Instructions for Authors

About

Pest Tactic Journal is a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to publishing original research, scientific reviews, pest profiles, and technical articles about endemic and invasive pests and their management. The primary goal of the Pest Tactic Journal is to publish high quality, open-access articles in a minimally cluttered space, while minimizing lengthy editorial processes. It also aims to provide timely information to researchers, farmers, crop care professionals, ag input industry, pest management professionals, regulatory agencies, extension educators, and students about various pests of various crops and effective ways of managing their populations.

Supplementary data

In addition to images, graphs, and tables included in the manuscript, submitting more audiovisual content that enriches reader’s experience is strongly encouraged. Brief videos summarizing the manuscript content, pest biology and damage, experimental design, instructions on using new equipment, or a deck of photos related to the topic can be submitted along with the manuscript.

Peer-review process

Every submitted manuscript is reviewed by our editorial board. Furthermore, articles may undergo additional reviews by ad-hoc subject experts specialized in a topic.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) use policy:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to be integrated into various aspects of our daily routine and scientific activities, including authoring publications. As a result, the editorial board has developed the following guidelines to help authors self-assess the appropriateness of AI use when preparing manuscripts for the Pest Tactic Journal. While using AI tools for spelling and grammar, it is critical to maintain originality and creativity in writing to preserve reader trust and uphold the integrity of scientific publishing. Please follow the following guidelines for AI use: The use of grammar and spelling correction tools that improve the structure of the original sentence or content are acceptable. AI tools such as ChatGPT, CoPilot, and Gemini can be used for brainstorming, literature search, and obtaining summaries and highlights of the documents, and help you synthesize your thoughts. But the manuscript text should be author-generated. AI-based tools for data collection, summarization, and analysis, or for generating audiovisual content, are allowed, but only with appropriate attribution. Other types of AI use that fall within the general publication guidelines should be clarified in a statement.

Topics and article types

We accept manuscripts on agricultural, ornamental plants, structural/urban, medical, and veterinary pest control topics related to North America. Topics may include pests such as insects and other arthropods, vertebrates, weeds, pathogens, and others that are of economic or environmental importance. We accept the following article types:

• Original research articles: Submitted articles provide brand-new quantitative or qualitative information for science. These articles may include results from surveys and needs assessment studies.
• Scientific reviews These articles provide a comprehensive literature review on a subject and analyze problems through scientific reasoning.
• Technical articles These articles may include pest management recommendations, field/lab demonstration experiments where products/methods are compared with no replications or statistical analysis, case studies, etc. Articles must deliver new insight into the science of pest control or cover less understood or misunderstood topics and not just repeat obvious and well-known facts.
• Pest profiles These articles may provide a thorough overview of an invasive or emerging pest with information on its biology, damage, host range, current or potential threat, and available control options. These articles should help the readers prepare to deal with a new pest or provide recent developments in the management of an existing pest.

Content

َAll submitted articles must have the following:

• Double-spaced lines
• Continuous line numbers
• Title
• Short description less than 150 characters (not words) for web production
  • E.g.: "A review article on the biology and management of bed bugs"
• All figures and tables must have a caption and must be cited in the main text.
• Example: "All insects were transferred into a 50cm x 20 cm plastic container (Fig. 1)."
• When referring to unpublished data, authors must cite the source in one of the following ways:
• Unpublished data (personal observation)
• Example: “Argentine ants do not readily feed on bait X. (Unpublished data).”
• Personal communication
• Example: “Argentine ants do not readily feed on bait X. (John Smith, personal communication).”
• Submit a separate bibTeX file (.bib) of all the cited references
• Can be exported from most bibliography management tools including Google Scholar, Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley

• Acknowledgments (if applicable)

َTechnical article specific requirements:

• Suggested length: <3000 words
• Section titles
• References Cited in alphabetical order using APA style

َResearch articles, scientific reviews, and pest profiles:

• Suggested length: <4000 words
• Abstract (<200 words)
• Keywords (up to 4)
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion or Results and Discussion
• References Cited in alphabetical order using APA style

Language

Currently, we accept manuscripts in English only.

Images

All submitted images must be of good quality, preferably at a resolution of 300 dpi. We accept the following image formats: PNG, JPEG, and GIF.

Measurements

Technical articles: Use metric units, or customary units (e.g., inch, foot, yard, pound, ounce) followed by metric units in parenthesis. Example: “Queen termites are usually ½ inch (1.25 cm) long”.

Research articles, scientific reviews, and pest profiles: Must be in metric units. Example: “Queen termites are usually 1.25 cm long”

Acceptable file types

Microsoft Word .doc or .docx files

Plagiarism

We have a strict policy against plagiarism. All submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism manually and by using automated software. Authors must rephrase and paraphrase their manuscript when incorporating the work of others, ensuring that proper credit is given through citation. Any manuscript containing plagiarized content, whether through direct copying or insufficient paraphrasing, will be rejected. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their work is original and properly cites references. Any form of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, will not be tolerated and may result in the rejection of the manuscript.

Bibliography style

Follow APA style for citing and listing references. Please check https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples for various examples.

Examples of APA style citation:

E-Journal

• Taravati, S., McDonald, C. (2023). The false chinch bug as a structural pest in Southern California. Pest Tactic Journal, 2(1), 1-8

Scientific journal

• Dara, S. K. (2019). The new integrated pest management paradigm for the modern age. Journal of Integrated Pest Management, 10(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.1093/jipm/pmz010

Magazine

• Schaefer, N. K., & Shapiro, B. (2019, September 6). New middle chapter in the story of human evolution. Science, 365(6457), 981–982. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay3550

Book chapter

• Thestrup, K. (2010). To transform, to communicate, to play—The experimenting community in action. In E. Hygum & P. M. Pedersen (Eds.), Early childhood education: Values and practices in Denmark. Hans Reitzels Forlag. https://earlychildhoodeducation.digi.hansreitzel.dk/?id=192

How to cite Pest Tactic articles

Available citation data for Pest Tactic Journal:

• Author(s)
• Year
• Title
• Volume
• Issue
• Pages

Submission fee:

Currently, there is no submission fee. However, we encourage authors to consider making donations to our journal to help us cover editorial work, PDF and web production, backend web development and maintenance, and website hosting services fees.

Submission

Please submit a Microsoft Word document of your manuscript to the editor: sdara@hawaii.edu

Editorial Board

Editorial board

Questions?

Please send your inquiry to: sdara@hawaii.edu