African Journal of Parasitology, Mycology and Entomology

Covering letter

A covering letter should be signed by all contributors, state previous submissions (if any) and clearly indicate that the manuscript is not submitted elsewhere and will not be submitted elsewhere as long as it is under consideration by AJPME. Authors must disclose any conflicts of interest.

1. Type of papers

1.1 Original Article

These include original findings that have not been published in any other journal before. Original papers should be up to 7,500 words long and contain no more than 7 figures and/or tables. The manuscript should be structured with Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion.

1.2 Short Report

Short Research Articles are original findings that can be reported in up to 2500 words and 3 figures and/or tables. There should be no more than 15 references.

1.3 Short communications

These are urgent communications of original and important preliminary results that are of high interest and likely to have a significant impact on one of the fields covered by the Journal. There should be no more than 2000 words, up to 2 figures/Tables and a maximum of 7 references. 

1.4 Review article

Review articles should cover subjects falling within the scope of the journal which are of active current interest. They may be submitted or invited by the Editor in Chief. Review articles should include insightful recommendations for future directions needed for achieving public health impacts. They should be no less than 40 references. Review articles are limited to 10,000 words per article. Authors should not limit their reviews to their own publications.

1.5 Systematic Reviews

Systematic Reviews should be based on medical interventions or animal studies. Authors should adhere to the PRISMA guidelines (http://www.prisma-statement.org) for reporting their Systematic Reviews, which should be up to 15,000 words long, include 50-150 references and up to 5 figures and/or tables.

1.6 Commentary

This will be an opinion-based article on an issue of broad interest yet within the scope of AJPME, which is intended to engender discussion. The Commentary should be up to 2,500 words long plus one or two figures/tables.

1.7 Case reports / Case studies

Case reports describe patient cases which are of particular interest due to their novelty and their potential impact on clinical practice. Case Reports should have a word limit of 2000 words, 15 references and up to 3 figures/pictures.

1.8 Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor should be short and with reference to a specific article or subject that has been recently discussed in previous issues.  Letters to the Editor are limited to 2,000 words per article (all text excluding tables and figure legends). A letter can have no more than eight references and one figure or table.

2. Preparation of the Manuscript

Original Articles and Short Reports should be divided into sections with the headings: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References, Tables, Figures, Figure legends, Acknowledgment, Competing Interests, Authors’ contributions, Consent (where applicable), Ethical approval (where applicable). Subsections should be numbered (for example 2.1 (then 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.2, etc.), up to three levels (only research paper).

Case Reports should follow the structure of Abstract, Introduction, Presentation of Case, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, Competing Interests, Authors’ contributions, Consent (where applicable), Ethical approval (where applicable), and References plus figures and/or tables. Abstracts (not more than 150 words) of the Case Reports should be structured.

Review papers may have different headings of the sections and are exempted from following these restrictions. 

Use double spacing throughout. Number pages consecutively, beginning with the title page.

2.1 Title Page

The title page should have:

1. Type of manuscript (e.g. Original Article, Case Report)
2. The title of the article, which should be concise, but informative;
3. Running title or short title not more than 50 characters;
4. The name by which each contributor is known (Last name, First name and initials of middle name), with his or her highest academic degree(s) and institutional affiliation.
5. The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed;
6. The name, address, phone numbers, and e-mail address of the Corresponding author;
7. Total number of photographs and word counts separately for abstract and for the text (excluding the references and abstract);

2.2 Abstract Page

The second page should carry the full title of the manuscript and an abstract (of no more than 250 words for original articles, no more than 150 words for case reports, etc.). The abstract should be structured and state the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. No references should be cited in this part. Generally non-standard abbreviations should not be used, if necessary, they should be clearly defined in the abstract, at first use.

Below the abstract should be provided 3 to 6 keywords. Use of abbreviations should be avoided, only standard abbreviations, well known in the established area may be used, if appropriate. These keywords will be used for indexing.

2.3 Abbreviations

Non-standard abbreviations should be listed and full form of each abbreviation should be given in parentheses at first use in the text.

2.4 Introduction

Provide a factual background, clearly defined problem, proposed solution, a brief literature review and the scope and justification of the work done.  

2.5 Methods

The Methods section should include sufficient information to reproduce the study.

Study site(s)

Study period

Selection and Description of Participants

Describe your selection of the participants (patients or laboratory animals, including controls) clearly, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population. The guiding principle should be clarity about how and why a study was done in a particular way. 

Technical information

Identify the methods, apparatus (give the manufacturer's name and address in parentheses), and procedures in sufficient detail to allow other workers to reproduce the results. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods (see below); provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known; describe new or substantially modified methods. Identify precisely all drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dose(s), and route(s) of administration.

Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT Statement (Moher D, Schulz KF, Altman DG: The CONSORT Statement: Revised Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Reports of Parallel-Group Randomized Trials. Ann Intern Med. 2001;134:657-662, also available at http://www.consort-statement.org ).

Authors submitting review article should include a section describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data. These methods should also be summarized in the abstract.
 

Ethics

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participants (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) give informed consent for publication. Authors should remove participants' names from figures unless they have obtained informed consent from the patients.

No manuscripts will be peer-reviewed if a statement of patient consent is not presented during submission (wherever applicable). Journal editorial office may ask the copies of the consent documentation at any time. 

Statistics

When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Report losses to observation (such as dropouts from a clinical trial). Put a general description of methods in the Methods section. When data are summarized in the Results section, specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. For all P values include the exact value and not less than 0.05 or 0.001. P is always italicized and capitalized.
 

2.6 Results 

Results should be clear and concise. Present your results in logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations, giving the main or most important findings first. Do not repeat in the text all the data in the tables or illustrations; emphasize or summarize only important observations. Supplementary materials and technical detail can be uploaded separately. It is suggested that the description about the tables and figures should appear in the text before the appearance of the respective tables and figures.  
When data are summarized in the Results section, give numeric results not only as derivatives (for example, percentages) but also as the absolute numbers from which the derivatives were calculated, and specify the statistical methods used to analyze them. Restrict tables and figures to those needed to explain the argument of the paper and to assess its support. Use graphs as an alternative to tables with many entries; do not duplicate data in graphs and tables. 

Tables & Figures

Tables & figures should be placed inside the text. Tables and figures should be presented as per their appearance in the text. It is suggested that tables and figures should be mentioned in the text before the appearance of the respective tables and figures. No tables or figures should be given without a reference inside the text.

Tables should be explanatory enough to be understandable without any text reference. Double spacing should be maintained throughout the table, including table headings and footnotes. Table headings should be placed above the table. Footnotes should be placed below the table with superscript lowercase letters. 

Each figure should have a caption. The caption should be concise and typed separately, not on the figure area. Figures should be self-explanatory. Information presented in the figure should not be repeated in the table. All symbols and abbreviations used in the illustrations should be defined clearly. Figure legends should be given below the figures.

2.7 Discussion

The discussion should not repeat in detail data or other material given in the Introduction or the Results Section, but provide detailed interpretation of data. This should interpret the significance of the findings of the work. Citations should be given in support of the findings. Discussion should include a Summary of key findings but not in a repeated form as mentioned in the results chapter, Strengths and limitations of the study (study question, study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation); Interpretation and implications in the context of the totality of evidence. 

2.8 Conclusions

This should briefly state the major findings of the study.  

2.9 Acknowledgments 

A brief acknowledgment section may be given after the conclusion section just before the references. The acknowledgments of people who provided assistance in manuscript preparation, funding for research, etc. should be listed in this section. All sources of funding should be declared as an acknowledgment. Authors should declare the role of the funding agency, if any, in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state.

2.10 Competing Interests

Declaration of competing interest is compulsory. All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. 

2.11 Source of funding 

The authors should cite the origin and the type of the financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article; they should also briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, it is recommended to state so.

2.12 Authors contributions

Authors may use the following wording for this section: “‘Author A’ designed the study, performed the statistical analysis, wrote the protocol, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. ‘Author B’ and ‘Author C’ managed the analyses of the study. ‘Author C’ managed the literature searches…… All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

2.13 Reference style

References must be listed at the end of the manuscript. AJPME uses the American Society of Chemistry (ACS) referencing style. References in the text should be cited by superscript numbers numbered sequentially (as an example: …previously reported 1). If a reference is cited more than once, it does not receive a new number. When citing more than one reference at a time, include reference numbers in increasing order separated by commas (i.e. 1,3,5). For examples of citing various types of documents, please refer to https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsguide.40303

Nomenclature and Units 

Internationally accepted rules and the international system of units (SI) should be used. If other units are mentioned, please give their equivalent in SI.

For biological nomenclature, the conventions of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria, and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature should be followed.
Scientific names of all biological creatures (crops, plants, insects, birds, mammals, etc.) should be mentioned in parentheses at first use of their English term.

 Chemical nomenclature, as laid down in the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the official recommendations of the IUPAC-IUB Combined Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature should be followed. All biocides and other organic compounds must be identified by their Geneva names when first used in the text. Active ingredients of all formulations should be likewise identified.

Math formulae 

All equations referred to in the text should be numbered serially at the right-hand side in parentheses. Meaning of all symbols should be given immediately after the equation at first use. Instead of root signs, fractional powers should be used.
Subscripts and superscripts should be presented clearly. Variables should be presented in italics. Greek letters and non-Roman symbols should be described in the margin at their first use.

To avoid any misunderstanding zero (0) and the letter O, and one (1) and the letter l should be clearly differentiated.
For simple fractions use of the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line is recommended.
Levels of statistical significance such as: *P <0.05, **P <0.01 and ***P <0.001 do not require any further explanation.
 

3. Submission

Articles are submitted online at: http://www.ajpme.com . New authors will have to register as author, which is a simple two step procedure. Authors should submit a manuscript file including all relevant figures, tables, etc. except for supplementary material. Supplementary materials are uploaded as separate files.

3.1 First Page File 

Prepare the title page using a word processor program. All information which can reveal your identity should be here. Use Word or LaTex templates. Do not zip the files. Do not upload a PDF file.

3.2 Article file

The main text of the article, beginning from Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. Use Word or LaTex templates. Do not zip the files. Do not upload a PDF file.

3.3 Images

Submit good quality color images. Each image should be less than 400 kb in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep up to 1024x760 pixels or 5 inches). All image formats (jpeg, tiff, gif, bmp, png, eps, etc.) with high-resolution, 300 dpi images
are acceptable; jpeg is most suitable. 

3.4 Legends 

Legends for the figures/images should be appended to the relevant figure/images.

After submission, a manuscript number will be communicated to the corresponding author within 72 hours. For submission related problems or all other correspondence, please contact the editorial office.

4. Plagiarism

We do not accept any form of plagiarism. If plagiarism is suspected the course of actions will be as per the following COPE guideline https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/02A_Plagiarism_Submitted.pdf

5. Copyright and License

5.1  Submission of a manuscript clearly indicates that: 

The study has not been published before or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (except as an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis); its publication is permitted by all authors and after accepted for publication it will not be submitted for publication anywhere else, in English or in any other language, without the written approval of the copyright holder.

5.2 Copyright of any open-access article, published in this journal, is retained by the author(s), licensed as an open access article using a \href{https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/}{CC BY 4.0} license.

5.3 Submission of a manuscript clearly indicates that authors grant this journal a license to publish the article and identify the journal as the original publisher. 

The submitting author (corresponding author) is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors and after the publication of the paper author-dispute-related issues will not be entertained. It is also the corresponding authors' responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.

5.4 Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details, and publisher are identified.

5.5 The Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 formalizes these and other terms and conditions of publishing articles. 

5.6 Where an author is prevented from being the copyright holder (for instance in the case of US government employees or those of Commonwealth governments), minor variations may be required. In such cases, the copyright line and license statement in individual articles will be adjusted, for example to state ‘© 2016 Crown copyright’.

5.7 Authors requiring a variation of this type should inform the journal during or immediately after submission of their article. Changes to the copyright line cannot be made after the publication of an article.

5.8 Authors should mandatorily ensure that submission of a manuscript to this journal would result in no breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy.

6. Proofs

A PDF file of proof will be sent to the corresponding author as an e-mail attachment. Authors will be asked to check any typographical or minor clerical errors in the manuscript at this stage. No other major alteration in the manuscript is allowed. After publication authors can freely access the full text of the article as well as can download and print the PDF file.

7. Article processing charges 

Our articles are free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.

All accepted manuscripts will be published in English but submissions in French are welcome.

Publication fees for articles submitted in native English is Euro 600.

Publication fees for articles submitted in French is Euro 850.

Current members of the African Society for Parasitology (SoAP) will receive a discount of 15% of the publication fees. Evidence of SoAP membership obtained from the Tresurer of SoAP will be required to obtain the discount. To join SoAP and take advantage of these discounts, please contact SoAP Treasurer Prof. Therese Dieng (therese.dieng@ucad.edu.sn).  

8. Formating details