Instruction for Authors

Essentials to ensure fast handling of Research papers

  1. Manuscript must be saved as PDF file. Continuous line numbering must be added and the text must be double spaced.
  2. Research papers must be no longer than 5500 words, including abstract, but without tables, figures, the corresponding legends and references.
  3. Abstracts must not be longer than 200 words.
  4. You must include Keywords (≤ 5).
  5. Contact details of at least 3 suggested reviewers (name, affiliation and email address) mustbe included.
  6. Highlights must be included (a summary of your main achievements in 3-5 bullet points no more than 85 characters each).
  7. Figures and tables must be placed at the end of the text.
  8. The international system of units (SI units) must be used only.
  9. If analytical data are reported in tables and/or figures: Number of replications should be mentioned in the legend or a footnote and standard error or other evidence of reliability of data must be given.
  10. Your Cover letter should explain the novelty of the research presented, that your paper presents original research, that it has not been published previously and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  • Please note that this list is not extensive and purely highlights the most important aspects of a submission.

Types of paper

Two types of peer-reviewed papers will be published:

  1. Review articles.

These concise reviews should present a focused aspect on a topic of current interest or an emerging field. They are not intended as comprehensive literature surveys covering all aspects of the topic, but should include all major findings and bring together reports from a number of sources. They should aim to give balanced, objective assessments by giving due reference to relevant published work, and not merely present the prejudices of individual authors or summarise only work carried out by the authors or by those with whom the authors agree. Undue speculation should also be avoided. These reviews will receive priority in publication.

The reviews may address pertinent issues in food science, technology, processing, nutritional aspects of raw and processed foods and may include nutraceuticals, functional foods, use of "omics" in food quality, food processing and preservation, and food production, food sustainability and food biotechnology.

Topics to be covered should be at the cutting edge of science, well thought out, succinct, focused and clear. Ideally, the review should provide a view of the state of the art and suggest possible future needs and trends. All articles will be subjected to peer review process.

  1. Research papers

Reports of complete, scientifically sound, original research which contributes new knowledge to its field. The paper must be organized as described in Article Structure below (Essentials to ensure fast handling of Research papers). Papers should not exceed 5500 words including abstract but without tables, figures, the corresponding legends and references. All lines and pages must be continuously numbered.

Article structure

Subdivision - numbered sections

Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.

Introduction

State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

Material and methods

Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarized, and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and also cite the source. Any modifications to existing methods should also be described.

Results
Results should be clear and concise.

Discussion

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Conclusions

The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Results and Discussion section.

Appendices
If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly, for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

Essential title page information

Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

Author names and affiliations. Please clearly indicate the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author and check that all names are accurately spelled. You can add your name between parentheses in your own script behind the English transliteration. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.

Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about Methodology and Materials. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author.

Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.

Highlights

Highlights are mandatory for this journal as they help increase the discoverability of your article via search engines. They consist of a short collection of bullet points that capture the novel results of your research as well as new methods that were used during the study (if any).

Highlights should be submitted in a separate editable file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point).

Abstract

A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Abstracts should not exceed 200 words for Research papers, or 300 words for Review articles.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 5 keywords, using British spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Acknowledgements

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Formatting of funding sources

List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements:

Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]

If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence:

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Units

Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other units are mentioned, please give their equivalent in SI.

Do not use %, ppm, M, N, etc. as units for concentrations. If analytical data are reported, replicate analyses must have been carried out and the number of replications must be stated.

Figure captions

Figures must be comprehensible without reference to the text. Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration.

Tables

Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Include a short but informative title. Provide the experimental conditions, as far as they are necessary for understanding. The reader should not have to refer to the text in order to understand the tables.

Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
If analytical data are reported, replicate analyses must have been carried out. State the number of replications and give standard error or other evidence of reliability of data.
Probabilities may be indicated by * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01 and *** P < 0.001.

References

Citation in text

Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

All citations in the text should refer to:

  • Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication (Smith, 2003);
  • Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication (Smith & Jones, 2004);
  • Three authors: all authors names and year of publication (Smith, Jones, & Brown, 2005). For all subsequent citations of this work use et al. (Smith et al., 2005).
  • Three or more authors: first author's name followed by et al. and the year of publication (Black et al., 2007).

Web references

As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

Preprint references

Where a preprint has subsequently become available as a peer-reviewed publication, the formal publication should be used as the reference. If there are preprints that are central to your work or that cover crucial developments in the topic, but are not yet formally published, these may be referenced. Preprints should be clearly marked as such, for example by including the word preprint, or the name of the preprint server, as part of the reference. The preprint DOI should also be provided.

References in a special issue

Please ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.

Reference style

List: references should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

Charles, A. P. R., Jin, T. Z., Mu, R., & Wu, Y. (2021). Electrohydrodynamic processing of natural polymers for active food packaging: A comprehensive review. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 20(6), 6027–6056.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number:

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2018). The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon, 19, Article e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00205.

Reference to a book:

Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style (4th ed.). Longman (Chapter 4).

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). E-Publishing Inc.

Reference to a website:

Powertech Systems. (2015). Lithium-ion vs lead-acid cost analysis. Retrieved from http://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion-vs-lead-acid-cost-analysis/. Accessed January 6, 2016

Reference to a conference paper or poster presentation:

Engle, E.K., Cash, T.F., & Jarry, J.L. (2009, November). The Body Image Behaviours Inventory-3: Development and validation of the Body Image Compulsive Actions and Body Image Avoidance Scales. Poster session presentation at the meeting of the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, New York, NY.

Reference to software:

Coon, E., Berndt, M., Jan, A., Svyatsky, D., Atchley, A., Kikinzon, E., Harp, D., Manzini, G., Shelef, E., Lipnikov, K., Garimella, R., Xu, C., Moulton, D., Karra, S., Painter, S., Jafarov, E., & Molins, S. (2020, March 25). Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS) v0.88 (Version 0.88). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3727209.

After acceptance

Online proof correction

To ensure a fast publication process of the article, we kindly ask authors to provide us with their proof corrections within two days. Corresponding authors will receive an e-mail with a link to our online proofing system, allowing annotation and correction of proofs online.

We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor.