Journal Policies

Peer Review Process

The journal observed practice is a closed peer review (the identity of authors is hidden from reviewers, and vice versa).

All submissions to the journal are initially assessed by the Editor-in-Chief, who decides (relying optionally on the journal editors’ additional opinions) whether they should be sent for peer review. The final decision on submitted paper’s publication is taken by Editor-in-Chief, based on at least two independent reviewers’ opinions and recommendation of the Associate Editor (and, optionally, recommendation of the Editorial Council).

Submitted manuscript (after initial acceptance) will be converted to a PDF file (available on the Review page of the submission) for review purpose.

Two review rounds are allowed for each submission. Authors are entitled to one revision of the paper after the first review round; exceptionally, the minor revision is acceptable after the second review round. They should address the critical remarks of the reviewers and editors and refer to these remarks in a separate letter to the editor submitted together with the revised files. Submissions accepted for publication will be made available (as copyedited and typeset preview version of the final paper) for proofreading, which should be limited to the correction of typographic errors.

A revised version of the manuscript must be submitted via the online editorial system within two months; if provided after the period of two months, the revised version will be considered as a new submission.

Publication Frequency

Starting from 2021 (Vol. 74), Acta Agrobotanica transforms into annual – there won’t be issues within a volume, but the volume numbering remains intact and will be continued. The articles will be published continuously, which means that an article will be published in its final and complete version of record as soon as all editorial works have been finalized.

Open Access Policy

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

Publication Ethics

Acta Agrobotanica is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and aims to follow the COPE’s Code of Conduct. In case of the discovered misconduct on the author’s part such as plagiarism, falsifying data, or double publication, the journal Editorial Team will call for explanation and then undertake appropriate steps by following the COPE flowcharts or seeking advice on particular issues at the COPE forum. This may eventually include notification of authorities at the author's institution, the withdrawal of the article in question and the exclusion of any further submissions of the same author from being processed by the journal.

Authorship

The journal endorses the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidance concerning authorship credit. According to the guidance the authorship should be “based on the following 4 criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.”.

“Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading.”.

The following authorship problems should be prevented before submitting a paper: “ghostwriting” and “guest authorship”. Ghostwriting refers to the case when a person who made substantial contributions to a publication is not credited as an author or, in case of purely technical support, insufficienf for authorship, the person is not acknowledged in a publication. Guest authorship is the opposite situation, when a person appears in the publication as an author despite insignificant contribution or even absence from the scientific process.

Contributorship

In case of more than one author contributing to the research, individual contributions (substantial, not percentage) of each author must be specified in the manuscript (in the “Authors' contributions” section; e.g., research designing: Author1; conducting experiments: Author2; writing the manuscript: Author1, Author2; etc.). This information will be published in the article.

Changes in authorship

In accordance with COPE guidelines, any changes in authorship require written consent of all authors sent individually via direct email to the Editor-in-Chief. Each of them must issue a statement on the acceptance of the proposed changes in the authorship of submitted manuscripts or published articles. Corresponding author takes responsibility for providing clear reason for the change(s) and should coordinate interaction between the authors and the Editor-in-Chief. In case no satisfactory agreement can be reached among the authors, they must contact their parent institution(s) for final decision; the editors take no responsibility to resolve such disagreements. If a change in authorship pertains to the already published paper, it will be executed by publishing a correction article.

Competing Interests

Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well the conflict of interest is handled.

Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his or her actions. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. They vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence scientific judgment. They may also exist when an individual is not aware of it. Financial relationships, such as employment, consultancies, honoraria, paid expertises are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. However, conflicts may occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

If any conflict of interest exists, it is obligatory that each author (step 3 of the submission process) and reviewer (review step 4) declares it.

Default Timing

Please note that the default timing for editorial and review operations may go beyond the specified below.

Editors

• From submission to first decision (whether or not the manuscript will be sent out for review): maximum 4 weeks
• To reach decision for reviewed manuscripts: maximum 4 weeks
• From acceptance to online: maximum 8 weeks

Reviewers (single review round)

• Accept/decline review request: maximum 7 days
• Review: maximum 4 weeks

Authors

• Revise (when the initial submission does not conform to the journal requirements or when the paper is resubmitted for subsequent revision or review): maximum 2 months

Corrections, Retractions, and Commenting

In general, the journal publishes corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern by following the COPE guidelines.

Corrections

Minor corrections (clarifications) will be possible through comments posted by the editors to the online version of the article. Major corrections will be published via correction article, fully indexed and linked to the original paper. Major corrections cover errors that significantly affect the understanding of the original article.

Commenting

Readers may also post comments. Editors reserve the right to remove the comment if its content is inconsistent with generally accepted ethical principles.

Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers are requested to treat submissions in strict confidence.

Author Self-Archiving

Authors are permitted to post: (i) the original manuscript (preprint) – in any repository or on their website, (ii) the accepted for publication version of the manuscript (postprint) – in any repository or on their website, (iii) the publisher-created published version – in any online service, with the exception that the preprint shouldn’t be available during the review process in this journal to comply with double-blind review requirements. Additionally, authors should ensure that the prepublication version of the work if shared is (i) accompanied by an appropriate note describing the work as a preprint or postprint and that (ii) upon publication, it is linked with the published work (e.g., the prepublication version is amended to include DOI of the published work).

Verify the policy at SHERPA/RoMEO.

Digital Archiving

The published articles are deposited to the Library of Science (maintained by the Center for Open Science), to the National Library of Poland, and to the Internet Archive.