AIMS and SCOPE

The Soil & Environment (SE) is a six monthly Journal devoted to the advancement and dissemination of scientific knowledge concerning all disciplines of Soil and Environmental Sciences like soil fertility, soil chemistry, soil mineralogy, soil microbiology and biochemistry, soil physics, soil salinity, soil genesis, classification and morphology with particular emphasis on environment. The SE is published and distributed by the Soil Science Society of Pakistan (SSSP).

EDITORIAL POLICY

Originality, authorship, and copyright
The manuscripts submitted for publication must be previously unpublished research works written in English, which are not being considered for publication elsewhere. All the authors must have agreed to the submission and to the order of their names on the title page. They must also have agreed that the corresponding author may act on their behalf throughout the editorial review and publication process. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining such agreement and submit a certificate duly signed by all the co-authors. Requests for changes in authorship (order of listing or addition or deletion of name) after submission should be accompanied by signed statements of agreement from all the parties involved.

Originality/Similarity Policy

Originality/Similarity reports generated by the Turnitin provide clues in form of text matches. Proverbs, Universal Truths, phrases etc. Scholars/Students must make sure that document they are submitting is in proper documenting style and is free of plagiarism. If the report has similarity index <=19%, then benefit of doubt may be given to the author but, in case, any single source has similarity index >=5% without citation then it needs to be revised. If similarities of a report are from author's own (previous) work then these may be ignored only if the material has been cited by the author. As documents which are checked through this service are not yet published and no benefit is acquired, therefore, no punishment or penalty is recommended. It is advised that similarities at greater level may be taken care of in the light of the HEC plagiarism policy. For further guidance, please follow the Higher Education Commision of Pakistan (HEC) plagiarism policy.

Permissions
The author is responsible for acquiring the permission(s) to reproduce any copyrighted figures, tables, data, or text that are being used in the submitted paper. The written permission letter(s) must be submitted together with the manuscript.
 

Editorial review and revision
All papers will be critically read by at least two anonymous reviewers, selected for their competence in the subject area of the paper. Acceptance of the paper will depend upon its scientific merit and suitability for the journal. A paper may be accepted in its original form or subject to revision.
The reviewers' (and editor's) suggestions will be conveyed to the author, who will then have an opportunity to revise the paper. If a manuscript returned to an author for revision is held for longer than two months, or if revision is sufficiently extensive, then the date of receipt of the revised manuscript will be substituted for the initial date of receipt.
 

Proofs
Galley proofs (PDF format) for an accepted article will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author for copyediting corrections. The core content of an article cannot be changed during galley proof reading. It is the author's responsibility to check the entire manuscript, including tables, figure legends, and cited references, not just items queried. The proofs should be corrected and mailed to the Editorial Office within 48 h of receipt in order to expedite publication. Only one set of corrections will be accepted. This means it is important to ensure all of your corrections are sent to us in one communication.
 

Printing/ Processing Charges
There are no printing/ processing charges for Soil & Environment and also journal does not charge any submission fees.

HOW TO SUBMIT MANUSCRIPTS

Authors are requested to submit their manuscripts electronically by using the SE online manuscript submission system available at http://www.se.org.pk . This site will guide authors stepwise through the submission process. The editorial office will acknowledge receipt of your manuscript.

Revisions
Papers may be returned to authors for revision. Authors will be given four weeks after receipt of the reviewers' comments to revise their paper. Revisions must be submitted via the online submission system, under the heading "Submit Manuscript Online." Click on the link "Submit a revised manuscript" then upload your revised files. You can also submit the revised manuscript via email.

Resubmissions

Papers may be rejected but the authors are encouraged to resubmit the paper after additional experimental data are obtained. Resubmissions must be submitted via the online submission system under "Begin a new submission". The paper must be marked as a resubmission and manuscript number of the original submission, in the cover letter. Please also provide a letter giving point-by-point responses to the referees of the previous version.

FILE FORMATS

Prepare the text in Microsoft (MS) Word (6.0 or later version). Set the page size to have 2.5 cm margins on all sides. The font size should be no smaller than 12 points. Type every portion of the manuscript double spaced, including References and figure legends, and number all pages in sequence, including the abstract, figure legends and tables. The last two items should be placed after the Reference section. Manuscript pages should have line numbers. The text of your manuscript (including title page, abstract, main text, references, and figure legends) followed by tables and figures should be in a single word file for initial submission. Each figure should be labeled with a figure number. Standard fonts (Times New Roman, Times, or Courier), preferably Times New Roman should be used for the generation of text and Arial or Helvetica for the figures. Use the Symbol font and the "Insert Symbol" option from the menu bar for introducing symbols in MS Word. Authors can upload their articles as MS Word (6.0 or a later version). If your paper is accepted, you are then required to send the final version as source files including a separate Word file for text and graphic files. Manuscripts that do not follow the "File Formats" and "Organization and Styles of Manuscripts" (below) are not suitable for editorial review or publication, and will be returned to the author.
 

Manuscript Preparation

I. Articles
Articles are full-length research reports that contain detailed descriptions of experimental work, with clear interpretation and discussion of the theoretical and experimental results and data. Articles should be structured under the section headings Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgment, and References. Authors should present their material with utmost clarity and conciseness and in a logical manner. Constant repetition of experimental procedures, information, and facts among sections should be avoided. The average length of a published Article should be approximately six printed page long including tables and figures.
The organization shown below should be followed (in the order given):
 

Title page

• Title of the paper
• Author name(s)
• Author affiliation(s)
• Name, postal and E-mail addresses, and phone and fax numbers of the corresponding author to whom the revision or galley proofs of the paper is to be sent
• A brief running title (not to exceed 54 characters and spaces)
• Names of three potential reviewers with complete address including e-mail; at least one from outside the country.

With regard to titles, avoid the main title: subtitle arrangement, declarative titles, complete sentence constructions, and unnecessary use of articles. Because each manuscript should present results of independent and cohesive study, numbered series titles are not allowed. Place an asterisk after the name of the author to whom inquiries regarding the paper should be directed.
The affiliation address for each author should be indicated by superscript Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc).

Abstract
Articles must include an Abstract of 250 words or fewer. The Abstract should not repeat information already present in the title. It should be suitable for direct inclusion in Abstracting services like Current Contents, Chemical Abstracts, and Biological Abstracts, etc.

Key words

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of six key words. Please avoid general terms, multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and" "of"), and abbreviations. Only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. Kewords must be separated by comma and only first letter of first word is capital (Kewords: Soil, environment, journal).

Introduction
The Introduction presents the purpose of the studies reported and their relationship to earlier work in the field. It should not be an extensive review of the literature. Use only those references required to provide the most salient background to allow the readers to understand and evaluate the purpose and results of the present study without referring to previous publications on the topic.

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section should be brief but include sufficient technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated by a qualified reader. Only new methods should be described in detail. Cite previously published procedures in References.

Results
The Results section should include the rationale or design of the experiments as well as the results of the experiments. Results can be presented in figures, tables, and text. Reserve extensive discussion of the results for the Discussion section.

Discussion
The Discussion section should focus on the interpretation of the results rather than a repetition of the Results section. The Results and Discussion sections may be combined into one section when substantial redundancy cannot be avoided in two separate sections or if a long discussion is not warranted.

Acknowledgments
Place Acknowledgments, including information on the source of any financial support received for the work being published, before the References.

References
Publications cited in the text should be provided in a separate list of references. Consistency of names and dates should be carefully checked. In the text, authors and year of publication should be given in parentheses; et al. (in italic) should be used where there are more than two authors. For example "Arshad and Rashid (1987) demonstrated that ..... Previous work (Aslam et al., 1983; Nawaz, 1991; Chronological order should be used) has shown that...". In the list of references, the arrangement should be alphabetical; all co-authors should be cited. Two or more articles by the same author(s) are listed chronologically; two or more in the same year are indicated by the letter a, b, c, etc. Use full name of the periodical in italic form. In the case of non-English publications, the original title should be used.

Examples:

Journal Article :

Reeve, R.C. and E.J. Doering. 1966. The high salt-water dilution method for reclaiming sodic soils. Pakistan Journal of Soil Science 30: 489-50.

Book:

Franklin, T.L. and K.L. Smith. 1989. Title of book in full. 2^nd Ed. Publisher, Place. 340 p.

Book Chapter:

Chaudhry, A.R. Fodder Crops. 1994. p. 319-418. In: Crop Production. S. Nazir, E. Bashir and R. Bantal (eds.). National Book Foundation Islamabad, Pakistan.

Website:

Almonacid, S., N. Quintero, M. Martinez and M. Vela. 2000. Determination of quality parameters of bacterium inocula based on liquid formulation elaborated with strains producing indole acetic acid (IAA). Auburn University online: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/argentina/pdfmanuscripts/%20almonacid.pdf [Accessed 07/01/2001]

Figure legends
Figure legends should contain a brief description of the experiments so that the figure can be understood without reference to the body of the text. However, the legend should not repeat Materials and Methods or contain interpretive statements.
 

Tables
Tables should be typewritten separately from the main text and in an appropriate font size to preferably fit each table on a separate page. Each table must be numbered with Arabic numerals (e.g., Table 1, Table 2) and include a title. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc), not symbols. Do not use vertical rulings in the tables. Each column in a table must have a heading, and abbreviations, when necessary, should be defined in the footnotes.
 

Figures
Figures should be provided separately from the main text. Use Arabic numerals to number all figures (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2) according to their sequence in the text. The figure number must appear well outside the boundaries of the image itself. Multipart figures should be numbered in uppercase and bold font letters (A, B, C, etc) without parenthesis, both on the figure itself and in the figure legends.
Note that figures may have to be reduced in size to fit the one-column (84 mm) or two-column (176 mm) space of the printed page, as determined by the journal designer. Original figures, especially line drawings, must therefore contain fonts and other detail that are large and clear enough to be legible even after a 50% reduction in size. Line drawings must be a minimum of 0.5 mm thickness for clear reproduction.

All figures should be created with applications that are capable of preparing high resolution files acceptable for publication. All figures should be embedded at the end of text in a single Word file when you initially submit manuscript. If your paper is accepted, we will require submission of figures as separate files at publication quality resolution. Blurred images will not be accepted.

The author(s) will be required to pay for reproduction of color photographs.

II. Short Communications

Short Communications are short reports for the presentation of brief observation that have insufficient material to fulfill the structure of a full-length article. They are intended for reporting preliminary studies or brief studies of a descriptive nature. Short Communications should be arranged in the same way as Articles, except that the Introduction, Results, and Discussion sections are in a combined section with no section headings. The References section is identical to that of Articles. Notes are subjected to review.

Reviews should be structured under appropriate section headings that reflect the subject matter of the section. The References section is identical to that of Articles. There is no length limitation for Reviews. However it is recommended that a Standard Review be of a length equivalent to no more than 12 printed journal pages, including figures and references.

Reviews are subjected to independent peer review, and the Editor-in-Chief may request changes, or decide not to proceed with publication.

NOMENCLATURES, UNITS, ABBREVIATIONS, AND SYMBOLS

All biota should be identified by their technical names where the English terms are first used. The rules laid down by the accepted codes of nomenclature should be followed.

All abbreviations should be defined at their first use in the text only; do not repeat the definition of abbreviations thereafter.

Note that the SE uses British spelling and SI units (System International d'Unites) . The preferred style is to use the minus index (e.g. kg ha ^-1) instead of a slash or "per".

MANUSCRIPT CHECKLIST

It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of your manuscript prior to submitting it to the journal for review. Ensure that the following items are present:

• One author designated as corresponding author
• Telephone and fax numbers, and E-mail address of the corresponding author
• Running title
• Key words
• Page and line numbers
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes) and figures (separated from figure legends) are provided in a single file with main text for initial submission.
• References are in the correct format for this journal.
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa.
• Names of three potential Reviewers with complete address including E-mail.
• Originality certificate duly signed by all the authors.