Author Guidelines

REA considers different types of articles. The classification of each article will be done by the Editorial Board using the following categories:

• Keynote Article (Significant and impactful manuscript that summarises significant themes, ideas, or discussions central to the broader scientific debate in the field of agricultural economics and policy)
• Research Articles (Detailed, formal, and structured manuscript that presents the findings, methodologies, analysis, and conclusions of original research conducted within a specific field, aiming to contribute new knowledge, insights, or advancements to the existing body of literature. Normal length 6,000-8,000 words.)
• Review Articles (Comprehensive summary or discussion of an area of scientific research alongside a new perspective or conclusion and providing analysis or interpretation of a body of primary research on a specific topic. Normal length 6,000-8,000 words.)
• Short Communications (Concise report centred on a specific aspect of a problem, addressing key challenges, issues, or advancements in agricultural economics research without delving into detailed methodology. It may introduce fresh interpretations or observations with broad potential interest, intended to stimulate further research in the field. Normal length 4,000-5,000 words.)
• Book Reviews

Length of contributions

REA publishes Research Articles and Reviews Articles (normally 6,000-8,000 words), Short Communications (less than 4,000-5,000 words) and Book Review (less than 2,000 words). Please note: the word count for all article types includes abstract, tables, figures, appendices, footnotes, funding, acknowledgements, and references. Longer articles may be occasionally accepted but they must be motivated at the submission in the cover letter to the Editor.

Requirements

All new submissions will be assessed against their originality before being sent out for review. All papers should be fully original. This means that there should be no overlap in the text already published in other outlets, even if from the same authors. Authors should note that manuscripts deemed to contain plagiarism will be desk rejected, with the editors of REA reserving the right to notify the supervisors of authors whose work is plagiarized.

Text Setting

Before it is assigned to a section editor, each new manuscript is screened by REA’s editorial staff to assure that it complies with the following technical requirements, submissions that do not adhere to these requirements may be returned to authors:

• submission to this journal proceeds entirely online. The online submission system guides stepwise through the process of entering article details and uploading files;
• the submission includes all the following expected files: Cover Letter (not mandatory), Title Page File (mandatory), Manuscript File (anonym);
• the Title Page File must adhere to this format and contains all the following elements in this order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, JEL codes, Highlights, Corresponding Author, Acknowledgements and Funding; (Title Page TEMPLATE File)
• Manuscript File must adhere to this format and contains all the following elements in this order: Title, Abstract, Keywords, JEL codes, Highlights, Main text, References, Appendix (if needed); (Manuscript TEMPLATE File)
• the Abstract (only in English) must be no longer than 200 words;
• the Highlights help increase the discoverability of your article via search engines. They must be described by bullet points (2 to max 4; max 70 words for all highlights) and should capture the novel results as well as new methods of your research;
• all headings and subheadings are numbered throughout in the journal’s style as in the format; partitions into paragraphs must not exceed three levels of hierarchy;
• rows must be numbered;
• notes at the bottom of the page, within the text, must be progressively numbered. First lines and/or bulleted or numbered lists must not be used;
• the paper must be formatted in 12 point Times New Roman justified, with multiple line spacing 1,2;
• Figures, Tables and Graphics captions must be formatted in 11 point Times New Roman;
• all references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa;
• references are provided in the journal’s style as in the format, including the DOI code.

Articles can be drawn up both in English and in Italian. In the case the author, whether he is Italian or in any case not English mother-tongue, submits a paper in English, he/she will have to take on the responsibility of checking the quality and nomenclature of his own work, before submitting the article to the definitive draft for the publication.

Ethics in publishing

Link a https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/rea/ethics

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools - such as ChatGPT and others based on large language models (LLMs) - in developing any portion of a manuscript must be disclosed transparently and in detail in the Methods section (or via a disclosure or within the Acknowledgements section, as applicable). The author remains fully responsible for the accuracy of any information provided by the tool and for properly referencing any supporting work on which that information relies. GenAI tools must not be employed to create, alter, or manipulate original research data and results. The final decision regarding whether the use of a GenAI tool is appropriate or permissible for a submitted manuscript or published article rests with the journal’s editor or other party responsible for the publication’s editorial policy.

Disclosure instructions

Authors must disclose the use of GenAI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript in the core manuscript file, before the References list as a section entitled:
‘Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process’
During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.

This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references etc. If there is nothing to disclose, there is no need to add a statement.

GenAI tools cannot be accountable for a published work or for research design, which is a generally held requirement of authorship, nor does it have legal standing or the ability to hold or assign copyright. Therefore - in accordance with COPE’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools - these tools cannot fulfil the role of, nor be listed as, an author of an article.

GenAI use by peer reviewers

GenAI tools should be used only in a limited capacity during peer review. Editors or peer reviewers may use a GenAI tool to enhance the clarity of written feedback in a peer review report. Such use must be transparently disclosed when submitting the peer review report to the manuscript’s handling editor. Aside from this limited use case, editors and peer reviewers must not upload manuscripts (or any parts thereof, including figures and tables) into GenAI tools or services.

If any part of the evaluation of the claims made in the manuscript was supported by an AI tool, we request that peer reviewers clearly declare the use of such tools in the peer review report.

Author contributions

Endorsing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (https://sfdora.org/), REA requires corresponding authors to provide co-author contributions to the manuscript using the relevant CRediT roles. Adoption of the CRediT taxonomy (https://credit.niso.org/) is one way to acknowledge individual author contributions which allows all co-authors to gain recognition and reward for their work. The CRediT taxonomy includes 14 different roles (see specifications in table below) describing each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output. Note that not all roles may apply to every manuscript, and authors may have contributed through multiple roles. For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

CRediT statements should be provided during the submission process and will appear above the acknowledgment section of the published paper as shown further below.

Source: Allen, L., Scott, J., Brand, A. et al. (2014) Publishing: Credit where credit is due. Nature 508, 312–313; https://doi.org/10.1038/508312a.

Samples format for CRediT author statement

• S.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. P.S.: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. W.W.: Visualization, Investigation. J.J.: Supervision. A.K.: Software, Validation: S.Q.: Writing- Reviewing and Editing.
• Conceptualization, S.C.P. and S.Y.W.; Methodology, A.B., S.C.P. and S.Y.W.; Investigation, M.E., A.N.V., N.A.V., S.C.P. and S.Y.W.; Writing - Original Draft, S.C.P. and S.Y.W.; Writing –Review & Editing, S.C.P. and S.Y.W.; Funding Acquisition, S.C.P. and S.Y.W.; Resources, M.E.V and C.K.B.; Supervision, A.B., N.L.W., and A.A.D

Bibliographic References

The bibliographic references at the end of the text have to be listed without numbering, in alphabetical order by following the author’s surname and, for each author, following the chronological order of work’s publication.

In the case of similar surnames, they will be listed following the initial of his/her first name; if there’re surnames and initials of first names which are alike, first names have to be fully written. The year has to be written in brackets after the surname and the initial of the author’s name, followed by a dot, as follows: Freud S. (1910). If the author has two first names (middle initial), as it is habits in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the two initials have to be written with no space between them (for instance: Bianchi G.A., Rossi P.F., Kernberg P.F., etc.). In the case of works written by many authors, all surnames have to be quoted. In the case of a work edited by an author, it should be quoted the researcher’s name followed by the diction (edited by) both for Italian and foreign editions. In this latest case, researchers will be referred to as eds.

Authors have to specify the DOI code of all articles quoted in the bibliographic references. The DOI code is assigned to each article by the publishing house. The most trusted way to identify the DOI code is to check it out on the website of the publishing house and search for the article.

Quotes in the text can list up to two authors; from the third author on it can be mentioned the first author followed by et al.

Some examples of bibliographic references can be found in the Manuscript TEMPLATE File.

Click here to download the Author Guidelines - Detailed version.