The latest screening of our subscriber list reveals that there are presently 460 INFPD members from 70 countries in 5 continents. Out of these members 74.1% are from Africa, 14.7% from Europe and the remaining 11.2% from South/North America, Asia/Pacific and the Middle East. Only 35.7% of all our members (26.5 % of those working in Africa) have e-mailfacilities. As you know, since our 1997 General Meeting held at M'Bour, Senegal, our newsletter has been produced and sent electronically to members, the fact remains that hard copies will continue to be send by airmail to members without e-mail
facilities.
As the e-mail is a low-cost, fast and reliable way of communication, INFPD members are strongly invited to have e-mail addresses, whenever possible. This will make our work easier. Furthermore, the impressive dynamism of the network is mainly due to the strong commitment of a few of its members. As a result of this, it is rewarding to notice that the key role of family poultry in improving livelihoods of poor people in low-income food-deficit countries is being more recognised by NGOs, international aid agencies and donors. Issues relating to family poultry research are also being more addressed by scientists. This does not mean that we can slack off now in our work. We should rather step up our efforts.
With this in view, we do hope that more members will actively contribute to the life of our network, for example, by reporting, through the INFPD Newsletter, their results (successes obtained, but also failures experienced with possible reasons) in Research and Development (R&D) in family poultry. Views and experiences from various workers throughout the world can also be shared via the newsletter.
Extensive exchange of information can contribute to avoiding unnecessary duplications, repeated errors and/or waste of time and resources. Moreover, it should be stressed that INFPD members are also strongly encouraged to publish contributions dealing with family poultry in other international journals and to attend and present papers in animal agriculture conferences, workshops and symposia. This will help to widely disseminate relevant information about this critical, but generally overlooked poultry sub-sector.
Moving towards higher standards for our newsletter requires the full co-operation of our members in their willingness to report their R&D work. Submissions should be in either English, French or Spanish. They should be send as attached files to the editor. When sent by airmail, authors should supply a floppy diskette, specifying the software used. Two types of manuscripts can be considered for publication. They are original articles (e.g. see article by Maho et al., in this issue) and reports (e.g. see report by Young and Alders, in this issue).
Original articles must include in the order: title; name, postal and e-mail address(es) of authors; abstract of between 100 and 250 words; keywords (up to 8); introduction (including literature review); materials and methods; results; discussion (’results and discussionë can also be presented together); conclusions; references and tables. The translation of the abstract in one of the two other languages is required. With regard to reports, their headings depend on the author(s). The newsletter editor reserves the right to shorten, edit or otherwise alter contributions.
I look forward to receiving your contributions!
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