Submission Guidelines

The Journal of Applied Science in Southern Africa (JASSA) is a multi-disciplinary science journal. It specializes in applied research that is important to and/or deals with matters specific to Southern Africa. There is a certain degree of flexibility in the choice of articles, in particular pure natural science articles are considered. The journal publishes reviews of science books written by regional authors and of books whose subject matter is particularly relevant to the main focus of the journal.

Scripts: Three copies must be supplied, typed, double-spaced, on one side of A4 paper only.  Also to supply UZP with an electronic copy of the article(s) in Microsoft Word, preferably in RTF (rich text format).

Layout and style: A simple direct style of writing is preferred. Spelling should conform to the Concise Oxford Dictionary or the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary.

Title page: The title should be informative but concise and should not contain abbreviations. It should contain one or two key works for indexing purposes and it should name the organism studied, where relevant. Authorities for Latin names should not be given in the title but may be given at first mention in the text. The full name and address of the institution where the research was done should be stated. Change of address may be given as a footnote.  Please indicate at the foot of the page the name and address to which proofs should be sent.

A summary/abstract: placed at the beginning of the text, should briefly indicate the experiments described (including year and place, as appropriate), the main results and most important conclusions. It should not repeat the wording of the title.

Text: It is usually convenient to divide the paper into sections, for example, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements and, finally, References. Too many headings and subheadings should be avoided. The Introduction should set the work in context, present only essential background, and include a concise statement of the objectives. A detailed review of the literature is not necessary. Relevant details of the experimental materials and design should be given in the section on Materials and Methods, together with the techniques and statistical methods used. Numerical results should be tabulated and not repeated in the text. Metric and SI units should be used. Footnotes should not be used.

Tables must be inserted in the text at the appropriate place. Numerical results should be displayed as means with their relevant standard error and the standard error given to one place of decimal more than the mean. The title should fully describe the contents of the table and explain any abbreviations used in it.

Figures should be restricted to the display of results where a large number of values are presented and where interpretation would be more difficult in a table. Figures must be inserted in the text at the appropriate place. The originals of the figures should preferably be A4 size, of good quality camera-ready copy. There should be no numbering or lettering on the originals. Numbering and lettering which must be kept to an absolute minimum, should be legibly inserted on the copies. Vertical axes should be labeled vertically. A full caption, describing the figure, should be typed immediately below the figure.

Plates may be accepted, but only if they make a definite contribution to the value of the article. They should be good quality, unmounted glossy prints and be lightly numbered in pencil on the reverse side. They should be numbered as part of the sequence of the figures.

References: In the text, a reference should be quoted by the author’s name and date in parentheses, in date order, e.g. (Smith, 1983; Jones and Jones, 1985; Smith, 1986a, b). Where there are three or more authors, the first name should be given, followed by et al. A list of references should be given at the end of the text, listing, in alphabetical order, surname of authors and initials (in small capitals), year of publication, title of paper, name of journal in full (underlined to denote italics) as in CAB International Serials Checklist, volume, and first and last pages of the reference; the place of publication and publisher (and Editor(s) if appropriate) for books and conferences should be included. Authors should check that all references in the text appear at the end of the paper and vice versa, and that the names and dates correspond in the two places. 

NB:  Always acknowledge all sources of material used.

Series: The Publishers do not wish to publish continuing series and will accept work divided into parts only if they consider it to be of advantage to the readers. In such cases, the whole work must be submitted at the same time. In general, the first part must include, in the introduction, the reasons for carrying out the whole work and the final part must end with a discussion of all the findings to show the progress made.   The decision to publish an article in two or more parts rests solely at the discretion of UZP and the Editors-in-Chief.

Proofs may be sent to authors to enable them to check the correctness of the typesetting.  Please make sure you indicate (on title page) the address to which proofs are to be sent for proof reading.

Plagiarism is a criminal offence punishable by either a jail term or a heavy fine.  Please ensure that you acknowledge, fully, all materials that is used and is from other published/copyrighted sources.  Such material includes both text and illustrations (tables, photos, art work, charts etc.).

The Publishers must be informed if any of the material submitted has been published elsewhere. If a paper is accepted, it must not be published elsewhere in the same form. Work based on limited experimentation will not generally be accepted. Work of local interest only is not considered appropriate for an international journal.

Books for review and articles for publication should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, JASSA, University of Zimbabwe Press, P O Box MP 203, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe, or you may submit your articles in person at the Publications Office at the address given below.

The Editor-in-Chief is always pleased to advise potential authors.

All articles submitted to UZP for JASSA must comply with these guidelines.  Failure to do so will result in the return of the manuscript and possible delay in publication.