JAFSCD Program, Policy, and Practice Brief Guidelines

JAFSCD Program, Policy, and Practice Briefs are by invitation only. To be invited, prospective authors must complete the query form HERE, and attach a draft of the brief. The appropriate JAFSCD Associate Editor will conduct a desk review, and if the draft brief is approved for peer review, the author will receive instructions for formally submitting the brief into the JAFSCD submission system, Manuscript FastTrack.

From there, the brief will undergo double-blind peer review with two-week turnaround. Authors will be kept apprised of the status of their brief by the associate editor. Carefully note, the brief may be declined for publication at any point along the review process, and the associate editor makes the final determination to publish.

You can improve the chances of a successful review by carefully following the brief guidelines below. We strongly encourage lead authors to engage co-authors who have expert knowledge, especially practitioners with significant practical experience. Such co-authorship increases the robustness and longevity of the work.

Drafting Requirements

JAFSCD Briefs are intended to be succinct and high impact. They should represent the current state-of-the-art knowledge on a program, policy, or practice. Stylistically, the narrative should be matter-of-fact, in plain language, with limited jargon, and without any hyperbole or opinion.

We recommend writing the work with all your key ideas, and then tightening it to conform to the following character counts (including spaces) and word counts for each of these REQUIRED sections of the brief.

Font: please use Calibri font

Title: 10 word maximum

Key Point: 300 characters including spaces (2-3 sentences)

Keywords: 100 characters incl. spaces (about 10 words)

Terminology: 600 characters incl. spaces

Main Narrative: 5,000 characters incl. spaces

References: Limit to two or three in APA format; include URLs or DOIs

Want to Learn More?: 750 characters incl. spaces

 

What We Look for in a JAFSCD Brief Query

JAFSCD Briefs are intended to provide concise, accessible, and useful insights for people working across sustainable food systems and value chains. When reviewing a Brief query, we look for the following:

  • Topical / Series Fit: The proposed Brief clearly fits the purpose and scope of either the Sustainable Diets or Value Chain Coordination series.
  • “Briefability” / Focus: The topic is sufficiently focused and concrete to be developed effectively as a short Brief. Broad issues can work when the query identifies a specific question, experience, practice, or lesson.
  • Practical Value: The Brief has the potential to offer useful guidance, insights, evidence, methods, or lessons for practitioners, professionals, policymakers, community organizations, or others working in food systems.
  • Evidence / Experience: The proposal is grounded in sufficient evidence, experience, or demonstrated practice to support credible and useful lessons. An initiative does not necessarily need to be longstanding; emerging practices can be appropriate when there is enough experience to draw meaningful lessons.
  • Timeliness / Relevance: The topic addresses an emerging issue, recent evidence, current practice, or an ongoing issue that has substantial relevance to the field.
  • Distinctive Contribution: The Brief offers something meaningful to the Sustainable Diets or Value Chain Coordination community—such as new information, an underdocumented experience, a useful synthesis, an important insight, or a fresh perspective on a familiar issue. They may also present a detailed case example of a failed initiative (program, policy, or practice).
  • Transferability: The lessons or insights have potential relevance beyond the immediate case and could inform practice in other regions, sectors, organizational settings, or cultural contexts.
  • Accessibility: The proposed material can be communicated clearly and concisely to JAFSCD's interdisciplinary readership, without unnecessary jargon or specialized language.

In short, we are looking for Briefs that are focused enough to be concise, grounded enough to be credible, distinctive enough to be worth reading, and useful enough to inform practice beyond the immediate case.

 

EXAMPLES OF BRIEF TYPES

Using Farm-to-School as a Value Chain Coordination Brief context:

Primer Brief (overview of what will likely be an ongoing theme for briefs)
e.g., Understanding Farm-to-School Value Chains

Program Brief (case study or case comparison; could be post-mortem)
e.g., Building Regional Farm-to-School Networks

Policy Brief (examples of successful public policies)
e.g., Institutional Farm-to-School Procurement Policies

Practice Brief (in depth look at a “best practice”)
e.g., Funding Strategies for Farm-to-School Programs

Methods Brief (in depth look at a “best method”)
e.g., Forecasting School Produce Demand

Research Brief (a quantitative or qualitative assessment of program, policy, or practice)
e.g., Results of a National Census of F2S Programs

If you have any questions or concerns, email editor-in-chief Duncan Hilchey.