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International Journal of Horticultural Science (IJHS) is an electronic journal which follows the procedure of the collegial peer-reviewing (single-blind review), as every interested party included in the publication should accept the standards regarding the expected moral behaviour. If authors submit a paper and reviewers accept to conduct a review, it is presumed that they know and adhere to publication ethics.

Ethical principles of IJHS are based on the COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

 

1. Responsibilities of the editors

Publication decisions

Received submissions will be considered by the editors to determine whether they fall within the scope of the journal. Appropriate submissions will be sent out for full external review. The submissions not falling within the scope of the journal will be returned to the submitting author quickly so that submission elsewhere will not be delayed.

Editors have the authority over the editorial content and are responsible to manage the peer review process of the manuscripts. Responsible editor decides which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision. The editor-in-chief makes the final decision about the articles to be published.

Fair play

The editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, origin or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality

The editor and editorial colleagues must not disclose without express consent of the author any information about a submitted manuscript to any person, except for the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers and the publisher.

Disclosure and incompatibility

The materials which are waiting for publication but not yet published must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

 

2. Responsibilities of the peer-reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists the responsible editor to make editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness

Any chosen reviewer who feels unqualified to evaluate the manuscript or has conflict of interest about the invitation must inform the editor. If the invited reviewer knows that the prompt review will be impossible, he/she should notify the responsible editor and excuse himself/herself from the review process.

Confidentiality

All information regarding the manuscript must be kept confidential. Manuscript must not be shown to or discussed with others.

 Standards of objectivity

The reviewer’s opinions should be objective. It is inappropriate to criticize the author’s personage. Referees should express their views with supporting arguments.

 Disclosure and conflict of interest

Information or ideas obtained through peer review must be handled confidential and not used for gaining personal benefits. Reviewers shall not express opinions on manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competition, cooperation or other relations.

 

3. Responsibilities of the authors

Reporting standards

Authors reporting on the original research should present an accurate account of the works in the same manner as the debates on the importance of work. Underlying data shall be represented precisely in the paper. A study should be sufficiently detailed and underpinned by references to permit others to reconstruct the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

Data access and retention

Each author can be asked to submit raw data for editorial review if suspected falsification or fabrication of data. Authors should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication in any event.

Originality and plagiarism

Authors should ensure that the submitted work is completely original, and if other authors’ works or texts/text parts were used that these have been appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism is considered as one of the serious misconduct and indisputable publication ethics violation.

Multiple or simultaneous publication

Submitting the same work in more journals at the same time is an unethical behaviour and cannot be acceptable.

Reference of sources

In the text references should be cited accurately by the authors.

Authorship

Group of authors shall be limited to those who have made a remarkable contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the work. Authors who have significant contribution to the study shall be signed as co-authors. If there are other persons who participated in certain aspects of the research, they should be represented or listed as contributors. The corresponding author shall ensure that all co-authors are listed in the manuscript, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the study and have agreed with the submission.

Disclosure and incompatibility

Authors shall disclose in the paper any financial or other conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of the manuscript. Sources of financial support for the research should be listed.

Fundamental mistakes in the articles published

If authors discover a serious error or inaccuracy in their own work which has been published, authors must promptly notify the responsible editor of the Journal and cooperate with him to correct the mistake.

 

Editorial and peer-review process

Authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript is their original work (data including graphs, figures, tables, and illustrations), which has not been published previously. Authors must ensure also that the submitted manuscript has not been considered for publication elsewhere. Authors are aware that if the content detailed above has been published elsewhere, our Journal cannot accept it.

Each paper is evaluated in a single-blind, peer review process. Manuscripts sent out for review will typically be assessed by at least two experts. However, in extenuating circumstances (e.g. because of a delay caused by an overdue reviewer), the Editor may make a recommendation based on the comments of only one reviewer, plus his/her own assessment of the manuscript.

Reviewers are allocated to manuscripts based upon various criteria including expertise, availability and workload. Only the leading specialists in the area of the manuscript are invited as reviewers. Reviewing usually takes two-four months. The decision of the Editor with the experts' comments will be sent to the authors. In case of the consideration of the manuscript authors are asked to improve their manuscripts based on the comments made by the Editor and the reviewers. When authors submit their revised work, they have to provide a corrected version of their manuscript using a Track Changes Mode and point-by point answers to the comments raised by the reviewers and the Editor.

Revisions and resubmissions of previously rejected manuscripts will be sent back to those reviewers who evaluated the original version of the manuscript. However, in some cases, the Editor may decide not to re-invite all original reviewers and/or may invite new reviewers.

To avoid plagiarism, after the submission, the manuscripts will be checked by an international plagiarism search software programme (iThenticate). If the similarity index is too high (above 20%) the manuscript will be immediately rejected. In ethical issues the COPE guidelines are followed (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).