Instructions for Authors
Aim and scope
The Bulletin of Plant Breeding and Acclimatization Institute is an international journal publishing scientific papers in the field of knowledge about plants and plant production. The Bulletin of PBAI publish peer-reviewed articles: original scientific papers, short communications, and review papers, as well as (in the form of Supplements) conference materials and other studies not subject to scientific review.
Articles are published free of charge in English or and Polish languages.
Submission of an article requires a completed and signed copyright statement (more information in the " Authors Statement" section)
The Instruction is available as a PDF file at the bottom of this page.
Types of articles
Original scientific papers
Manuscripts of the preferred length of 5-16 pages (from c.a. 6 000 words) with any number of figures and tables are accepted. Continuously numbered lines starting from the second page are required. Articles may contain additional materials (tables, drawings, program codes, source data).
Short communications
The formal requirements for communications differ from the requirements for original scientific manuscripts, with the length of the manuscript limited to a maximum of 6 pages (approx. 3 000 words) and the limitation of the number of tables and figures to 2 pieces.
Review papers
Published review papers should reliably present the existing knowledge in a given field based on current Literature. The publication should be based mainly on original publications. However, using other review publications, scientific books, and unpublished authors' data is acceptable.
Review articles can be of any length; manuscripts up to 8 000 words are preferred (16 pages) with up to 100 references. In addition, a review article can contain any number of tables and figures.
Non-reviewed publications
The IHAR Bulletin also publishes non-peer-reviewed materials such as:
- Letters to Editor
- Notes and Memories
- Conference materials – in the form of a Supplement
Detailed guidelines for peer-reviewed papers
Preparation of manuscript
The manuscript should be prepared in a text editor (e.g., Ms Word) and saved in DOC, DOCX or RTF format. Line numbers should be added in continuous mode starting from the second page of the manuscript.
Articles must contain an Abstract (in English and Polish*) of up to 250 words (in English), and 5 keywords in English and Polish (***.
We require that table captions and legends for figures, as well as descriptions of captions and rows in tables and axes and legends in figures as well as the footnotes, are bilingual: in English and Polish (***.
We ask for a compact list of cited Literature, up to 60 items in original scientific papers, 30 in short communications, and 100 in review papers.
The text of a manuscript should be formatted as follows:
- Paper size: A4
- Margins: 2.5 cm on each side
- Font – Times New Roman, size 11 pt.
- A single column of text
- Text alignment – justified
- Leading: 1.15 – 1.5
- Bullets and numbering – in the text, we use only one form of bullets and two types of numbering – 1., 2., 3., …; or a), b), c), …
- Bold and centered may be used for chapter and subchapter titles
- Latin names are written in italics
The manuscript should have a specific layout (* (**:
- The first page should include:
- The names and surnames of the Authors, with the Corresponding Author marked by an asterisk. Authors are asked to provide their ORCID number, if available
- Authors' affiliations
- The second page should include:
- The title in English
- The title in Polish (***
- Abstract in English (up to 250 words in English)
- keywords in English (in alphabetical order)
- abstract in Polish (***
- keywords in Polish (*** (in alphabetical order)
- On the following pages of the manuscript, the text should be organized in the usual layout:
- Introduction (should include a preface, description of the current state of knowledge on a given topic, and definition of the research goals. The Introduction should be structured in parallel to the order of the presented Results and the Discussion)
- Material and methods (the description of the Methods should enable the experiment to be repeated; in the case of statistical evaluation of the results, the data should come from at least three replicates)
- Results, including tables and figures). Tables and figures should be placed in the text in the closest possible place after their first reference in the text
- Discussion of obtained results on the background of literature data
(Optional: Results and Discussion can be put into one section)
- Conclusions (resulting from the presented research results)
- References (a list of publications cited should be up to about 60 items)
(* – In the case of short communications – the Discussion can be omitted, the Conclusions can be replaced with a Summary, and the References should count up to 30 items.
(** – In the case of review papers – the manuscript layout is proposed by the Author(s) relevant to the topic presented. References should include up to 100 items.
(*** – The Editorial Board may handle the translation for foreign Authors leaving the obligation to introduce changes to Authors.
Tables
Tables should be prepared in a text editor (e.g., MS Word) and included in the manuscript as soon as possible after the first reference to the table. The number and title of the table in English and Polish (*** should be placed separately before the table. The table's width should not exceed the horizontal dimensions of an A4 page (using Times New Roman font with the size of 10 points). It is allowed to merge cells in the table.
The editors reserve the right to divide the table if necessary, during editing and typesetting.
Figures and graphs
Figures and graphs included in the manuscript should be legible and of good quality (300 dpi or higher). The font size on the figure target format should be at least 8 points. Please include the drawings in the manuscript (below the first reference in the text) and as graphic files in BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF, or JPEG formats. Charts prepared in the MS Excel spreadsheet may be attached as an Excel file (XLS or XLSX) along with the source data. Figures and graphs can be drawn in color.
Equations and mathematical formulas
Equations and mathematical formulas should be submitted in plain text or using Microsoft equation editors – the default editor of MS Office or Microsoft Equation.
Citations and Literature
Citing Literature in the text of the work and creating a list of references should be made under the APA 7th Ed. (https://citationsy.com/styles/apa) or Elsevier-Harvard (with titles) (https://citationsy.com/styles/elsevier-harvard) standards.
Authors Statement
When submitting an article to the Bulletin of PBAI, Authors should submit a copyright statement. The declaration form is available in the download files. The completed and signed statement should be submitted in an electronic version (scan) to the journal's OJS system together with the article's manuscript.