POLICIES OF PUBLICATION

Peer Review Policy

This Journal maintain the higher standards of peer review while increasing the efficiency of the process. All research articles published in this journal undergo full peer review, key characteristics of which are listed below: All research articles are reviewed by at least two suitably qualified experts. All publication decisions are made by the journals’ Editor-in-Chief’ on the basis of the reviews provided. Members of the academic and research institutions both in international and national arenas and experienced retired professionals lend insight, advice and guidance to the Editor-in-Chief and to assist decision making on specific submissions. Qualified editors provide the professional and administrative support that allows the journals to maintain the integrity of peer review while delivering rapid turnaround and maximum efficiency to authors, reviewers and editors alike. Editors of the journal will decide promptly whether to accept, reject, or request revisions of referred papers based on the reviews and editorial insight of the supporting journals. In addition, Editors will have the option of seeking additional reviews when needed. Authors will be advised when Editors decide further review is needed. Articles submitted directly to the journal will be fully peer reviewed by at least two appropriately qualified experts in the field selected by the Editor-in-Chief/Editors. The Editor-in-Chief or a designated member of the Editorial Team will then decide whether to accept, reject or request revisions based on the reviews and comments received. Editors will decide whether each submission reports well-conducted research with conclusions supported by the data presented in the paper. Assessments of priority will not be a factor in decision-making, but all papers must make an incremental or novel addition to the literature.

The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities:

Accept, with or without editorial revisions

Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached

Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission

Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems or in cases of plagiarism/fabrication found out.

Copyright & License

The journal publishes open access articles under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright on any research article in the journal is retained by the author(s). Authors grant the Department of Botany, University of Kerala a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.

Plagiarism and fabrication

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else's work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large chunks of text have been cut-and-pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in this journal and the submissions will be tracked to find out plagiarism and will be returned to the author. If a case of plagiarism comes to light after a paper is published in the journal, the journal will conduct a preliminary investigation and if found correct, the author will not be permitted to publish further in the journal and the information in this regard will be published in subsequent issue of the journal