 words, typed on a separate page, is required. Where possible, abbreviations should be avoided in the abstract.

Authors should provide at least 3 to 6 key words, after the abstract; these should include at least, if appropriate, the scientific name of the pathogen, with or without the common name of the disease, and the common name of the host for common crops or the scientific name for less common hosts or for more precision (e.g., species of Triticum or of Brassica).

A brief Introduction should provide the reader with an understanding of the context, significance, and objective(s) of the study.

Material and methods, figures, and footnotes to tables should be written so that others can repeat or extend the work being reported.

A Results section should summarize the principal findings and the logic used in reaching them.

The Discussion should emphasize overall conclusions, making a clear distinction between those supported by the data and those that are merely suggested by them. Speculation is permissible, but should be modest. If deemed more appropriate, the

Results and discussion may be combined under one heading, but the essential features of both should be retained. This format is encouraged for manuscripts submitted as a Note.

Equations must be set up clearly in type, triple-spaced. They should be identified by numbers in square brackets placed flush with the left margin. In the   text, authors are encouraged to include uniform resource locators (URLs) and digital object identifiers (DOIs) to enable readers to find material on the World Wide Web. URLs and DOIs for references cited should be placed after the reference in the reference list; other URLs and DOIs should be placed in context in the text.

References

The author is responsible for verifying each reference against the original article. Each reference must be cited in the text, using the surnames of the authors and the year; if there are three or more authors, the name of the first author is followed by et al. Depending on the sentence construction, the names may or may not be in parentheses, but the year always is; e.g., Green and Brown (1981) or (Green et al. 1969). Multiple references in the text are placed in alphabetical order, e.g., (Abbott 1975; Green et al. 1961, 2000). Please note the punctuation. References not uniquely identified by the authors’ names and year are distinguished by a letter of the alphabet, according to the order of mention in the text, e.g. (Green 1983a, 1983b; Green and Brown 1978a,1978b) for the text citation and in the reference list. The reference list must be double-spaced and placed after the Acknowledgements. References must be listed in alphabetical order according to the name of the first author and not numbered. References with the same first author are listed in the following order:

(1) Papers with one author only are listed first in chronological order, beginning with the earliest paper.

(2) Papers with dual authorship follow and are listed in alphabetical order by the last name of the second author.

(3) Papers with three or more authors appear after the dual authored papers and are arranged chronologically. When authors are numerous, at least 6 names followed by et al. (or the whole of 7 names) with initials should be provided, in a consistent fashion.

The journal encourages the inclusion of issue numbers, which should be placed in parentheses after the volume number. Uniform reference locators (URLs) or digital object identifiers (DOIs) are useful in locating references on the World Wide Web, and authors are encouraged to include these; they should be added to the reference in the reference list (see example below). Online-only citations are indicated as such by including "[online]" after the title. Authors' names within the reference list are presented in bold. References should follow the form used in current issues of the Journal; however, the following bibliographic citations illustrate the punctuation, style, and abbreviations for references:

Journal article

Banniza, S., and Vandenberg, A. 2003. The influence of plant injury on development of Mycosphaerella pinodes in field pea. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 25: 304–311.

Book

Stacey, G., and Keen, N.T. (Editors). 1996. Plant–microbe interactions. Chapman & Hall, New York.

Book chapter

Mandell, G.L., and Petri, W.A., Jr. 1996. Antimicrobial agents: penicillins, cephalosporins, and other â-lactam antibiotics.                        InGoodman and Gilman's. The pharmacological basis of therapeutics. 9th ed. Edited by J.G. Hardman and L.E. Limbird. McGraw Hill, New York. pp. 1073–1101.

Paper in conference proceedings

Ridout, C.J., and Brown, J.K.M. 1996. Fine-scale mapping of the avirulence gene Avr_a12in the barley pathogen Erysiphe graminis f. sp. hordei. In Proceedings of the 9th European and Mediterranean Cereal Rusts and Powdery Mildews Conference. 2–6 Sept. 1996, Lunteren, Netherlands. European and Mediterranean Cereal Rust Foundation, Wageningen. p. 66.

Software user's guide

SAS Institute Inc. 2000. SAS/STAT user's guide. Version 8.1 [computer program]. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, N.C.

Electronic citations

Jablonski, S. 1999. Online multiple congenital anomaly/mental retardation (MCA/MR) syndromes [online]. US National Library of Medicine, Medical Subject Headings Section. Available from http://ccnrc.gc.ca/cjrs/rs3-05.html [accessed 9 September 2005].

Please ensure that any http addresses provided in an online citation are

Functional and that they bring the user directly to the document in

question when possible.

Abstracts, theses or dissertations, and papers in press are all allowed in the reference list, as exemplified below:

DeYoung, R.M., Copeman, R.J., Muehlchen, A.M., Lapp, M.S., and Dunstan, D.I. 1988. Erwinia spp. cause galls on Douglas fir

in coastal British Columbia. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 10: 361. [Abstr.]

Landry, P., Thompson, D., and Perreault, J.-P. 2004. The role of viroids in gene silencing: the model case of Peach latent mosaic viroid. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 26. In press.

Wang, I.K. 1991. 6-Methylsalicylic acid polyketide synthetase: enzyme purification and gene cloning. Ph.D. thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alta.

Unpublished reports can be included in the reference list if a full address where a copy can be obtained or a Web site is given; otherwise, they are footnoted at the first mention in the main text, with a call for footnote at subsequent mentions. Citation in text of unpublished manuscripts (in preparation, to be published, submitted but not accepted yet) should provide the name and initials of all authors involved.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations, including acronyms, should be defined at first mention in the abstracts and text; they should be restricted to frequent occurrences (three or more), except for well established ones (e.g., RNA).

Proofs and Reprints: Electronic proofs will be sent (e-mail attachment) to the corresponding author as a PDF file.  Page proofs are considered to be the final version of the manuscript. With the exception of typographical or minor clerical errors, no changes will be made in the manuscript at the proof stage. 

Copyright: Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, or thesis) that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher.

Fees and Charges: Authors are required to pay a N5000 handling fee and upon acceptance the publication fees of N15,000 will be charged per manuscript. However, extra fees of N1000 per page in excess of 5 pages will be charged. Final letters of acceptance are given only after payment. Manuscript, prepared as detailed above should be sent electronically to the Editor-in-Chief (npphjournal@gmail.com) and the Managing Editor (jpph.managingeditor@gmail.com). Invited papers will have a reduced page charge

Advertisement can be obtained from the Editorial Office at: npphjournal@gmail.com.

Dr. (Mrs) O. S. Adebayo

Programme Head,

Spices Research Programme
National Horticultural Research Institute
P.M.B 5432. Idi Ishin, Ibadan,

Oyo State, Nigeria
Phone (cell) +234 8055308025
Home +234 02 8713014
Office +234 02 2412501: 2412230

E-mail: akinboade2005@yahoo.com