The manuscript should be prepared in British English using “MS Word” or similar word processing software. “Times New Roman” or similar font (size 12) should be used; single line spacing may be used.
Authors whose native language is not English are encouraged to ask colleagues familiar with the field of research and fluent in English (preferably a native speaker) to correct the language in the manuscript before submission. An article may be returned to the author without review if the language is not of an acceptable standard.
The author is also responsible for the correct usage of other languages, be it a Latin diagnosis or an abstract in a foreign language. The grammar of texts in foreign languages needs to be checked by the author before submission, and again after review if the English from which it is translated have changed. Latin scholars who are consulted for the correcting of diagnoses should be acknowledged.
Metric measures should be used. Special symbols can be used but need to be carefully checked by the author at the proof stage, because they may be altered due to incompatibility of files.
Hyphens ‘-’ are used to link words such as personal names, topographical names, some prefixes and compound adjectives.
En-dash ‘–’ (a dash the length of the letter ‘n’) should be used for ranges or spans. In the context of HARNESSING NATURE, it is mainly used for ranges of numbers, most frequently size ranges, elevation ranges, dates and page numbers.
Multiplication ‘×’. The multiplication sign × is not to be confused with the letter x.
Title: Centered, Bold font
Names of Author(s): Centered
Author affiliation needs to be given below author names in order of appearance. The relation between author listing and affiliation needs to be indicated as superscripted numbers to the right of the name in the author listing and to the left in affiliation.
The corresponding author should be highlighted using ‘*’ along with the contact email. Short biographies of each author along with their email ids and ORCIDs should preferably be given at the very end of the manuscript.
These details will be placed only in the author details file.
Reference: The journal uses the APA reference style.
About APA style
There are two parts to referencing: the citations within the text of your paper and the reference list at the end of your paper.
The APA referencing style is an “author-date” style, so the citation in the text consists of the author(s) and the year of publication given wholly or partly in round brackets.
Use only the surname of the author(s) followed by a comma and the year of publication. Include page, chapter or section numbers if you need to be specific, for example, if you are quoting, paraphrasing or summarising:
No distinction is made between books, journal articles, internet documents or other formats except for electronic documents that do not provide page numbers. In this case use the paragraph number, if available, with the abbreviation para.
The full details of the source are given in a reference list at the end of the document:
Reference list entries contain all the information that is required to follow up on your source. Reference lists in APA are arranged alphabetically by the author.
See Reference List Entries or All Examples for details on how to construct references for specific resources such as books, journals and web pages.
Tables and Figures: Tables need to have a title above the table and figures need to have a title below the figure.
Tables are numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and submitted separately from the text. They have a title and a footnote explaining any abbreviation used in that table. Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters. Double documentation of the same points in figures and tables is not acceptable.
Important: Obtain permission and include the acknowledgement required by the copyright holder if a figure is being reproduced from another source.
Save colour illustrations as RGB at max. 300 dpi (JPG or PNG preferred) which should be inserted in the manuscript file during submission and may be submitted separately after the manuscript is accepted for publication. All figures (photographs, illustrations or graphs) should be cited in the text, and numbered consecutively throughout (Fig. 1, etc.) and must be referred to in the text. Figure parts should be identified by upper-case roman letters (A, B, etc.), “I” or “O” are not used. Scale bars should be included in illustrations with measurements. Figure legends must be brief, self-sufficient explanations of the illustrations. The legends (if any) should be placed at the end of the text.
Image Raw Files
You may keep original raw files of the images with you and must submit them if requested. A raw file is an image as seen by the camera’s sensor. You may think of it as an unprocessed film. Depending on the camera setting, it may be saved as JPEG, TIFF or other formats. You may submit it as supplementary material or keep it with you for verification by the PST editors/reviewers.
Competing Interests
HARNESSING NATURE requires authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work. All submitted manuscripts must accompany a ‘competing interests’ statement listing all competing interests. Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests.
Declarations to be made regarding ethical issues
Manuscripts that deal with clinical findings should be enclosed with a statement on the informed consent of the patients under study.
If humans and animals are the subjects of a clinical study, it is essential for the study to have been carried out in accordance with the ethical standards of the country/countries where the research described in the article has been conducted. A declaration to that effect must accompany the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘acknowledgements’ section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Revision of a manuscript
Microsoft Word’s Track Changes enables the copy editor to make insertions (text appears in colour) and deletions (text appears crossed out in colour or in the margins as deleted). The copy editor can posit queries to both the author (Author Queries) and to the editor (Editor Queries) by inserting these queries in square brackets. The copyedited version is then uploaded, and the editor is notified. The editor then reviews the text and notifies the author. The editor and author should leave those changes with which they are satisfied. If further changes are necessary, the editor and author can make changes to the initial insertions or deletions, as well as make new insertions or deletions elsewhere in the text. Authors and editors should respond to each of the queries addressed to them, with responses placed inside the square brackets. After the text has been reviewed by the editor and author, the copy editor will make a final pass over the text accepting the changes in preparation for the layout and galley proof stage.
Copyright Notice
Copyright and Licence details of published articles
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Open Access Policy
HARNESSING NATURE is an open access magazine. There is no registration required to read any article. All published articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC Attribution 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Privacy Statement
The names and email addresses entered in this magazine will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.