Author guidelines

General remarks

• The following guideline concerns new submissions as well as resubmissions (postreview submissions).
• It is strongly recommended that authors check spam folder regularly during editorial process to avoid missing important notifications.
• After initial acceptance, the manuscript will be converted to a PDF file for review purpose and processed against plagiarism via Similarity Check (http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck/index.html) for originality.
• During editorial process, any revised version of the manuscript must be submitted within 2 months; if provided later, the revised version may be considered as a new submission.

Detailed guidelines

• The submission must be composed as a single MS Word (or its alternative) file. The file must include all supportive materials such as figures, tables, or appendices.
• The spelling of the manuscript must be US English.
• Page size: A4 (210 × 297 mm).
• Text: formatted with 12-point Times New Roman font; double-spaced, left-aligned paragraphs.
• Line numbers: enabled.
• The maximum number of characters (including spaces) should not exceed:
  - 50,000 for the original research paper;
  - 15,000 for short communication;
  - 80,000 for other article types.
• Use SI units and symbols whenever possible.
• The manuscript size cannot exceed 48 MB.
• The first page of the manuscript must contain:
  - article type (original research paper, short communication, review, checklist, etc.);
  - article title;
  - abstract (max. 300 words, which summarize briefly the results and conclusions of the research; do not include any citations here);
  - keywords (max. eight keywords separated with semicolon);
  - running head (i.e., the shortened title of the submission; max. eight words).

On subsequent pages, include the main text, which must be properly structured, according to the article type.

Article sections

For the original research paper, the required separate top-level sections are: “Introduction”, “Material and methods”, “Results”, “Discussion”; for other article types, including short communication, review, and checklist, the above structure is not required and customized sections are acceptable; each top-level section may contain up to four levels of subsections.

Additionally, the following sections are mandatory for all article types:

• financing (provide statement about research funding here; all sources should be mentioned, including grants, statutory and private funds, etc.);
• authors’ contributions (this section is mandatory for submissions with at least two authors; determine each author’s contribution qualitatively, not quantitively, e.g., research designing, conducting experiments, writing the manuscript, etc.);
• references (the number of references should be kept to a minimum).

In-text citations and reference list

We encourage authors to use reference management software to format in-text citations and reference list. Please follow APA ver. 7 to organize these elements of the manuscript. Below we present some basic rules and common examples related to citing and formatting sources. More detailed guidelines and examples are available on https://apastyle.apa.org/

Use author–date citation format in the main text, table, figure caption, etc. to cite corresponding entry in the reference list.

In-text citations

Citing single source:

• single author: “(Ruzin, 1999)”;
• two authors: “(Taiz & Zeiger, 2002)”;
• three and more authors: “(Mirek et al., 2002)”.

Citing multiple sources:

• place in-text citations in alphabetical order and separate each source with a semicolon: “(Mirek et al., 2002; Ruzin, 1999; Taiz & Zeiger, 2002)”;
• to cite sources having the same author(s) and year, use lowercase letter after the year: “(Wilson, 1999a, 1999b)”.

Above examples show parenthetical citations. In-text citations may also appear in narrative format, e.g., “As Imaichi (2008) noted…”.

Reference list

• Organize items in the reference list alphabetically, by the surname of the first author. Arrange references having the same first author chronologically, the oldest first. If both the author(s) and publication year are the same, add a lowercase letter after the year (similarly as in corresponding in-text citations; see above).
• For each reference item, list all first 20 authors. If there are more than 20 authors, including the first 19 authors, add an ellipsis (“…”), and then the last author. For reference items with at least two authors, include comma and ampersand (“, &”) before the last author.
• Use full journal names.
• For non-English references, provide English translation and original title in square brackets.
• Include DOI for all references having this identifier assigned. Use the following online service to look up a DOI: https://doi.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery
• For books, include only publisher name, without publication place; if a book has more than one publisher, separate publishers with semicolon. Do not include book series titles.
• For websites, do not include a website in a reference list if it is only mentioned generally (include url in the main text instead); provide date of retrieval only for pages that are likely to change over time, e.g., Google Maps.

Sample references:

Article in a journal, with DOI:

• Dąbrowska, M. A., Rola, K., Volkova, P., Suda, J., & Zalewska-Gałosz, J. (2015). Genome size and phenotypic variation of Nymphaea (Nymphaeaceae) species from Eastern Europe and temperate Asia. Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae, 84(2), 277–286. https://doi.org/10.5586/asbp.2015.016

Article in a journal with article number instead of page numbers, with DOI:

• Malinowski, D. P., Pinchak, W. E., Pitta D., & Min B. R. (2018). Solar radiation affects bloat potential of wheat forage. Acta Agrobotanica, 71(4), Article 1754. https://doi.org/10.5586/aa.1754

Book:

• Ruzin, S. (1999). Plant microtechnique and microscopy. Oxford University Press.

Book with edition number other than 1st:

• Taiz, L., & Zeiger, E. (2002). Plant physiology (3rd ed.). Sinauer Associates.

Edited book:

• Bremer, K. (Ed.). (1994). Asteraceae: cladistics & classification. Timber Press.

Chapter in a book, with DOI:

• Imaichi, R. (2008). Meristem organization and organ diversity. In T. A. Ranker & C. H. Haufler (Eds.), Biology and evolution of ferns and lycophytes (pp. 75–104). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511541827.004

Webpages and websites (here, date refers to publication date, not retrieval date, which is only required for webpages with content likely to change over time, in which case add full retrieval date before url):

• World Health Organization. (2018, February 20). Antimicrobial resistance. https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/antimicrobial-resistance

Map (with non-English title translated in the square brackets):

• Krogulec, E., & Wierchowiec, J. (2000). Mapa geologiczno-gospodarcza Polski [Economic-geological map of Poland] [Map]. Państwowy Instytut Geologiczny.

Supportive materials

Supportive materials, such as figures, tables, or appendices must be consecutively numbered, depending on the order they appear in the text. This may also apply to equations/formulae if they are referenced multiple times within the text. When referring the supportive materials in the text, use full labels, e.g., Table 1, Figure 1.

Insert supportive materials after the main text and references.

Figures
- should be saved in jpg or png format and saved in separate files. Please do not include figures in a Word file. Figures files should be attached to the publication platform separately during the manuscript submission
- should be of good quality, at least 300 dpi
- the publication's authors should prepare figures consisting of subfigures as one figure. Individual subfigures should be marked with capital letters A, B, C ...
- captions for figures and subfigures should be included in the main file of the manuscript (Word file; not under figures in graphic format)

Tables
Dedicated MS Word (or its alternative) tools must be used to create tables; do not use tabs and spaces.

Appendices
These comprise supporting information in the form of tables, figures, datasets, etc., which:

• will not be included in the published article but will be linked with it;
• is not crucial for understanding the results but complements the study significantly;
• does not fit into the final article layout (e.g., large tables or figures, video, audio).

This information must be referred by adding leading “S” ahead of the number, e.g., Table S1, Figure S1. Please note that these materials will not be edited and will be published exactly as submitted.