Advances in Agronomy, Plant Breeding and Horticulture

Instructions

Language editing and author services

We have partnered with a number of leading author services providers to offer our authors an exclusive 10% discount on a wide range of manuscript preparation and post-publication services. This discount applies to various language editing, translation, and research communication services. 

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the online manuscript tracking system. Only electronic PDF (.pdf) or Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf) files can be submitted through the MTS, and there is no page limit. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and peer review.

You may submit manuscript directly to the Editioral Tracking System.

Terms of submission

Manuscripts must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are only being considered by this journal. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the submitting author’s responsibility to ensure that the article has all necessary institutional approvals. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication, unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the manuscript for readability. All submissions are bound by Prime Scholars Library terms of service.

Peer review

All submitted articles are subject to assessment and peer review to ensure editorial appropriateness and technical correctness. In order for an article to be accepted for publication, the assigned Editor will first consider if the manuscript meets minimum editorial standards and fits within the scope of the journal. If an article is within scope, then the Editor will ideally solicit at least two external peer reviewers (whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors) to assess the article before confirming a decision to accept. Decisions to reject are at the discretion of the Editor.

Our Research Integrity team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to: recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Concurrent submissions

In order to ensure sufficient diversity within the authorship of the journal, authors will be limited to having three manuscripts under review at any point in time. If an author already has three manuscripts under review in the journal, they will need to wait until the review process of at least one of these manuscripts is complete before submitting another manuscript for consideration. This policy does not apply to Editorials or other non-peer reviewed manuscript types.

Article Processing Charges (APC) :

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Average Article prorcessing time (APT) is 55 days

Fast Editorial Execution and Review Process (FEE-Review Process):

Advances in Agronomy, Plant Breeding and Horticulture is participating in the Fast Editorial Execution and Review Process (FEE-Review Process) with an additional prepayment of $99 apart from the regular article processing fee. Fast Editorial Execution and Review Process is a special service for the article that enables it to get a faster response in the pre-review stage from the handling editor as well as a review from the reviewer. An author can get a faster response of pre-review maximum in 3 days since submission, and a review process by the reviewer maximum in 5 days, followed by revision/publication in 2 days. If the article gets notified for revision by the handling editor, then it will take another 5 days for external review by the previous reviewer or alternative reviewer.

 Acceptance of manuscripts is driven entirely by handling editorial team considerations and independent peer-review, ensuring the highest standards are maintained no matter the route to regular peer-reviewed publication or a fast editorial review process. The handling editor and the article contributor are responsible for adhering to scientific standards. The article FEE-Review process of $99 will not be refunded even if the article is rejected or withdrawn for publication.

The corresponding author or institution/organization is responsible for making the manuscript FEE-Review Process payment. The additional FEE-Review Process payment covers the fast review processing and quick editorial decisions, and regular article publication covers the preparation in various formats for online publication, securing full-text inclusion in a number of permanent archives like HTML, XML, and PDF, and feeding to different indexing agencies.

Preprints

Prime Scholars Library supports the deposition of manuscripts in preprint servers, and does not consider this to compromise the novelty of the results. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered. The preprint should be cited.

Article types

The journal will consider the following article types:

Research Articles

Research articles should present the results of an original research study. These manuscripts should describe how the research project was conducted and provide a thorough analysis of the results of the project. Systematic reviews may be submitted as research articles.

Reviews

A review article provides an overview of the published literature in a particular subject area.

Formatting

An optional research article manuscript template can be downloaded here. We recommend that all manuscripts include line numbers and follow the structure below:

Title and Authorship Information

The following information should be included:

  • Manuscript title
  • Full author names
  • Full institutional mailing addresses
  • Email addresses

Affiliations. Prime Scholars Libraryremains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in institutional affiliations. Responsibility for affiliations ultimately rests with the author, although Prime Scholars Library may request changes be made to countries listed in affiliations to ensure consistency across published output (for indexing and discovery reasons).

Abstract

The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained, citation-free, and should not exceed 300 words.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and Methods

The methods section should provide enough detail for others to be able to replicate the study. If you have more than one method, use subsections with relevant headings, e.g. different models, in vitro and in vivo studies, statistics, materials and reagents, etc.

It should be complete enough to allow experiments to be reproduced. All the procedures should be described in detail, previously published procedures should be cited, and important modifications of published procedures should be mentioned briefly. Capitalize trade names and include the manufacturer's name and address. Subheadings can be used. Methods in general use need not be described in detail.

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, the authors are responsible for checking the license and obtaining any necessary permission. If permission was required, a statement confirming permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Publishing Protocols. We encourage authors describing any methodology, in particular laboratory-based experiments in the life sciences but also computational and bioinformatics protocols, to upload details of their methods to protocols.io. This is an Open Access website that allows researchers to record their methods in a structured way, obtain a DOI to allow easy citation of the protocol, collaborate with selected colleagues, share their protocol privately for journal peer review, and choose to make it publicly available. Once published, the protocol can be updated and cited in other articles.

You can make your protocol public before publication of your article if you choose, which will not harm the peer-review process of your article and may allow you to get comments about your methods to adapt or improve them before you submit your article.

Results and Discussion

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Main Text (Review only)

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Conclusions

This should clearly explain the main conclusions of the article, highlighting its importance and relevance

Data Availability

This statement should describe how readers can access the data supporting the conclusions of the study and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. Authors should explain why each interest may represent a conflict. If no conflicts exist, the authors should state this. Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests.

Funding Statement

Authors must state how the research and publication of their article was funded, by naming financially supporting body(s) (written out in full) followed by associated grant number(s) in square brackets (if applicable), for example: “This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the National Science Foundation [grant number zzzz]; and a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant”.

If the research did not receive specific funding, but was performed as part of the employment of the authors, please name this employer. If the funder was involved in the manuscript writing, editing, approval, or decision to publish, please declare this.

Acknowledgments

All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the manuscript before the references. Anyone who made a contribution to the research or manuscript, but who is not a listed author, should be acknowledged (with their permission).

References

The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the bibliographic information No numbering in the inline text, direct author names along with the year should be provided within brackets before the punctuation marks (eg: Das et al., 2017). References are to be placed in alphabetical order at the end of the main text.

Format: ALL Author names WITH Initials (Year). Title. Journal Short Name. Vol(Issue no): Full Page nos.

Example:

Aduradola AM, Shinkafi MA (2003).Aspects of seed treatment for germination in Termarindus indica Linn. ASSET Series A. 33(4):29- 34.

Airi S, Bhatt ID, Bhatt A, Rawal RS, Dhar U (2009). Variations in seed germination of Hippophae salicifolia with different presoaking treatments. J. Forest. Res. 20(1): 27 -30.

Date formatting

Prime Scholars Library recommends writing dates out fully to avoid confusion with different all-numeral date styles. For example, 11/10/2018 could be 10 November 2018 or 11 October 2018 depending on the reader, therefore, the date should be written out in full. For example, the date September 1, 2018 can be used rather than 01/09/2018 or 09/01/2018.

Units of measurement

Units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using the International System of Units (SI).

Preparation of figures

Upon submission of an article, authors should include all figures and tables in the PDF file of the manuscript. Figures and tables should not be submitted in separate files. If the article is accepted, authors will be asked to provide the source files of the figures. Each figure should be supplied in a separate electronic file. All figures should be cited in the manuscript in a consecutive order. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or bitmap formats (Photoshop, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.

Maps. Prime Scholars Library remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps. For reasons of consistency, authors are requested to use accepted standard maps as the basis for map figure drawing, for example using the latest standard base-map of Map Press. Responsibility for maps rests with the author and it is their responsibility to also provide any copyright or licence information when using maps that are not owned or created by the author (e.g. Google Maps, etc.)

Preparation of tables

Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used.

Authors may appeal if they feel that the decision to reject was based on: i) a major misunderstanding over a technical aspect of the manuscript, or ii) a failure understand the scientific advance shown by the manuscript. Appeals requesting a second opinion without sufficient justification will not be considered. To lodge an appeal, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript number. Appeals will only be considered from the original submitting author.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary materials are the additional parts to a manuscript, such as audio files, video clips, or datasets that might be of interest to readers. Authors can submit one file of supplementary material along with their manuscript through the Manuscript Tracking System. If there is more than one file, they can be uploaded as a .ZIP file.

A section titled “Supplementary Material” should be included before the references list with a concise description for each supplementary material file. Supplementary materials are not modified by our production team. Authors are responsible for providing the final supplementary materials files that will be published along with the article.

Proofs

Corrected proofs must be returned to the publisher within two to three days of receipt. The publisher will do everything possible to ensure prompt publication.

Copyright and permissions

Authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts, and all Open Access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. The submitting author is responsible for securing any permissions needed for the reuse of copyrighted materials included in the manuscript.

While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

Reporting guidelines

Authors are strongly encouraged to use appropriate reporting guidelines when preparing and submitting manuscripts, to maximise transparency and reproducibility. Our editors and reviewers are also encouraged to use them in the review process. Completed checklists should be provided in the supplementary files on submission. We particularly encourage the use of:

  • CONSORT for randomized controlled trials
  • TREND for non-randomized trials
  • PRISMA for systematic review and meta-analyses
  • CARE for case reports
  • STROBE for observational studies
  • STREGA for genetic association studies
  • SRQR for qualitative studies
  • STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies
  • ARRIVE for animal experiments

Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also known as ‘competing interests’) occur when issues outside research could be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment. For more information, see our publication ethics policy. Authors must declare all potential interests – whether or not they actually had an influence – in a ‘Conflicts of Interest’ section, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. If there are none, the authors should state “The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.” Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests. Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

Authors must declare current or recent funding (including for Article Processing Charges) and other payments, goods or services that might influence the work. All funding, whether a conflict or not, must be declared in the “Funding Statement”. The involvement of anyone other than the authors who 1) has an interest in the outcome of the work; 2) is affiliated to an organization with such an interest; or 3) was employed or paid by a funder, in the commissioning, conception, planning, design, conduct, or analysis of the work, the preparation or editing of the manuscript, or the decision to publish must be declared.
You may be asked to make certain changes to your manuscript as a result of your declaration. These requests are not an accusation of impropriety. The Editor or reviewer is helping you to protect your work against potential criticisms.

If you are in any doubt about declaring a potential conflict, remember that if it is revealed later – especially after publication – it could cause more problems than simply declaring it at the time of submission. Undeclared conflicts of interest could lead to a corrigendum or, in the most serious cases, a retraction.

Authors may appeal if they feel that the decision to reject was based on: i) a major misunderstanding over a technical aspect of the manuscript, or ii) a failure understand the scientific advance shown by the manuscript. Appeals requesting a second opinion without sufficient justification will not be considered. To lodge an appeal, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript number. Appeals will only be considered from the original submitting author.

Appeals

Authors may appeal if they feel that the decision to reject was based on: i) a major misunderstanding over a technical aspect of the manuscript, or ii) a failure understand the scientific advance shown by the manuscript. Appeals requesting a second opinion without sufficient justification will not be considered. To lodge an appeal, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript number. Appeals will only be considered from the original submitting author.

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