Pertanika accepts submission of mainly four types of manuscripts.  Each manuscript is classified as regular or original articles, short communications, reviews, and proposals for special issues.  Articles must be in English and they must be competently written and argued in clear and concise grammatical English.  Acceptable English usage and syntax are expected.  Do not use slang, jargon, or obscure abbreviations or phrasing.  Metric measurement is preferred; equivalent English measurement may be included in parentheses.  Always provide the complete form of an acronym/abbreviation the first time it is presented in the text. Contributors are strongly recommended to have the manuscript checked by a colleague with ample experience in writing English manuscripts or an English language editor.  Lingually hopeless manuscripts will be rejected straightaway (e.g., when the language is so poor that one cannot be sure of what the authors really mean).  This process, taken by authors before submission, will greatly facilitate reviewing, and thus publication if the content is acceptable.

The instructions for authors must be followed.  Manuscripts not adhering to the instructions will be returned for revision without review.  Authors should prepare manuscripts according to the guidelines of Pertanika.

1. Regular article
Definition: Full-length original empirical investigations, consisting of introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, conclusions.  Original work must provide references and an explanation on research findings that contain new and significant findings.

Size: Should not exceed 5000 words or 8-10 printed pages (excluding the abstract, references, tables and/or figures).  One printed page is roughly equivalent to 3 type-written pages.

2. Short communications
Definition: Significant new information to readers of the Journal in a short but complete form.  It is suitable for the publication of technical advance, bioinformatics or insightful findings of social and behavioural sciences as well as the humanities.

Size:  Should not exceed 2000 words or 4 printed pages, is intended for rapid publication. They are not intended for publishing preliminary results or to be a reduced version of Regular Papers or Rapid Papers.

3. Review article
Definition: Critical evaluation of materials about current research that had already been published by organizing, integrating, and evaluating previously published materials.  Re-analyses as meta-analysis and systemic reviews are encouraged.  Review articles should aim to provide systemic overviews, evaluations and interpretations of research in a given field.

Size: Should not exceed 4000 words or 7-8 printed pages.

4. Special issues
Definition: Usually papers from research presented at a conference, seminar, congress or a symposium.

Size: Should not exceed 5000 words or 8-10 printed pages.

5. Others
Definition: Brief reports, case studies, comments, Letters to the Editor, and replies on previously published articles may be considered.

Size: Should not exceed 2000 words or up to 4 printed pages.

With few exceptions, original manuscripts should not exceed the recommended length of 6 printed pages (about 18 typed pages, double-spaced and in 12-point font, tables and figures included).  Printing is expensive, and, for the Journal, postage doubles when an issue exceeds 80 pages.  You can understand then that there is little room for flexibility.

Long articles reduce the Journal's possibility to accept other high-quality contributions because of its 80-page restriction.  We would like to publish as many good studies as possible, not only a few lengthy ones.  (And, who reads overly long articles anyway?) Therefore, in our competition, short and concise manuscripts have a definite advantage.

Manuscript Format

The paper should be formatted in one column format with the figures at the end.  A maximum of eight keywords should be indicated below the abstract to describe the contents of the manuscript.  Leave a blank line between each paragraph and between each entry in the list of bibliographic references.  Tables should preferably be placed in the same electronic file as the text. Authors should consult a recent issue of the Journal for table layout. There is no need to spend time formatting your article so that the printout is visually attractive (e.g. by making headings bold or creating a page layout with figures), as most formatting instructions will be removed upon processing.

Manuscripts should be typewritten, typed on one side of the ISO A4 paper with at least 4cm margins and double spacing throughout.  Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc. should be numbered.  However, no reference should be made to page numbers in the text; if necessary, one may refer to sections.  Underline words that should be in italics, and do not underline any other words.

Authors are advised to use Times New Roman 12-point font.  Be especially careful when you are inserting special characters, as those inserted in different fonts may be replaced by different characters when converted to PDF files.  It is well known that 'µ' will be replaced by other characters when fonts such as 'Symbol' or 'Mincho' are used.

We recommend that authors prepare the text as a Microsoft Word file.  

1.

 Manuscripts in general should be organised in the following order:

Page 1: Running title.  Not to exceed 50 characters, counting letters and spaces.

Corresponding author.  Street address, telephone number (including extension), fax number and e-mail address for editorial correspondence.
Subject areas.  Most relevant to the study.  Select one or two subject areas from (refer to Referral Form A–attachment).
Number of black and white figures, colour figures and tables.  Figures submitted in color will be printed in colour at the authors' expense.  See "6. Figures & Photographs" for details of cost.

*

Page 2: Authors.  Full names, institutions and addresses

Abbreviations.  Define alphabetically, other than abbreviations that can be used without definition.  Words or phrases that are abbreviated in the introduction and following text should be written out in full the first time that they appear in the text, with each abbreviated form in parenthesis.
Footnotes.  Current addresses of authors if different from heading.

 Page 3: Abstract.  Less than 250 words for a Regular Paper, and up to 100 words for a Short Communication.

For papers submitted to Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science (JTAS) and Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology (JST), submissions should be made in English.  Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities (JSSH) accepts submissions in both English and Bahasa Melayu.  However, if the paper is submitted in Bahasa Melayu, an abstract in English should be provided by the author submitting the paper.
Keywords.  Not more than eight in alphabetical order.

Page 4 and subsequent pages: Text - Acknowledgments - References - Tables - Legends to figures - Figures.

2.

Authors' addresses.  Multiple authors with different addresses must indicate their respective addresses separately by superscript numbers:

George Swan¹ and Nayan Kanwal²

¹Department of Management, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, USA.

²Research Management Centre, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia.

3.

Text.  Regular Papers should be prepared with the headings Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions in this order.  Short Communications should be prepared according to "9. Short Communications." below.

4.

Tables.  All tables should be prepared in a form consistent with recent issues of Pertanika and should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals.  Explanatory material should be given in the table legends and footnotes.  Each table should be prepared on a separate page.  (Note that when a manuscript is accepted for publication, tables must be submitted as data - .doc, .rtf, Excel or PowerPoint file- because tables submitted as image data cannot be edited for publication.)

5.

Equations and Formulae.  These must be set up clearly and should be typed triple spaced.  Numbers identifying equations should be in square brackets and placed on the right margin of the text.

6.

Figures & Photographs.  Submit an original figure or photograph.  Line drawings must be clear, with high black and white contrast.  Each figure or photograph should be prepared on a separate sheet and numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals.  Appropriate sized numbers, letters and symbols should be used, no smaller than 2 mm in size after reduction to single column width (85 mm), 1.5-column width (120 mm) or full 2-column width (175 mm).  Failure to comply with these specifications will require new figures and delay in publication.  For electronic figures, create your figures using applications that are capable of preparing high resolution TIFF files acceptable for publication.  In general, we require 300 dpi or higher resolution for coloured and half-tone artwork and 1200 dpi or higher for line drawings.  For review, you may attach low-resolution figures, which are still clear enough for reviewing, to keep the file of the manuscript under 5 MB.  Illustrations will be produced at extra cost in colour at the discretion of the Publisher; the author will be charged Malaysian Ringgit 50 for each colour page.

7.

 For examples of references for each journal, please click here:

View references JTAS and JST

View references JSSH

8.

Short Communications should include Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions in this order. Headings should only be inserted for Materials and Methods.  The abstract should be up to 100 words, as stated above. Short Communications must be 5 printed pages or less, including all references, figures and tables.  References should be less than 30. A 5 page paper is usually approximately 3000 words plus four figures or tables (if each figure or table is less than 1/4 page).

*Authors should state the total number of words (including the Abstract) in the cover letter.  Manuscripts that do not fulfill these criteria will be rejected as Short Communications without review.