Editorial workflow

Editorial steps

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

Submission - The manuscript has been submitted and no editor was assigned yet
Review - An editor has been 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, headings,…)
Production - Typesetting, proofreading by the author, finalizing the PDF, registration of the DOI, online publication
Archives - The manuscript has either been rejected or was published and is not longer in progress

1 Submission

To facilitate rapid publication, submissions are only accepted through the Online Journal System. To submit a manuscript please register by clicking on "register" in the upper right corner of the screen. After successful registration and login, respectively, your are automatically directed to the submission site. To start a new submission click "New Submission". Please follow all the five submission steps. After successful submission you will receive a confirmation via e-mail. By logging in to the system you will be able to track your submission throughout the editorial process.

Only those mansucripts are accepted that have been submitted by one of the authors. The submitting author should be the corresponding author. If the submitting author is not the corresponding author, you can change the default settings by changing the primary contact in the list of contributors within the metadata entry. Please list all authors according to the order in the manuscript. For all authors a valid e-mal address has to be supplied to enable querries by the editors concerning the scientific integrity or to inform authors when the article has been published. However, only the e-mail address of the corresponding author will be published.

During the submission and the whole editorial process authors have the opportunity to direct an enquiry to the editors by using the field "Discussion". The discussions can be used e. g. to suggest reviewers. However, suggested reviewers should not have the same affiliation as one of the authors.

The submitting author has to agree to the following conditions:

  • 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.
  •  The manuscript was formatted according to the Author Guidelines of the Journal of Cultivated Plants.
  • 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. 

2 Review

2.1 Editorial review and check for plagiarism

All submitted manuscripts are initially evaluated by an editor. This includes a short review if the topic fits into the scope of the Journal of Cultivated Plants and if the experimental setup and the language are appropriate. Furthermore, manuscripts will undergo a check for plagiarism, if editors suspect this kind of misconduct. 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.

2.2 Peer-Review

If the manuscript passes the initial evaluation, it will be prepared for an anonymous peer review. Thereby, names of authors and affiliations as well as acknowledgements are removed. Afterwards the manuscript will be sent to at least two peer-reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors - unless the reviewers disclose their identity, voluntarily. If the reviewers reach an opposed assessment, a further reviewer will be asked to evaluate the manuscript. The final decision is made by the responsible managing editor 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.

3 Revisions

Revisions should be completed within six weeks. However, authors can ask to extend the deadline by opening a "new discussion". If major revisions are necessary, the editor can initiate a second review round and submit the revised manuscript to the reviewers again or to further reviewers.

4 Production and publication

After copyediting, the manuscript will be sent to a layout editor. Afterwards the author has the opportunity to proofread the PDF and to check for spelling and grammer errors within 5 business days. Subsequently, a final PDF (gallay) will be produced, scheduled and published.

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

An illustrated step-by-step guidance for authors about the whole editorial process from submission to proofreading the gallay can be found here.