Publication ethics

Version 2: 10^th Jan. 2020: The information about plagiarism and used plagiarism detection software was updated. Additionally, the guidelines regarding a conflicts of interest statement werde specified.

Correction/Retraction

We encourage authors to notify us if they discover an error in one of their already published articles. Depending on the severity, we will correct or retract the article. If the article is corrected, we will publish the corrected version via a Corrigendum with additional short notes to readers which corrections were made.

If the article is retracted, it will not be deleted, however, labled with a clear retraction note and complemented with reasons for the retraction and who is retracting the article. Reasons for a retraction are: double publication, plagiarism, copyright violation, unreliable data due to data fabrication or honest error, willful exclusion of a legitimate author and otherwise unethical behavior.

If any reader notices a major problem, please bring it to the attention to the editor-in-chief or managing editor (journal-kulturpflanzen@julius-kuehn.de). We adhere to the retraction guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Authorship

Manuscripts submitted by third parties and thus not by one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author assumes responsibility for the manuscript during the submission and peer review process.

Only people who contributed substantially to the writing of a manuscript or to the research presented therein should be named as authors. Should a manuscript feature a suspiciously long author list, the submitting author might be asked to state who contributed what to the submission.

Changes to the author list after submission have to be discussed with the responsible editor and are only permitted in exceptional cases, for example when additional work was required during the revision of the manuscript. All co-authors have to agree to the change.

Self-Citation

Authors should cite their previous publications where appropriate but should avoid excessive self-citation. In cases of an unusually large number of self-citations reviewers and editors will evaluate if the citations are relevant and substantial and may request deleting individual self-citations.

We do not request authors to cite from previous issues of the Journal of Cultivated Plants for the sake of impact improvement and citing many articles of the Journal of Cultivated Plants does not influence the editor’s decision. However, authors are free to cite from the journal if suitable.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is "The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own" (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, 2nd ed.). In any form, plagiarism is not acceptable in scholarly publications. Therefore, the editors of the Journal of Cultivated Plants will take action if plagiarism is detected by reviewers or editors, in any stage of the article process. The plagiarism detection software used is "Docoloc" (https://www.docoloc.de/). If a high percentage of the text is marked as probably plagiarised, especially within the introduction and discussion section, the editors will check the marked text in detail. If the suspicion of plagiarism is thereby confirmed, the submission will be rejected and archived. The authors of such rejected manuscripts are not allowed to resubmit their manuscript again.

Text recycling

While text recycling, also called self-plagiarism, is sometimes unavoidable when describing a method, we take it seriously in all other parts of a manuscript. All incoming submissions are screened for plagiarism and the authors’ previous publications are checked for substantial overlap. If an author chooses to split one big experiment into several publications, they should make a clear statement on this in their manuscript, explain their decision and cite the other publication.

It is difficult for scientists to handle the ever-increasing amount of published research articles. Therefore, results should be presented as concise and complete as possible and not be scattered in several articles across different journals.

Conflict of interest – Authors

Autors have to include a conflicts of interest statement after the acknowledgement section within their manuscripts, regardless whether there are conflicts of interest or not. If they exist, a detailed statement of type and extent has to be delivered. Conflicts of interest occur, e. g., if the author's research was (partially) funded by companies associated with the investigated subject (i.e. a company that produces or markets an investigated substance or cultivar) or if one of the authors is associated with such a company, although no direct funding was provided.

Conflict of interest – Reviewers

Editors take great care to select reviewers, who have not previously published together with the authors of the manuscript and who are not employed by the same institution as the authors. Although the review is double-blind and reviewers and authors remain anonymous throughout the editorial process, a reviewer might notice a connection to the authors of a manuscript. In that case, reviewers are asked to inform the editor and step down from their assignment. Reviewers should also decline to undertake the review, if their own work is too close to the described study and could be seen as competition. Authors can ask the editor not to consider certain individuals as reviewers for their manuscript, if they suspect a conflict of interest.

Conflict of interest – Editors

Editors are allowed to publish in the journal, since it is the central publishing organ of their institution or learned society.
Being a member of the Editorial Team or an employee of the publisher does not influence the expectations on quality and novelty of the presented research nor the outcome of the reviewing and editorial decision process.