Editorial Policy

REVIEWING PROCEDURE

The submitted manuscripts are reviewed by two independent reviewers. The journal operates with double-blind peer review policy. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors’ own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors. The choice of reviewers is at the Editors’ discretion.

The purpose of peer review is to assists the Editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

The manuscripts passing the evaluation regarding form and scope are sent for review. Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the authors; if such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report it to the Editor without delay. The referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript notifies the Editor without delay. During the review process Editor may require authors to provide additional information if they are necessary for the evaluation of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for other purposes.

The period from manuscript submission until its final acceptance or rejection is normally completed within three months.

In the case when the reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers.

The final decision on the acceptance of the manuscript for publication is made by the Editor-in Chief.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Authors warrant that the manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. Authors must make sure that all and only those who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely; if persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section. If the manuscript results from the project or its previous version have been presented at a scientific meeting in the form of an oral presentation, the details shall be provided in the Acknowledgements.

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript, according to the citation style used by the journal. Any part of the manuscript that is taken verbatim from other work must be clearly marked by quotation marks. Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holders.

When the authors discover a significant error in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor and cooperate to retract or correct the paper.

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other conflict of interest.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Alternative Crops and Cultivation Practices Editorial Policies.

The Editor is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Alternative Crops and Cultivation Practices will be published. The Editor is constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editor reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The authors will be informed whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within three months from the date of the manuscript submission.

Editor and Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. In case one or more members of the Editorial Board hold a conflict of interest regarding a submitted manuscript, these members shall withdraw from all decisions related to the manuscript.

Editor and Editorial Board shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the members of the Editorial Board must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The Editorial Board shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors and vice versa.

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript. The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. They should recognize relevant published works that have not been considered in the manuscript and may recommend specific references for citation. Reviewers shall not require citing papers published in Alternative Crops and Cultivation Practices, or their own papers.

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. One of the goals of the review is to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors.

ETHICAL PUBLISHING

Anyone may inform the Editor and/or Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behavior or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information and evidence to start an investigation:

  • Editor makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation
  • During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating
  • The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them
  • If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious

Minor misconduct, which is most commonly a result of misunderstanding and has no influence on the integrity of the paper and the journal will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties:

  • Sending a warning letter to authors and/or reviewers
  • Publishing correction of the paper or erratum

In the case of major misconduct, the Editor and the Editorial Board may adopt different measures which can be used separately or jointly:

  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct
  • Informing officially the author’s/reviewer’s affiliating institution
  • The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy
  • A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period
  • Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action

When dealing with unethical behavior, the Editorial Board will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another’s ideas, words, or other creative expression as one’s own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action. Plagiarism includes the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author’s work without clearly indicating the source in a way described under Authors’ responsibilities
  • Copying figures, equations, data or tables from someone else’s paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder

Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy.

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article.

A retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication. A retraction may be published by the Editor, the author(s), or both parties consensually.

The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labeled as “Retraction”. The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted”.

Retractions are published according to the requirements of COPE.

OPEN ACCESS

Journal Alternative Crops and Cultivation Practices is published under an Open Access license. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

The right to use content without consent does not release the users from the obligation to give the credit to the journal and its content in a manner described under Licensing.

In accordance with law, digital copies of all published volumes are archived in the legal deposit library of the National Library of Serbia and concurrently in the Repository of SCIndeks – The Serbian Citation Index as the primary full text database.

The journal does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages. There are no hidden costs whatsoever.

COPYRIGHT & LICENSING

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.

The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original authors, a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made.

Users are required to provide full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in Alternative Crops and Cultivation Practices and the license used.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted to deposit author’s post-print (accepted version) and publisher’s version of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author’s personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript or after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article’s DOI and the license.

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editor and the Editorial Board. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.