Author Guidelines

The Journal of the Cameroon Academy Sciences (JCAS) is a multidisciplinary publication of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences (CAS) that is devoted to all aspects of fundamental and applied re­search. It also publishes topical reviews on science and technology in development, arts, humanities and culture.

Opinions expressed in the journal are those of its authors and should not be construed as reflecting the official policy of the Academy. The journal will not publish articles dealing with political or religious advocacy. JCAS appears both online and in a print edition.

Publication mode: From 2017 the JCAS has adopted the open access mode under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/choose/ )

Archiving:  The JCAS is archived by African Journals online (soft copy) ( http://www.inasp.info/ajol// ) and the Cameroon Academy of Sciences (printed edition). Henceforth all accepted articles will be assigned a DOI number before publication.

Language and Style: Articles should be written in English or French and provided with abstracts in both languages. Articles should be written in the passive voice and in the third person.  Pronouns such as “I” and “we” should be avoided except in cases where it is customary to do so.

Submission of articles: The manuscripts along with any display items such as tables, figures, photographs, etc. should be submitted online or by email. Hard copy submissions will not be accepted. Photographs should be in black and white. Colour photographs will only be published exceptionally and even then at considerable extra cost to the author. The authors of accepted articles will be required to submit a final version of the manuscript on a CD/ROM or online using the software Microsoft Word or any other computer software recommended by the editor.

All submitting authors must counter-sign against their names on the title page to indicate their approval of the submission. The signed title page should be scanned and sent as an email attachment to the address given below.

The Editor-in-Chief,

Journal of Cameroon  Academy of Sciences, Biotechnology Unit, Faculty of Science, University of Buea,  Box 63, Buea,

SW Region,

Cameroon

Email: jcas@gmail.com

Peer-review: All articles [H1] submitted to the journal will be reviewed anonymously by three reviewers and will be accepted only when a majority of the reviewers recommend it for publication. Authors of rejected articles will be given an opportunity to reply to the reviewers’ comments.

Page Changes and Offprints: Authors of accepted articles will be required to pay a fee of 20 USD or 10.000 FCFA per printed page. Contributors from Low Income Countries can apply for a complete or partial waiver of pages charges and will be given such if their articles are accepted. Contributors/authors will receive a pdf copy of their article from which they can make additional copies.

Persons interested in the print edition can place orders directly at the following prices:

100 USD for the Americas;

 80 USD  for Europe &  Asia

 30 USD  for Africa

 And  30 USD for Cameroon per volume of  three issues.

Copyright: The submission of an article to the JCAS means that the same article is not being considered elsewhere for publication. Upon acceptance, the author(s) shall sign a declaration that they understand and accept that their article will be published in the Open Access mode under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/choose/ )

Preparation of manuscripts: Manuscripts should be typed on A4 paper with double spacing and a 2 cm margin all round. A full length article should not and should not less than 10be  exceed 5,000 words. Commentaries and letters to the Editor should not exceed 1,000 words each.

Title: The title should not exceed 150 characters and should not contain abbreviations or acronyms. It should be precise and informative.

Title Page: The title of the article should be typed on the first page of the manuscript followed by the names of the authors and the respective postal and email addresses of their institutions. The name and address of the corre­sponding author should be clearly identified in a foot-note.

Organization of the article: Depending on the type of com­munication the article should be divided into the following sections:

Experimental Work             

- Abstract                                           

-Introduction                          

- Materials and Methods                                 

- Results                                             

- Discussion

- Conclusions                          

- Acknowledgements              

- References: Bibliography followed by webography

Theoretical Work

-Abstract

-Problem statement

-Approach, definitions, assumptions

-Solutions of Proof

-Discussion

 -Conclusions

-Acknowledgements

-References (Bibliography followed by webography)                            

Reviews, commentary, or articles in the Arts and Social/Human Sciences

- Abstract

- Scope of the review/article

- The review itself with suitable headings

- Conclusions

- Acknowledgements

- References (Bibliography followed by webography)

FURTHER DETAILS ON STYLE

Layout:  JCAS will contain sections for various colleges of the Academy, but will receive and publish articles from non-members as well, subject to editorial review. The following Sections will appear in regular numbers of the Journal

-Biological Sciences

-Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

-Arts and Social Sciences

-Reviews/Commentaries

Authors should clearly indicate the section to which their manuscript is directed and should in addition indicate whether the work is a Research or a Review Article.

Abstract: All articles should be provided with a brief summary not exceeding  200 words. The summary should be written in simple language and should highlight the aims of the work, the approach or methodology, the main results obtained and the conclusion reached. Abbreviations should be avoided, and if used, they should be explained at least once. The summary should be presented in English and French.

Introduction or statement of the problem: This section should give the scientific reasons for doing the work and relate the work to previous knowledge and expected outcomes and impact. Only relevant literature should be cited. The introduction should, therefore, not be transformed into a literature review.

Materials and Methods: This section should describe the materials and methods employed in the work in sufficient detail to enable a qualified reader to duplicate the work. Previously described methods should be cited and not elaborately described. Statistical methods of treatment should be mentioned if they have been used. If the work involved the use of human subjects, primates or the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, it should be stated if ethical clearance from the appropriate authority has been obtained. The editor may request a copy of the clearance document or informed consent form for verification.

The results: This section should describe the results preferably in the same order as predicted by the objectives. Reference should be made to display items such as tables and figures where appropriate. Lengthy discussions should not be undertaken in this section although timely conclusions may be drawn after the presentation of the results.

Discussion: The discussion should highlight what is new in the paper. References should be made to the display items to support the conclusion reached, and to previous publications on the same topic. The discussion should be limited to the results described in the manuscript and any implications this may have.

References:

Bibliography

For a paper with one or two authors the surname(s) is/are referred to in the text.  Where the cited paper has more than two co-authors, the surname of the first author is mentioned followed by et al.

Example:

(a)    Smith et al. (1997) showed that mosquitoes bite more frequently in the evening than at dawn.

(b)    Ngu and Titanji (1981) were the first to describe the use of African patients’ own white blood cells for self-treatment of cancer. 

(c)    For a journal article, the citation is written as follows:

        Greenway, P. (1998). Foresight on ageing. Biologist 45, 217-220

(d)   For a book the reference is written giving successively the names(s), the year of publication or the author’s editor consulted[H2] , the title of  the book, the name of the publisher(s), the city of publication, and the pages cited, e.g. Morris, J. G. (1978). A Biologists Physical Chemistry. Edward Arnold Ltd. Lon­don

(e)    At the end of the manuscript all the references should be typed in alphabetical order of the first author’s   surname giving the full title of the article, the journal and pages inclusively;

Webography

Articles from websites and from online journals should be listed in alphabetical order of the surnames of the first authors, followed by the website address (URL) and after the bibliography.

Figures and tables: These should be constructed in such a manner ­that they can be understood without reading the text. Graphs should preferably be drawn using appropriate computer software and presented on a single page ready for mounting. No writing is allowed on figures directly although the abscissa and ordinates of graphs can be labelled. Appropriate symbols should be used on graphs and explained in the legends.

Legends: Figure and table legends should be typed consecutively on separated sheets at the end of the manuscript. The printer will mount them in the article.

Acknowledgements: These should be presented at the end of the text and before the bibliography. In case of co-authorship of articles, the role of each author should be specified in a brief statement such as “conceived of the project, carried out the surveys and drafted the manuscript. etc.

 The authors should declare any conflict of interest such as owning stocks in a company whose product has been evaluated and/or tested in the article.