As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
Author Guidelines
PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS
A manuscript intended for publication in JSDE must be typed double-spaced on line-numbered A4 paper. There shall be a title page containing title of paper, names(s) and address(es) of the authors(s), a running title and five key words. A self-contained abstract of about 100 words should precede the Introduction, which will be followed by Theory (if necessary), Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Acknowledgements and References. Tables and Figures should be numbered in Arabic numerals and given appropriate headings. Legends for figures or plates should be indicated clearly. Tables, figures and plates should be placed at the appropriate positions after they have been mentioned. Scientific names should be italicized.
REFERENCE FOR SPELLING/UNITS
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary shall be the reference for all spellings. The SI system should be used for all measurements. Only unambiguous and internationally recognized abbreviations shall be used, although the first time an abbreviation is used, its full name must be given.
REFERENCE TO PUBLISHED LITERATURE
References to published literature in the body of the manuscript are made by author(s) and year in one of two ways, depending on structure, e.g Ayorinde (1987) or (Ayorinde, 1987). When there are more than two authors,
the first author’s name is followed by et al., e.g Akobundu et al. (1982). All literature cited in the text should be listed under References at the end of the paper. References should be listed alphabetically by author and chronologically for the papers by the same author(s). Initials of all authors should follow their surnames, these should be followed by the year of publication, title of the article, journal name, journal volume and the first and last pages of the article. Journal names, volume and pagination should be italicized. For books, the references should include name(s) and initials(s) of author(s), year, title (italicized), and name and address of the publisher.
