Author Guidelines

updated on 2020-11-25

Please also read the sections on Publication Ethics, Data Privacy and Licensing

The Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality (JABFQ) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles and review articles.

A manuscript must be submitted on the understanding that it has not been published in any other peer-reviewed journal or a book or an edited collection, and is currently not under consideration for any such publication. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all co-authors.

Manuscript Structure

1. Manuscript outline

All figures and tables are to be included within a single file, placed before the reference section. Additional data files (e.g. figures, tables) that contain information directly supportive to the document can be accepted as supplementary files. Supplementary files are published exactly as provided, and are not copyedited.

The language of the journal is English. The manuscript should be submitted as a Microsoft Word compatible document (.doc, .docx, .odf, .rtf or the like). Please make use of line numbering for easier correspondence with the reviewers.

The manuscript should comprise the following parts in this order: Summary, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, Conflict of Interest, References, ORCID, Author’s address.

The name of the participating research facility or institution should be given at the head of the first page, followed by the title and short title of the manuscript and the name(s) of the author(s). Please indicate the corresponding author (not necessarily identical with the submitting author). The summary should be self-contained and makes no use of citations. It should not exceed 200 words.

Acknowledgments (if applicable) must be included before the references section and may include supporting grants. After the Acknowledgements, a paragraph ‘Conflict of interest’ must be included. If there are no conflicts, the sentence “No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.” is added. Please consult the journal’s statement on Publication Ethics for definition of ‘conflict of interest’. After the References, the ORCIDs of the authors should be added. If you or your co-authors do not have an ORCID yet, please consider registering for one at https://orcid.org/. At the end of the paper, the complete postal address including a valid e-mail address of the corresponding author is to be added.

1.1 Introduction

The introduction should be written in a concise form. Do not use subheadings. Important findings relevant for the manuscript as well as the scientific background should be described and the relevant publications should be cited. Please limit the introduction to what is necessary for the reader to understand the topic and clearly state your objective. Do not try to list as much literature as possible. At the end of the introduction, a clear research hypothesis and aim of the study should be given.

1.2 Materials and methods

Materials and methods have to be described in a precise manner so that the reader can reproduce the experiments. If you used biological material, clearly state its origin, growing conditions (soil, climate/weather, GPS coordinates, treatments with fertilizer or active substances, …), harvesting procedure and any detail needed for replication or proper comparison of your data. Details on statistical analyses including number of replicates, statistical testing procedures, and, if applicable, methods of randomization, sample pooling and reasons for exclusion of data or subjects from the study, are to be included. If several methods are described, the use of subsections is recommended.

1.3 Results and Discussion

The sections “Results” and “Discussion” may each be divided by subheadings or may be combined. Data that is presented in tables or graphs should not be re-iterated in the text. Please focus on highlights and important differences. The discussion should not be a simple repetition of the results or the introduction. Instead, a critical reflection of the findings and comparison to previously published studies is expected. The novelty of the work and the additional value for the scientific field should be demonstrated. At the end of the manuscript, the main conclusions of the work should explain its importance and relevance.

1.4 Nomenclature

Generally, scientific names of plants and animals should be italicized. Units should be presented using System International (SI) units. When using abbreviations throughout the text, spell them out upon first use within the text. Do not use a table to list abbreviations.

1.5 Tables and Figures

Not all numerical data must be presented in tables. Data comprising of only few data points or 'yes/no' or '+/-' data types as well as overviews of experimental conditions and data with only one variable are best presented in written form in the results section.

Tables should be labeled with a descriptive title and should be cited in the text consecutively. Units should be included in the column heading, abbreviations or symbols (asterisks, superscript letters, …) used in the table should be explained in a caption below.

If results of a statistical analysis are included, please provide information on number of replicates, type of test, significance level and so on directly at the table. Tables can be printed one or two columns wide (87mm or 180mm) in the final article.

All figures and pictures have to be original work by the authors. In case you want to include a picture from another source, please provide written permission from the copyright holder. Be aware, that you might no longer hold the copyright on your own pictures if you have published them previously in another journal. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, etc.) or bitmap formats (TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be at least of 300 dpi resolution; one column width is 87mm, two-column width is 180mm. Please check if all important details are recognizable when your picture is scaled to these sizes and choose the appropriate width. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers. There is no fee for colour pictures. Should you decide to colour your diagrams, please keep in mind that not all readers might print them in colour. Also remember that about 9% of the male population suffers from red-green-blindness. Refrain from using 3D diagrams or pie charts.

1.6 References

The authors are solely responsible for completeness and accuracy of the cited references. A standard article should contain no more than 40 references. Focus on the most important and relevant literature and data. Only cite literature you have read yourself and could provide a copy of to the editor. Refrain from citing articles from dubious sources / predatory journals. If we cannot track an article or the journal it was published in or if the cited item clearly lacks credibility, we might ask you to remove it from your manuscript.

Please have a look at an article from the current issue of the JABFQ for formatting of in-text citations and the style of the reference list. Journal names are to be abbreviated according to the ISI journal abbreviation index. Author and editor names have to be written in small caps and not all capital letters! If available, each reference in the reference list should be provided with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). If you cite research data, please refer to them as same as to articles with respect to both in-text citation and style of the reference list. The necessary items of a data citation are author/creator, year, title, publisher/distributor, DOI and, if present, data type and version. If not visible or obvious, please use the DOI citation formatter to identify the necessary items for a citation.

EndNote users may download the JABFQ citation style file here. To achieve the correct style, your EndNote library must contain abbreviated journal titles. Citavi users can find the correct citation style with their Citavi stylefile list under 'Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality'.

Journal articles:

Sschützendübel, A., Schwanz, P., Teichmann, T., Gross, K., Langenfeld-Heyser, R., Godbold, D.L., Polle, A., 2001: Cadmium-induced changes in antioxidative systems, hydrogen peroxide content, and differentiation in scots pine roots. Plant Physiol. 127, 87-898. DOI: 10.1104/pp.127.3.887.

Books:

AOCS, 1998: Official methods and recommended practices of the American Oil Chemists Society. Methods 5th ed. Champaign, IL, USA: AOCS Press.

Research data:

Oliveira, I., Pinto, T., Faria, M., Bacelar, E., Ferreira, H., Correia, C., Goncalves, B., 2017: Correlations between morphological and biochemical characteristics of five common medicinal and aromatic plants. Data from Oliveira, I., Pinto, T., Faria, M., Bacelar, E., Ferreira, H., Correia, C., Goncalves, B., 2017: Morphometrics and chemometrics as tools for medicinal and aromatic plants characterization. J. Appl. Bot. Food Qual. 90, 31-42. DOI: 10.5073/JABFQ.2017.090.006 . OpenAgrar – Repository, DOI:10.5073/openagrar.2017.000001

Web page:

EFSA, 2015: Neonicotinoids: foliar spray uses confirmed as a risk to bees. Retrieved 3^rd February 2016, from http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/150826.

2. Mandatory letter to the editor

The authors have to submit a short letter to the editorA along with their manuscript. This should contain a short outline of the experimental plan, a statement on the novelty of the work and suggestions for at least three reviewers. Full names, affiliations and email addresses of potential reviewers are to be included. Co-workers employed by the same institution as the submitting author or former co-authors should not be named as reviewers. The letter to the editor can be submitted by pasting text into the respective free text field within the submission form or by uploading a separate document.

3. Data availability and deposition

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. JABFQ strongly recommends authors to deposit all data and related metadata underlying the findings reported in a submitted manuscript in an appropriate public repository. The repository may be either general (e.g. Dryad, Zenodo) or subject-specific. JABFQ works close together with OpenAgrar, a subject-specific repository for agricultural research, which publishes and deposits the data without further costs. In OpenAgrar the article and data publication are bi-directional linked and to both a DOI is assigned making them citable, accessible and discoverable. Authors interested in depositing their data in the OpenAgrar repository can contact ulrike.stahl@julius-kuehn.de for further information. JABFQ defines the “underlying data” as the data set used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript with related metadata and methods, and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. Whether processed or raw data should be published depends on how the standard is to share data in the field.

Editorial Workflow

1. Electronic Submission

To facilitate rapid publication and minimize administrative costs, submissions are only accepted through the online tracking system. Users from China may encounter problems when trying to register. This is due to a blocking of the Google captcha service, that protects the website from spam accounts. In this case, please contact ojs@julius-kuehn.de. We will create an account for you manually, so you can proceed to submit your work.

Submissions by anyone else but one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and the peer-review process. Please list the names of all authors in the same order they appear on the manuscript. A valid email address has to be entered for each author. These addresses will not be published online but need to be archived together with the manuscript. The co-authors will receive automated notifications upon submission of  the manuscript and when the editorial decision is made. Only substantial contributors to the manuscript or the science presented therein should be named as authors.
Along with their manuscript, the authors have to submit a letter to the editor, which contains a short outline of the experimental plan, a statement on the novelty of the work and suggestions for at least three reviewers. Full names, affiliations and email addresses of potential reviewers are to be included. Co-workers employed by the same institution as the submitting author or former co-authors should not be named as reviewers.The letter to the editor can be submitted by pasting text into the respective free text field within the submission form or by uploading a separate document.
If problems occur during the online submission, the author can contact ojs@julius-kuehn.de for technical support.

The submitting author will be asked to agree to the following terms on behalf of all co-authors:

• I assure that all authors listed on the manuscript agreed to this submission and that I am authorized to act on their behalf. All authors have substantially contributed to the manuscript and all contributers are listed as authors.
• The manuscript has not been published in any other peer-reviewed journal or in a book or edited collection, and is not under consideration for any such publication.
• I accept that the manuscript will be screened for plagiarism and falsified data and I am willing to provide original data to reviewers and editors should the need arise.
• The manuscript is original work by the authors and does not violate any third-party rights. I have read the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license and agree to them.
• I have provided the mandatory letter to the editor including reviewer suggestions
• I confirm that the manuscript complies with the author guidelines and publishing policies of the Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality.

The author has to choose a thematic section of the journal, to which they want to submit their manuscript. Independently from the chosen section, all manuscripts are evaluated by an Editor-in-Chief first, not by a specific section editor. If the editorial team sees a better fit of a manuscript to another section than the one the author chose, this might be adjusted. Available sections are:

• Plant physiology
• Plant ecology
• Plant biotechnology
• Plant breeding and cultivation
• Plant nutrition
• Plant stress and tolerance
• Plant microbiology and phytopathology
• Plant analysis
• Plant food chemistry

2. Processing Steps

The submitting author can track the processing stage and the date of the last changes of their manuscript online. These stages are:

Unassigned - no editor was assigned yet
In review - an editor is assigned and carries out the initial editorial review, followed by invitation of external reviewers, then waiting for reviews to arrive, decision making on the manuscript, and finally awaiting a revised version from the authors
Copyediting – the accepted manuscript is checked for adherence to the journal style (formatting of references, …), some manuscripts may be sent to an external copyediting service for correction of grammar and spelling.
In production - payment of the publication fee is underway, typesetting, proofreading, finalizing the PDF, registration of the DOI, online publication
Archived - the manuscript is either rejected or published and no longer in progress

3. Review

All submitted manuscripts are initially evaluated by an editor. This includes a short review of the topic, the experimental setup and the language. If the manuscript passes the initial evaluation, it will be sent to peer-reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors. The final decision is made by the responsible editor-in-chief or section editor based on the reviews and his/her own opinion of the manuscript. The reviewers' comments will be provided to the author along with the editorial decision.

4. Revisions

Revisions should be completed within six weeks if the editor decides that a minor revision of a manuscript is required. After this period, the author will be reminded once before the original submission will be declined and archived. If a major revision is required and additional experiments and thus more time are needed, please inform the responsible editor ahead of time.

5. Production and publication

After copyediting, the author will receive detailed instructions where to request the official invoice and how to process the payment of the article processing charge. After the amount is credited to the journal’s account, the typesetting begins.

The author will be asked  to proofread the galley. Corrected proofs must be returned to the layout editor within 5 business days of receipt. The publisher will do everything possible to ensure prompt publication. Therefore, it is important that the manuscript and figures comply with the journal's guidelines for formatting and style.

The author will be informed when the final article is published online.