Editorial Policy & Workflow

All submitted manuscripts to Asian Journal of Agriculture and Biology (AJAB) undergo extensive peer-review process and circulate among Author, Editorial Office, Editor/Associate Editor, Reviewer, and Publisher before final publication. The whole process consists of following editorial workflow:

All steps, from manuscript submission to final publication, are performed in the eJManager. All submitted manuscripts are initially quality controlled by the Editorial Office for manuscript formatting, reference provision, plagiarism checking and completion of all necessary files required to perform review process. Once initial quality controls are passed, the manuscript is forwarded to appropriate Editor / Section Editor depending upon the institution and previous co-publication record of the author with the Editor / Section Editor. Editor / Section Editor decides the initiation of review process or decline to do so based on the quality of the presented work and scope of the journal.

If Editor-in-Chief / Editor finds the manuscript of high quality and is within the aims and scope of the journal, the manuscript is forwarded for peer review to at least 3 or more subject experts in the field. Reviewers are requested to (i) assess each section of the manuscript for values ranging from 0 to 5, (ii) to provide comments to Author (iii) comments to Editor, (iv) recommendations (accept, reject, minor revision, or major revision) and (v) willingness to review the revise version of this manuscript in case of minor and major revision.

Based on the reviewers’ comments, suggestions and overall assessments, Editor-in-Chief / Editor recommends one of the following options:

(i) accept, (ii) reject, (iii) minor revision, (iv) major revision, (v) returned.

Reviewers can also upload a review report in the form of an attachment if the suggestions were made in a word document or in the manuscript directly.

In case of acceptance, author is notified and the publisher processes the manuscript for formatting, copy-editing, proofreading, reference linking, metadata generation for indexing and publication purposes. The rejected manuscripts are closed, whereas, manuscripts with minor or major revision require appropriate actions from the author for re-consideration by the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief either makes final recommendations or considers another round of review process.

Editor-in-Chief is final and decisive authority to make any recommendations on submitted manuscripts without involvement of the Editorial Office. This is mainly due to the fact that editors are leading personnel in the field and they make their recommendations on the basis of reviewers’ assessment. Also Editor-in-Chief / Editor can’t play external reviewers’ roles, except in occasional cases, to have fair, highly professional and dynamic peer-review system.

Peer Review Policy

AJAB performs single blind peer-review process, which means that reviewers know the authors whereas authors are not informed who have reviewed their manuscripts. In most cases, the submissions are peer-reviewed by at least three or more independent subject experts. They look to see if the provided article is novel, well-written, thorough, and does not duplicate previously scientific papers and merits publication in AJAB. If the paper is recommended for publishing in assessment reports by the peer reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief takes the final decision which is intimated to the corresponding author via email. Though sometimes tedious and time consuming, reviewing a manuscript is also a privilege and time of publication depends on reviewers’ response and may range from 2 to 5 months.

Plagiarism Policy

AJAB is committed to publishing only original material. The journal uses plagiarism detection software “Turnitin” to screen all submissions. Any instance of significant plagiarism, including self-plagiarism or text recycling, will be dealt with in accordance with COPE guidelines, which may result in rejection or retraction.

Policy on Use of Generative AI

AJAB considers that Generative AI (GenAI) presents both opportunities and challenges in scientific writing and academic publishing. AJAB does not prohibit GenAI use in preparation of manuscripts, however, it requires from authors to give declaration in the article text, explaining to which extent GenAI was used in preparation of their manuscript because authors are solely responsible for the integrity of their research work submitted to AJAB.

On use of GenAI, AJAB follows the guidelines of WAME and encourages authors to read and comply with these guidelines which are accessible through following link on WAME website:

https://wame.org/page3.php?id=106

Copyright Policy

For all articles published in AJAB, copyrights are retained by the authors. Articles published in AJAB are licensed under an open access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited which means anyone may download and read the articles for free.

Conflict of Interest Policy

A conflict of interest can occur when there is a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with, that could influence research. Full disclosure is required when you submit your research to AJAB. The journal editor will firstly use this information to inform his or her editorial decisions. They may then publish such disclosures to assist readers in evaluating the article. Or, instead, the editor may decide not to publish your article based on any declared conflict. You can declare the conflict of interest in your article text and your cover letter as well. In addition, you should fully acknowledge all funding sources supporting the work.

Open Access Policy

Open access (OA) is the act of giving unhindered access using the web, to peer-reviewed academic journal articles, propositions, academic monographs, and book sections. By making data unreservedly accessible, OA speeds up scrutiny and learning. AJAB is focused on advancing the worldwide information trade by making free accessibility of research studies to its readers. Along these lines, AJAB assists authors to accomplish an elevated degree of transparency and gives open access to all the published articles right away. Full text of articles is made accessible in PDF on AJAB website and is completely open access, quickly unreservedly accessible to read, download, and share.

Article Withdrawal Policy

Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication or published as ONLINE FIRST ahead of schedule but which have not been formally published with volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are determined to violate the publishing ethics guidelines such as multiple submission, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like, may be “Withdrawn” from the journal. Withdrawal means that the article files are removed and replaced with a PDF stating that the article has been withdrawn from the journal in accordance with AJAB Editorial Policies.

Return, Refund and Cancellation Policy

• When publishing article in Asian Journal of Agriculture and Biology (AJAB), the Author has the following cancellation right: The Author can withdraw her/his Article and cancel the declared intention to conclude the contract any time during the evaluation (peer-review) of the Article. Once the Article is accepted for publication, it may no longer be withdrawn by the Author. Any benefits or interests received by the Author up to the cancellation must be restituted to AJAB.
• When offering services to the Author, AJAB has the following cancellation right: AJAB may turn down or reject the Article anytime without specifying any reason and thus cancel the conclusion of the contract (submission). After the cancellation through AJAB, both parties are freed from any previous commitments of these Terms and Conditions. The Author shall be fully refunded if any service fees were already paid before the cancellation of the contract.
• In case a Customer pays more than invoiced by AJAB, any bank or transaction charges will be deduced from a partial refund of the overpaid amount.
• Once an article is published, AJAB will refund authors in exceptional circumstances only and a decision will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Shipping Policy

Articles published are available online accessible from the website and can be downloaded by the authors and other researchers freely. Being digital commodity, articles are not shipped through surface mails to the authors owing to AJAB being online only journal.

Privacy Policy

Authors and assessors contribute information such as names, email addresses, affiliations, and contact information on the AJAB website. Any information provided to this website will be protected from loss, misuse, unauthorized access or disclosure, alteration, or destruction. No information at any level is ever used for any purpose other than already mentioned and shared with any other party as per the journal’s privacy policy.

Digital Archiving Policy

All articles published in AJAB are archived in digital archives of Life Sciences Society for emergency backup and data restoration. Complete data is also stored and continuously updated in independent and secure hard drives for data security in case of digital blackouts. AJAB is in process of developing an agreement with LOCKSS and CLOCKS systems to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.