AUTHOR GUIDELINES

A. POLICY

1. Authorship

• The award of authorship should balance intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis and writing of the study against the collection of data and other routine work. If there is no task that can reasonably be attributed to a particular individual, then that individual should not be credited with authorship.

• To avoid disputes over attribution of academic credit, it is helpful to decide early on in the planning of a research project who will be credited as authors, as contributors, and who will be acknowledged.

• All authors must take public responsibility for the content of their paper. The multidisciplinary nature of much research can make this difficult, but this can be resolved by the disclosure of individual contributions.

2. Redundant Publication

• Published studies do not need to be repeated unless further confirmation is required.

• Previous publication of an abstract during the proceedings of meetings does not preclude subsequent submission for publication, but full disclosure should be made at the time of submission.

• Publication of the same data two (or more) times in primary journals is a clear violation of scientific ethics.

3. Study Design

Good research should be well justified, well planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved.

• Research protocols should seek to answer specific questions, rather than just collect data.

• Protocols must be carefully agreed by all contributors and collaborators, including, if appropriate, the participants.

• The final protocol should form part of the research record.

• Early agreement on the precise roles of the contributors and collaborators, and on matters of authorship and publication, is advised.

• Statistical issues should be considered early in study design, including power calculations, to ensure there are neither too few nor too many participants.

4. Peer reviews

Peer reviewers are experts chosen by editors to provide written opinions, with the aim of improving the study.

• Suggestions from authors as to who might act as reviewers are often useful, but there should be no obligation on editors to use those suggested.

• The duty of confidentiality in the assessment of a manuscript must be maintained by expert reviewers, and this extends to reviewers' colleagues who may be asked (with the editor's permission) to give opinions on specific sections.

• The submitted manuscript should not be retained or copied.

• Reviewers and editors should not make any use of the data, arguments, or interpretations, unless they have the authors' permission.

• Reviewers should provide speedy, accurate, courteous, unbiased and justifiable reports.

• If reviewers suspect misconduct, they should write in confidence to the editor.

• Journal/Proceeding should publish accurate descriptions of their peer review, selection, and appeals processes.

• Journal/Proceeding should also provide regular audits of their acceptance rates and publication times.

5. Plagiarism

Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others' published and unpublished ideas, including research grant applications to submission under "new" authorship of a complete paper, sometimes in a different language.

It may occur at any stage of planning, research, writing, or publication: it applies to print and electronic versions.

• All sources should be disclosed, and if large amounts of other people's written or illustrative material is to be used, permission must be sought.

6. Data Analysis

Data should be appropriately analysed, but inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.

• All sources and methods used to obtain and analyse data, including any electronic pre-processing, should be fully disclosed; detailed explanations should be provided for any exclusions.

• Methods of analysis must be explained in detail, and referenced, if they are not in common use.

• The post hoc analysis of subgroups is acceptable, as long as this is disclosed. Failure to disclose that the analysis was post hoc is unacceptable.

• The discussion section of a paper should mention any issues of bias which have been considered, and explain how they have been dealt with in the design and interpretation of the study.

7. Confidentially

Manuscripts should be reviewed with due respect for authors' confidentiality. In submitting their manuscripts for review, authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work and creative effort, on which their reputation and career may depend. Authors' rights may be violated by disclosure of the confidential details of the review of their manuscript. Reviewers also have rights to confidentiality, which must be respected by the editor. Confidentiality may have to be breached if dishonesty or fraud is alleged but otherwise must be honored. Editors should not disclose information about manuscripts (including their receipt, their content, their status in the reviewing process, their criticism by reviewers, or their ultimate fate) to anyone other than the authors themselves and reviewers. Editors should make clear to their reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and are the private property of the authors. Therefore, reviewers and members of the editorial staff should respect the authors' rights by not publicly discussing the authors' work or appropriating their ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewer s should not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files and should be prohibited from sharing it with others, except with the permission of the editor. Editors should not keep copies of rejected manuscripts. Reviewers should remain anonymous. Comments returned to authors need not be signed. When comments are not signed the reviewers' identity must not be revealed to the author or anyone else. Reviewers' comments may be sent to other reviewers of the same manuscript, and reviewers may be notified of the editor's decision.

B. MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION

1. Submission of manuscripts

Email a copy of the manuscript to mcj@koko.gov.my

DR. ZAINAL BIN BAHARUM

Editor in Chief

Malaysian Cocoa Journal

Each submission will be considered by a member of the Editorial team to determine whether it lies within the scope of the Journal/Proceeding. Those that do will be assigned to a handling editor or sent out for full review. Those that do not will be returned to the authors quickly for revision or resubmission. If accepted, papers become the copyright of the Journal/Proceeding. All queries should be directed to the Editorial office at the address given above.

2. Submission of revised manuscripts

In cases, where the Editors recommend submission of a revised manuscript, a copy of the original manuscripts and figures are normally kept by the Editorial Office, ready for receipt of the revised manuscript. Revised manuscripts must be in their final form when submitted.

3. Photograph/electronic artwork

For submission of photographs to be published in the Journal/Proceeding, please send good quality originals. Photographs will normally be published in black and white. In the case that the authors want the photographs to be published in colour, request can be made to the Editorial Board. However, the final decision rest with the Chief Editor as the cost of printing in colour is expensive. For electronic artwork, please send your image file in TIFF or EPS format instead of JPEG. This is because the more often a JPEG image is amended or compressed, the more detail is lost from the final image. If you are only able to send in JPEG files, please make sure that they are saved at the highest possible quality setting that is minimum compression.

4. Proofs

The proofs are for correction of typographical errors only. They should not be used for final changes to articles; such changes must be made to the manuscripts before it goes to the printers.

C. INSTRUCTION TO AUTHORS

1. SCOPE

1.1 Type of papers

Original scientific contributions dealing with cocoa, cocoa products and byproducts as well as articles dealing with cocoa extension, licensing, marketing and other activities relating to the cocoa industry.

1.2 Layout of papers

Full papers, figures, and tables must be typed single spacing on A4 paper (21.0 cm x 29.7 cm) with margins of at least 4 cm on the left, 2 cm on the right, 4 cm on the top and 4 cm at the bottom.

1.3 Length of paper

1.3.1 Abstract

Each full paper (research) must include an informative summary no exceeding 250 words. It should contain all essential information regarding objectives, materials and methods, results and conclusions, but excluding figures, sectional headings, tables and references.

1.3.2 Key words

A maximum of 6 key words in alphabetical orders are to be listed.

1.3.3 Full paper

No full paper should exceed 6,000 words (except for review papers), figures and graphs. Each table, figure or graph is considered being equal to the number of words, which could have been typed in the equivalent space. Papers are considered to have been submitted in the final form after they have been fully checked for typographical and other errors.

1.3.4 Font

Manuscripts are to written using Times New Romans, font size 10.

1.4 Language

The full paper should be in English.

2. TITLE

The title of each full paper should be in capital letters, bold and should be followed by the names and full mailing address(es) of author(s), including postal codes, in lower case. It should be as short as possible and adequately reflect the contents of the paper.

The title of each paper must be identical to the title of the summary and remain unchanged.

3. SECTIONAL HEADINGS

A paper which reports the results of research should be divided into the following sections:

(i) Abstract,

(ii) Introduction,

(iii) Materials and Methods,

(iv) Results,

(v) Discussions,

(vi) Conclusions,

(vii) Acknowledgements and

(viii) References.

The author may omit one or more sections if not applicable e.g. a preliminary report on a research project which has not yet been concluded, need not include a section on Conclusions. Sectional headings should be centred and in capital letters and bold while subsections (first order headings) should begin in the margin and should be italics and bold while second-order subheadings should be spaced within the paragraph, e.g.

DISCUSSION

Foliage Production

Leaf number Variation in pod maturity exerted a significant effect on mean leaf per plant.

4. FOOTNOTES

Footnotes in the text should be avoided as much as possible. When they are necessary they should be inserted at the bottom of the appropriate page and separated from the text by a horizontal line.

5. NAMES

5.1 Scientific names

Scientific names in Latin should be italicized, e.g. Theobroma cacao L. Scientific names should always be supplied along with any more common names used except for well-known cases. If the scientific name is repeated more than once, the generic name should be abbreviated and the authority’s name omitted, e.g. T. cacao. For plants developed by breeding, use “cultivar” rather than “variety”.

5.2 Trade names

When used, trade names for chemicals should be accompanied by their active ingredients.

6. UNITS OF MEASUREMENT

Only units of measurement conforming to the metric system should be used but other units of measurement could be inserted in parenthesis.

7. ABBREVIATIONS

Authors should use standard abbreviations and symbols for units of measurement.

e.g.:

Km	kilometer	Ha	Hectare
G	Gram	Ml	Millilitters
J	Joule	Lx	Lux

8. ILLUSTRATIONS

8.1 Line drawings and graphs

These must be drawn with black ink on white or light-blue tracing paper or faint blue-lined graph paper. Lettering should be in black ink except for the legends (titles), which should be typed on a separate sheet.

8.2 Photographs

Please send good quality originals. Photographs will normally be published in black and white. In the case that the authors want the photographs to be published in colour, request can be made to the Editorial Board. However, the final decision rest with the Chief Editor as the cost of printing in colour is expensive.

For electronic artwork, please send your image file in TIFF or EPS format instead of JPEG. This is because the more often a JPEG image is amended or compressed, the more detail is lost from the final image. If you are only able to send in JPEG files, please make sure that they are saved at the highest possible quality setting, that is minimum compression. Scale-marks should be added when necessary and prints should be trimmed to a minimum size, eliminating superfluous objects.

8.3 Size

The size of figures, graphs or line drawings and the lettering should be such that they can be reduced to a scale of say ¼ without loss of clarity and legibility. They should appear on one side of the page only. Excessively, large diagrams (more than 21.0 cm x 29.7 cm size) are not acceptable.

9. STATISTICS

In reporting analyses of data, place emphasis on the scientific results of interest. Statistical techniques should be used selected to make sufficient use of relevant data, but must be appropriate to the design of experiments or surveys. The experimental design must be clearly described.

10. TABLES

Tables should have descriptive headings which are sufficiently complete to permit their comprehension without requiring any reference to the text. Units of measurement should be at the top of the table or column.

Units, symbols or abbreviations in the table should agree with those used in the text.

Use a dash, -, when no observation was taken or was available and 0 for a zero reading or observation. Express values less than unity as 0.19 instead of 19.

11. LITERATURE CITATION

Refer in the text to author (year) or (author, year). When papers are by more than two authors, all the names should be recorded on the first mention; thereafter further reference should be to first author et al.

In review papers only, where the list of works reviewed is extensive, the literature may be numbered and work cited by number in the text.

Bibliographic references should be well verified. Only those cited in the text should be included in the list of references. References should be listed in alphabetical order of authors’ names and in order of dates of publication in the case of an author with more than one reference.

When more than one reference is quoted for a given year by the same author, the letters a, b, c and so on should follow the year of publication, if possible in chronological order. References should contain the essential information that enables the reader to locate them.

11.1 Papers from Journals and Bulletins

Papers from journals and bulletins should be referred to as follows: (a) surname(s) and initials of author(s), (b) year of publication, (c) title of article, (d) name of journal or bulletin, (e) the volume and (f) page numbers, e.g.

Ampomah, A. (1987). The growth of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao L.) Trop. Hort. 100: 1-5.

Alpha, A. and Ensisi, B. (1983). Cocoa growth rhythms. Trop. Hort. 100: 11-17. 9

11.2 Proceedings from Symposia, Conferences, Workshops etc.

Papers from Proceedings of Symposia, Conferences, Workshops, etc. should also specify the name, venue and year of the Symposium, Conference or Workshop, e.g.

Ensisi, B. (1981). The growth of cocoa pod. Proc. 7th Int. Cocoa Res. Conf. Douala, 1979, 725-730.

11.3 Books

References to books should contain (a) the surname(s) of author(s) and initials, (b) year of publication in parenthesis, (c) the title of book italicized, (d) the edition and volume number if applicable, (e) place of publication and publishers, e.g.

Ensisi, B. (1983). Cacao. 4th ed. London. ABC Publishers.

11.4 Anonymous references

Anonymous references should be treated similarly to the above categories except that the word ANON shall replace the name of the author(s).

11.5 Other references

Articles that are “in press” may be listed only if they have been accepted for publication, and the name of the publication that has accepted them must be provided. Refer to unpublished data and personal communications parenthetically in the text, giving author’s initials as well as surname.