Submissions

Author Guidelines

The Quest Journal of Food Security (QJFS) publishes high-quality scholarly contributions within the broad fields of food security, agriculture, livestock production, crop science, food systems, nutrition, post-harvest studies, agricultural economics, rural development, and related interdisciplinary areas. The journal welcomes only Research Articles, Review Articles, and Research Notes/Short Communications. Manuscripts submitted to the journal must present original scholarly work, must be written in clear academic English, and must not have been published previously or be under consideration by another journal at the same time. Submission of a manuscript implies that all authors have approved the submitted version and agree to its consideration by QJFS.

Article Types
Research Articles are expected to report the results of original investigations and to present data in a logical, coherent, and scientifically sound manner. Such manuscripts should make a clear contribution to knowledge and should be sufficiently detailed to allow the work to be evaluated and, where appropriate, repeated by other researchers. A Research Article should ordinarily not exceed thirty double-spaced pages, including tables, figures, and references. The abstract should not exceed three hundred words, the reference list should generally be limited to sixty entries, and the combined number of tables and figures should not be more than ten.
Review Articles are intended to provide a comprehensive, critical, and scholarly synthesis of the literature on a topic of current relevance to food security and related fields. A Review Article should not simply list previous findings; rather, it should evaluate, compare, and integrate published studies in order to present a clear understanding of the present state of knowledge, identify gaps, and indicate directions for future as 1. Introduction, 2. Historical Background, 3. Current Evidence, 4. Emerging Issues, 5. Conclusion, and so on, and subsections should be numbered 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, and the like. Every Review research. Review Articles must be extensive, balanced, and analytical. The principal sections should be numbered consecutively, such Article must contain an introduction section and a conclusion section, with logically arranged and relevant section headings in between. The introduction should clearly explain why the subject is important, why it deserves review, and how it relates to contemporary problems in food security or agriculture. The body of the review should be comprehensive and detailed, with exhaustive references to the literature. Review Articles should be written on the basis of original published studies, including studies authored by the writers where relevant, and should demonstrate critical engagement with the source material. A Review Article should ordinarily not exceed fifty double-spaced pages, should have an abstract of not more than three hundred words, should generally not exceed one hundred and twenty references, and should not contain more than twelve tables and figures combined.
Research Notes or Short Communications are intended for concise reports of original and important findings that merit rapid dissemination. They may present a focused experimental result, a new observation, a method, a preliminary but significant finding, or another limited investigation with clear scientific value. Such manuscripts must be brief but complete, and they should still be documented with enough detail in both the literature background and the description of procedures to allow the reader to understand the basis of the findings. A Research Note or Short Communication should ordinarily not exceed fifteen double-spaced pages, should contain an abstract of not more than three hundred words, should not exceed thirty references, and should not include more than five tables and figures combined.
The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to assign a manuscript to a different category where this is scientifically and editorially more appropriate.

ORCID Requirement
All authors must provide their ORCID iD during submission. This requirement applies to every author listed on the manuscript and is necessary for the completion of the editorial and publication process. Authors who do not yet have an ORCID iD should obtain one from the official ORCID registry before submission. Please visit https://orcid.org/ to get your unique 16-digit ORCID iD number.

Submission Policy
Manuscripts are considered for review on the understanding that the work is original, has not been published in whole or in part elsewhere, is not under review by another journal, and will not be submitted to another journal until a decision has been reached by QJFS. The journal expects authors to maintain the submitted authorship order throughout the review process. After submission, authorship changes, including addition, removal, or rearrangement of authors, will not normally be permitted except in exceptional circumstances approved by the editorial office.
Submissions that do not conform to the journal’s formatting requirements, manuscript structure, page limits, reference limits, or ethical standards may be returned before review. Manuscripts may also be returned if the similarity index is judged to be more than 50 % or if required corrections and documents are not provided within the requested time. Authors are therefore advised to ensure that the manuscript is properly prepared before submission.

Preparation of the Manuscript
Manuscripts must be prepared in Microsoft Word format and should be typed in Times New Roman, twelve-point font, with double spacing and margins of approximately three centimetres on all sides. Every page, including the title page, references, tables, and figure pages, should be numbered consecutively. Line numbering should also be included to aid the review process. The manuscript must be written in English and should use clear, precise, and professional language. Either British or American spelling may be used, provided it is applied consistently throughout the paper.
The main text should be arranged into logically ordered and numbered sections according to the article type. For Research Articles and Review Articles, principal sections should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, while subordinate sections should be numbered using decimal notation. The sections for Acknowledgements and References should not be numbered. Short Communications may follow a more compact structure, but the text should still be complete, coherent, and scientifically organized.
Authors are strongly encouraged to proofread their work carefully before submission and, where necessary, to obtain language editing assistance from a fluent colleague or professional editor. Repetition, overly long sentences, unnecessary jargon, and weak scientific expression should be avoided. Abbreviations and acronyms should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Title Page
A title page must be uploaded as a separate document and must not be merged with the main manuscript file. The title page should contain the full title of the manuscript in sentence case, the full names of all authors, the affiliations of all authors written in the form Department, Faculty, Institution, City, Country, the ORCID iDs of all authors, and the email address of the corresponding author. Only one corresponding author should be designated per manuscript. The main manuscript file should begin with the title only and must not contain any identifying information that could compromise the anonymity of the review process.

Title, Abstract, and Keywords
The title should be concise, informative, and reflective of the content of the paper. It should avoid unnecessary abbreviations and should clearly identify the scientific subject of the manuscript.
Each manuscript should be accompanied by an abstract placed immediately below the title in the main text. The abstract should be a single paragraph, should not exceed three hundred words, and should present the aim of the study or review, the essential methods or approach, the major findings or arguments, and the principal conclusion. Citations should not be included in the abstract.
Authors should provide a maximum of six keywords after the abstract. To facilitate retrieval and indexing, keywords should be chosen carefully, should not merely repeat words from the title, and should represent the substantive content of the manuscript.

Requirements for Review Articles
Because Review Articles are expected to provide a strong synthesis of scholarship, their internal structure should be especially deliberate and clearly signposted. The introduction must state the relevance of the topic, indicate the scope of the review, and explain why the subject matters to food security, agricultural productivity, human nutrition, environmental sustainability, or another relevant domain. The discussion must go beyond summary and should critically compare studies, identify areas of agreement and disagreement, and indicate where evidence remains insufficient or contested. The literature base should be broad and should include recent work as well as foundational studies, with a reference list that is as comprehensive as is scientifically justified.
Review Articles should not be superficial compilations of citations. They should be authoritative, analytical, and well grounded in original published studies. Where authors have published directly relevant original research, those studies may be incorporated appropriately into the broader review, provided the paper remains a genuine review rather than a disguised report of the authors’ own findings. Section headings should be meaningful and should guide the reader through the historical development, current status, practical significance, and future direction of the topic. The conclusion should synthesize the major insights of the review and should not merely restate the opening paragraphs.