Consent to Publisher Form (PDF Download)
Detailed Editorial and Review Policies
Very Important
Authors must provide a cover letter, which should be inserted as the first page of manuscript (or separately uploaded as supplementary file during online system submission), including manuscript's information, name and contact details (brief affiliations, reviewing interests, and emails, ORCID numbers, if available. Please be aware that no thesis or dissertation that already published or available in the websites or repository of universities will be considered for the publication in AJCS.
Submission of Consent to Publisher Form
We kindly request that you submit a signed consent form before we can begin the review process for your manuscript. This form is a necessary step to ensure that all ethical and procedural guidelines are met. The review process will not start until we receive the consent to the publisher form.
How to Submit the Consent Form:
Download the Form: The consent form can be accessed via this link here: Consent to Publisher Form or the link above this page.
Complete the Form: After downloading, please print the form and hand-write the following statement at the bottom of the form:
“I am aware of the publication policy and fees and also do not submit to any other journal simultaneously until a final decision is made by the journal.”
Sign and Date: After adding the handwritten statement, sign and date the form.
Upload the Form: Please upload the completed and signed consent form as a supplementary file along with your manuscript submission.
Submitting this form is crucial for us to proceed with the review of your manuscript. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out.
Editorial and Peer Review Policies
1) All submitted manuscripts will be rigorously reviewed by the editor-in-chief and/or editorial board and then two external peer-reviewers. Editors have access to the state-of-art plagiarism checkers and will examine the originality of the submitted work before starting the peer-review process.
2) An initial decision will be made within 5 days from the submission date based on initial evaluation of the editor-in-chief and/or editorial board whether the manuscript should be proceeded further to the peer-reviewing process or not. In the initial process, the editor checks the minimum English language requirement, originality, scientific quality and merits of the content. If authors did not receive any communication within 5 days, it may mean that their submission will proceed to the next stage (external peer-review). For this purpose we usually communicate with authors via the online system of the journal (OJS) and also by emails. Therefore, please ensure that you check your spam folder of the email that you have provided for the corresponding author. More important communications such as outcome of review process will be done via email of editor or managing editor.
3) The external peer-review process will normally take about 30-45 days. After receiving all reviewers comments, a final decision will be made and authors will be notified (usually by managing editor), exactly based on reviewers comments, views and recommendations.
4) It is authors responsibility to check their institutional requirements (with their research department) to find whether the AJCS does meet their criteria for publication such as indexing in databases. Upon submission, AJCS presumes that authors are fully aware and agree with the editorial policy and; therefore, does not accept any responsibility for this.
Please find full editorial policies and process here
Publication Ethics
Please read full detail of the ethical statement here.
AJCS publishing ethics is guided by COPE’s Code of Conduct. We aim to adhere to the COPE’s practice guidelines.
The editors and authors are expected to comply with practices in publication ethics including those pertaining to authorship (for example avoidance of ghost or guest authorship), dual submission, attribution, plagiarism, image integrity and figure preparation, and competing interests. Authors must also comply with AJCS policies on research ethics (human subjects research, animal research, global research). Details are provided in the COPE’s practice guidelines. Please also find a detailed AJCS's author and publication ethics statement here.
Concerns raised on publications
AJCS will carefully investigate concerns raised by editors, readers, authors and reviewers about submissions or publications regardless of the time since publication or study completion. AJCS will take steps to correct or clarify the scientific record if necessary, which may include issuing a correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
Copyrights and responsibilities for authors
No copyright will be held by AJCS and authors are the sole copyright holder of their contents and also responsible for the accuracy and honesty of their data. AJCS only keeps the "consent to publisher's form" signed by authors for its future reference and possible concerns and conflicts which may rise in the future.
English Language Editing Service Prior to submission
Authors who believe their manuscripts would benefit from professional editing, especially from non-English speaking countries, are encouraged to use a language-editing service. A sample list of English language editing companies can be found here: English Language Service
Preparation of Manuscript and Style
Full Research Papers
1) The journal language is English. British English or American English spelling and terminology may be used in article. Please provide your manuscript in double-spaced (or 1.5), Times and New Roman font (size 12) left alignment, Word format. Contributors who are not native English speakers are strongly encouraged to ensure that a colleague fluent in the English language, if none of the authors is so, has reviewed their manuscript. The journal has an option to facilitate language correction of manuscripts, if the authors are not sure about the correctness of manuscript grammar and spelling.
2) Style of papers Original research papers should generally not exceed 12 pages of printed text, excluding references, tables and figures legends (one page of printed text = approx. 600 words). A manuscript for a research paper should be assembled in the following order: Title, Author (s), Affiliation(s) (if the senior author is not the corresponding author, this is indicated) Keywords, Abbreviations, Abstract, Introduction, Results, Discussion (results and discussion may be combined), Materials and methods, Conclusion, Acknowledgments, References. Tables and figures (JPEG/75 DPI or even higher) should be placed at the end of manuscript, after reference section, and numbered consecutively (eg. for figures, Fig 1., Fig 2...... and for tables Table 1., Table 2. etc.). Please place tables and figures at the end of manuscript consecutively. Please make sure that the total size of your manuscript is not more than 2 MB for review purposes.
-----------------------IMPORTANT FOR SUBMISSION PROCESS-----------------------
A) During the submission process, when authors entered the abstract and clicked OK to proceed, if submission system asked to enter the abstract again, please ignore that message and click OK again to proceed. Please contact tony.elders@gmail.com, if you faced any problem during submission process.
B) The file size SHOULD NOT be more than 2 MB, otherwise you will encounter problems to submit. If so, please submit figures as supplementary data or turn your MS to PDF. This will reduce the file size.
C) Authors will be asked to download, sign and submit the Consent to Publisher as soon as they received the review report, when revisions requested by reviewers. Upon receipt of consent to publisher authors may not be allowed to withdraw their submission.
D) Papers are only considered for publication on the understanding that no substantial part has been, or will be, submitted/ published elsewhere. Publication of a paper in Australian Journal of Crop Science implies that papers will be distributed freely to researchers, for non-commercial purposes without any limitations. By submission of manuscripts to AJCS, authors agree to transfer consent to the publisher form (upon acceptance). Authors will remain the copyright holder of their work.
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Research notes should not exceed six pages of printed text (one page of printed text = approx. 600 words), including references, tables and figures. A manuscript for a research note should be assembled in the following order: Title, Author(s), Affiliation(s) (if the senior author is not the corresponding author, this is indicated) Key words, Abstract, Abbreviations, Manuscript text, Acknowledgments, References. Tables and Figures (JPEG) should be cited in the appropriate area in the text with the legend and numbered consecutively (eg. for figures, Fig 1., Fig 2..... and for tables Table 1., Table 2. etc.)
Review papers should not exceed 15 pages of printed text, including references, tables and figures. A manuscript for a review should be assembled in the following order: Title, Author(s), Affiliation(s) (if the senior author is not the corresponding order, this is indicated) Keywords, Abstract, Abbreviations, Manuscript text, Acknowledgments, References. Tables and figures (JPEG) should be cited in the appropriate area in the text with the legend and numbered consecutively (eg. for figures, Fig 1., Fig 2. ..... and for tables Table 1., Table 2. etc.).
Title: Should not be long and also should be unique and specific.
Keywords: Please provide 5 to 10 key words in alphabetical order separated with semicolons, not included in the title.
Scientific or systematic name of plants and fungi etc. should be written in italic. eg. Oryza sativa; in vitro; in vivo. Abbreviation: Abbreviations and their explanations should be collected alphabetically arranged in a list. Examples: BA_6-benzylaminopurine; NAA_naphthaleneacetic acid. Some commonly used abbreviations (e.g., DNA; PCR) do not have to be explained.
Abstract: Please provide a short abstract between 150- 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references. Usually, the abstract summarizes the work reported and does not contain background information or speculative statements.
Introduction: This section should argue the case for your study, outlining only essential background, but should not include either the findings or the conclusions. It should not be a review of the subject area, but should finish with a clear statement of the question being addressed. Please provide a context for the report with respect to previous work done in the field. The literature should be cited.
Results: This should highlight the results and the significance of the results and place them in the context of other work. The final paragraph ought to provide a resume of the main conclusions.
Discussion: A comprehensive discussion section is required to justify the results. Normally a comparison between your results and results from previous works should be given in the Discussion. In Materials and methods section, please provide sufficient methodological details to allow a competent person to repeat the work. Tables, Graphs and Figures Tables, Graphs and Figures should be placed at the end of manuscript, after reference section, with the legends and numbered consecutively. For Figures and Graphs or illustrations just use Fig 1., Fig 2. ............etc. For Tables Just use Table 1., Table 2. ............etc.
Materials and methods: This section should include all the materials (such as Plants, Chemicals, Kits, etc.) and also methodology. A typical example for the sub-headings might be: Plant materials, Treatments, Conduction of study and experimental design, Traits measured, Statistical analysis, etc.
Acknowledgments: Just mention a quick thanks to the fund providers, supporters, etc.
Statement of contributions: Authors should include an statement indicating the roles and responsibility of each author. The name of authors and co-autghors can be abbreviated in the statement. For example for Smith Jounes you can write: SM was responsible for the experimental design,.... and so on.
Cross-referencing: In the text, a reference identified by means of an author's name should be followed by the date of the reference in parentheses like Xue et al. (2011). In the text when there are more than two authors, only the first author's name should be mentioned, followed by 'et al.,' eg. Xu.et al., (2016). In the event that an author cited has had two or more works published during the same year, the reference, both in the text and in the reference list, should be identified by a lower case letter.
All the below examples can be used in the text: According Mark (1986); (Smith, 1987a, b), (Jones, 1986; Elders et al., 1988), (Bullen and Bennett, 1990).
References:
A) Journal article: Smith J, Jones MJ , Houghton LD (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med. 965:325–329.
B) Journal issue with issue editor: Smith J (ed) (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J. 14(6):126–233.
C) Book chapter: Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York. 4.
D) Paper presented at a conference: Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. Paper presented at the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4–9 June 1978.
E) Proceedings as a book (in a series and sub-series): Zowghi D et al (1996) A framework for reasoning about requirements in evolution. In: Foo N, Goebel R (eds) PRICAI'96: topics in artificial intelligence. 4th Pacific Rim conference on artificial intelligence, Cairns, August 1996.
F) Lecture notes in computer science (Lecture notes in artificial intelligence), vol 1114. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, p 157. 6. Proceedings with an editor (without a publisher): Aaron M (1999) The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.
Ethical requirements for authors and published works
Ethical statement (if any) should be placed at the end section of each manuscript after “Acknowledgment section”.
Introduction: The Australian Journal of Crop Science (AJCS) is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in all aspects of its operations. As a reputable scholarly publication, AJCS recognizes the importance of maintaining integrity, transparency, and fairness in scientific research and publication. This ethical statement outlines the principles and guidelines that AJCS adheres to, ensuring the ethical conduct of authors, reviewers, editors, and all parties involved in the publication process.
1. Research Ethics: AJCS promotes research that adheres to ethical principles, ensuring the welfare and rights of human participants, animals, and the environment. Authors are expected to obtain appropriate ethical approvals for studies involving humans or animals, comply with relevant guidelines, and provide informed consent. Additionally, authors should disclose any potential conflicts of interest that may influence the research.
2. Originality and Plagiarism: AJCS is committed to publishing original work. Authors are expected to submit manuscripts that accurately represent their own research and properly acknowledge the contributions of others. Plagiarism, in any form, including self-plagiarism, is strictly prohibited. The journal employs plagiarism detection software and reserves the right to reject or retract any manuscript found to contain plagiarized content.
3. Authorship and Contributorship: AJCS follows the principles outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding authorship and contributorship. Authors must have made substantial contributions to the research and be able to take responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of the work. All individuals who meet the criteria for authorship should be listed as authors, and any significant contributors who do not meet the criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.
4. Conflict of Interest: AJCS requires authors to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that may influence the research or its interpretation. These conflicts may include financial, personal, or institutional relationships that could be perceived as having an impact on the integrity or impartiality of the research. Such disclosures enhance transparency and allow readers to evaluate the potential biases associated with the work.
5. Peer Review Process: AJCS utilizes a rigorous peer review process to ensure the quality and validity of published articles. Peer reviewers are selected based on their expertise, and they are expected to provide unbiased and constructive feedback to authors. Reviewers should promptly disclose any conflicts of interest that may arise during the review process and should maintain confidentiality regarding the reviewed manuscripts.
6. Editorial Independence and Integrity: AJCS maintains editorial independence and ensures that decisions on manuscript acceptance or rejection are based solely on academic merit, relevance, and originality. The editoral board is responsible for the fair and unbiased evaluation of manuscripts and must disclose any conflicts of interest that may influence their decisions. The journal is committed to addressing any allegations of misconduct or unethical behavior promptly and transparently.
7. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern: AJCS recognises the importance of correcting the scientific record. In cases where errors, inaccuracies, or research misconduct are identified after publication, the journal will promptly consider appropriate actions, including corrections, investigation, retractions, or expressions of concern, depending on the nature and severity of the issue. The goal is to maintain the integrity and credibility of the research published in AJCS.
Publication charges: The Australian Journal of Crop Science (AJCS) operates on an fully open-access model and requires authors to pay a publication fee upon formal acceptance of their manuscript. As of January 2024, the fee is 450 AUD (Australian dollars) per article.