Journal
of the
Professional Association for Cactus Development

Guidelines for Submitting Papers
to the Journal of the
Professional Association for Cactus Development

(Revised January 2008)

The Professional Association for Cactus Development (PACD) recognizes the valuable expertise of all its constituents—plant scientists, medical scientists, growers, ranchers, marketers, and chefs. Our goal is to foster meaningful dialogue among all aspects of development of the cactus industry. It is important for the growers to understand the needs of the buyers, for the scientists to understand the needs of the growers, and for the scientists to understand the relevance of market-driven economies in their research. The input of a CEO of a company processing and marketing cactus products is as valuable as that of a scientist. As the views of all these sectors are absolutely vital to the growth of the cactus industry, it is essential for our Journal (JPACD) to actively seek and publish the perspectives of both nonscientists and scientists involved with cactus.
Because the normal communication mode of the business, ranching, and culinary sectors is not that of a scientific paper and because both nonscientific and scientific inputs are very valuable to the body of knowledge for cactus, the JPACD will strive to include many types of knowledge, each in the format traditional to its individual professional discipline.
The editors will seek written contributions for inclusion in the JPACD from growers, marketers, legislators, and those involved in public policy. The editorial board will also review papers outside the scientific format for grammatical clarity and accuracy. The editorial board may request input from ranchers, chefs, and marketing specialists to verify the accuracy of nonscientific submissions.
The traditional mode of communication in science has been a refereed journal article with an introduction that briefly reviews the scientific literature, a materials and methods section, a results section, and a discussion section. Clearly, this mode of communication is essential to information exchange among scientists. Scientific papers will be peer reviewed in the normal process by a scientific editorial board using the traditional scientific review process.
The editors acknowledge that both field and laboratory data are vital to the development of our knowledge base for cactus. The editors also acknowledge the difficulty in field experiments with large perennial plants that may require many years to produce data. Cost factors in maintaining an adequate number of replications over long periods with wide spacing may be confounded with the necessity to conduct several types of experiments simultaneously. The editors will be sympathetic to these needs, and it will be the policy of our JPACD to be as helpful as possible to extract precious data from all experiments.
When submitting a manuscript to the JPACD please consider the following:
1. The JPACD is abstracted by the Institute for Scientific Information and in 2006 had an impact factor of 0.933.
2. There are no page charges
3. Beginning in 2008, the JPACD instituted the following four categories for contributions:
a. Full-length research papers of any length
b. Short communications/methods papers of 1 or 2 pages when printed
c. Reviews of the scientific literature of any length
d. Nonrefereed letters to the editor, news of general interest, or noteworthy articles from nonscientists
4. Manuscripts may be in English only, Spanish only, but with an abstract and titles of tables and figures in English, or in English and Spanish.
Because articles in English are more widely read than articles in Spanish, these English versions will be cited more frequently. The increased citations will increase the impact factor for both the scientist and the JPACD to the benefit of both. The JPACD recognizes that there are many nonscientists in Latin America who will find the articles in Spanish invaluable; therefore, the JPACD will continue to publish articles in English and Spanish.
To assist those who wish to have their manuscript in English but who are unable to write them in English the JPACD offers the following contact information. The JPACD will not become involved in any transactions or discussions between authors and translators and has no financial arrangement with any translation service.
Greg Linton, originally from Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies, with native language of English, and presently with Universidad Autonoma Chapingo, Mexico. lg-w@msn.com Cell: 01152-1-595-107-8227. Fee is Sixty Mexican pesos per page.
Rafael Martilotti, Quality English to Spanish translations in the field of Agriculture. Rate is: US$ 0,03 per source word. rafaelmartilotti@arnet.com.ar, Skype: raffmarti
5. It is generally recognized that the taxonomy of the fruit-bearing Opuntia is very difficult. To reduce ambiguities, the editors highly encourage authors preparing manuscripts to submit two color pictures of the major fruit types used in the study one-page, scalable file format. The first picture, at the top of the page, should be a photograph of the entire plant with a ruler to indicate scale. This picture should have sufficient detail to show approximate level of spininess, cladode morphology, and overall plant type. The second picture should have one uncut fruit and one half of a longitudinally cut fruit laid out on a nonreflective background with a metric ruler along side. This is to show the fruit size, external color, internal color, peel thickness, and seediness.
If the authors can find a photograph with similar characteristics as theirs, already published in the JPACD, they may cite that photograph in lieu of submitting their own photograph. Similarly, if they have previously submitted a photograph of the cactus that is the subject of a new paper, it will be sufficient only to cite the earlier photograph (See JPACD, Volume 9, 2007, p 60, for an example).
6. Statistics: Many international journals no longer accept multiple-range tests, such as Duncan’s or Tukey’s. The JPACD editors also look unfavorably upon tests which use pooled variances to test treatments and much prefer the reporting of means and 95% confidence intervals of the individual treatments (not pooled), such as can be obtained from Excel.
7. An editable electronic copy in a standard file format, such as MS Word or WordPerfect™, is required. A hardcopy of your paper is optional. Please provide an abstract and three to five key words at the beginning of your paper. This is very important for indexing purposes.
8. Graphics for figures should be scalable electronic files, or original color or black and white photographs or line illustrations. The JPACD will be printed only in black and white, but will be published on the Internet in color. However, authors should choose colors carefully because light colors, such as yellow, do not appear on black and white prints. Nonscalable graphics are acceptable if they do not exceed the image limit of 6-1/2 inches wide by 9 inches, including the figure title, for a full-page figure.
9. In-text citations will be, for example, (Nobel 1996) or Nobel (1996) reported that . . . ., as applicable. The style of references will be the author-date convention, e.g., Nobel, P. 1996. Effects of cold hardiness on Opuntia ficus-indica. Journal of Plant Physiology 30:234-256.
10. Report all monetary values in U.S. dollars (US$). Local currency may be reported parenthetically.
11. Scientific papers will use metric units. Marketing and/or ranching data may be in English units.
12. The JPACD will be published once per year. To facilitate rapid publication of papers, after the manuscript has been accepted it will be placed on our web site within about eight weeks, which includes peer review and production processes. When about 12 papers have been obtained and put on the web, a hardcopy will be published, closing out that year’s volume. Completion of the volume is expected to occur approximately at the end of each successive year.
In summary, the editors of the Journal of the Professional Association for Cactus Development are very excited to be a part of the excellent editorial committee and to work together to create the synergism between scientists, growers, legislators, and business people so vital to the development of this industry to serve the people of arid lands.