Information For Authors

Journal of Rural Development
(Quarterly Journal of NIRD&PR)

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

Procedure:

Communication: The National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj welcomes articles of interest representing original work, analytical papers and papers based on review of extensive literature on economic, sociological, psychological, political and administrative aspects of rural development for publication in its quarterly Journal of Rural Development (JRD). All communication should be addressed to the Editor, Journal of Rural Development. National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad - 500 030, India (e-mail: cdc.nird@gov.in). The Editor will correspond with the main author.

Declaration: Each article should be accompanied with a declaration by all the authors that (1) They are authors of the article in the order in which listed; and (2) the article is original, has not been published and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere. If quoted more than 500 words/a table/a figure from a published work, in the article, a copy of permission obtained from the respective copyright holder should be enclosed.

It is the author's responsibility to obtain permission in writing for the use of all previously published material, not that of the editor or publisher. Authors are responsible for payment of any permission fees.

Submissions on OJMS: This is to inform that the Journal of Rural Development (JRD) now accepts the papers on newly designed web portal, the Online Journal Management System (OJMS). The softcopy of the paper, written in the prescribed format, must be submitted by uploading it on the OJMS site (http://nirdprojms.in/). The authors must register themselves and obtain a unique ID on OJMS, in order to submit the papers.

Plagiarism Detection: All the submitted manuscripts undergo plagiarism check. The similarity index bar set by the journal is 10%. Any submission which exceeds the similarity index bar set by the journal will be rejected.

Review System: Every article will be reviewed by a masked peer view by two referees. The criteria used for acceptance of articles are contemporary relevance, contribution to knowledge, clear and logical analysis, fairly good English and sound methodology of research articles. The Editor reserves the right to reject any manuscript as unsuitable in topic, style or form without requesting external review.

Editing: Every accepted article will be edited. If the author wishes to see the edited copy he/she should make this request at the time of sending the article. Since this involves a minimum of an additional four weeks time, in the production process, we will assume your concurrence to our editing unless specified by you.

Copyright: The author owns the copyright of the article until the article is accepted by the JRD for publication. After the acceptance communication, the copyright of the article is owned by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj and should not be reproduced elsewhere without the written permission of the editor and the authors of the article.

Preparation of the Article: Title Page: The title page includes the title of the article, name/s of the author/s and their institutional affiliation/s. Repeat only the title on the first page of the article.

Abstract: The first page of the article should contain an abstract of the article not exceeding 250 words.

Word Limit: Papers should generally contain between 4,000-6,000 words including abstract (not exceeding 250 words), notes, bibliography/ references, tables, etc. Shorter papers may be accepted by arrangement with the editor.

Reduce Bias in Language: Constructions that might imply bias against or stereotypes on the basis of gender, ethnicity, disability or age should be avoided.

Spellings: Use British spellings in all cases instead of American (Concise Oxford Dictionary).

Underline Words: Words underlined in a manuscript appear in italics when typeset. Don't underline words for emphasising them.

Abbreviations: A term to be abbreviated must, on its first appearance, be written out completely and followed immediately by its abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter, the abbreviation may be used without further explanation.

Numbers: Use figures to express all numbers 10 and above. Use words to express numbers lower than 10, and common fractions numbers that begin a sentence/title.

Tables: Type each Table on a separate page. Insert a location note at the appropriate place in the text. Minimise the use of Tables.

Notes: Footnotes should be listed as notes in an appendix and not typed at the bottom of the manuscript-pages on which they appear.

Quotations: Verbatim citation of fewer than 40 words may be incorporated in the text, enclosed with double quotation marks. A quotation of more than 40 words may be displayed as a free standing block, indenting five spaces from the margin. Do not use quotation marks for the block quotation. Give the source of the quotation in the form of author's last name, year and page number/s in parentheses.

Citation of Sources: WWhen paraphrasing or referring to an idea contained in another work, the author must cite the source in the text. The surname of the author and the year of publication may be inserted at the appropriate point as part of the narrative or in parentheses.

As far as possible, all articles and notes should be organised into the following sections: (i) Introduction, (ii) Hypothesis, (iii) Methodological Issues Involved, (iv) Limitations of Analysis, (v) Policy Implications and (vi) Conclusions, Sub-sections should carry clean and distinct subheadings.

Reference List

1. The reference list at the end of the article should provide complete information necessary to identify and retrieve each source: Author/s, year of publication, title and publishing data. References cited in text appear in the reference list; conversely, each entry in the reference list must be cited in the text, both should be identical in spellings and year.

2. An article published in journal may be listed in the following format: Author's last name, initials, year of publication, name of the article, name of the article, and name of the journal underlined, volume number, issue number in parentheses, and page number.

3. An article published in an edited book may be listed in the following format: Author's last name, initials, year of publication, name of the article, initials and surname of editors, Ed./ s, in parentheses, title of the book underlined, page numbers of the article in parentheses, place of publication and name of the publisher, separated by a colon.

4. A book may be listed in the following format: Author's last name, initials, year of publication, title of the book underlined, place of publication and name of the publisher, separated by a colon.

5. When a reference has more than one author, list all the authors' names. For an institutional report, write full name of the institute as the author. For a government report, the author is the name of the Country/State and the name of Ministry/ Department, separated by a colon.

6. Arrange references in the Reference List in the alphabetical order by the surname of the first author and then his/her initials. When ordering more than one reference by the same author, list the earlier publication before the last publication. References by the same author with the same publication year should be arranged alphabetically by the title, and suffixes a, b, c and so on are added to the year.

The Institute will provide soft copies of published papers to authors.


Note: The final decision of publishing the submitted article rests with the Editorial Board members and Editor, JRD.