Journal Policy
EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
The Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Contemporary Agriculture will be published. The Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
The Editorial Board 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 Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication.
Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the paper shall be made by the Editorial Board. In case one or more members of the Editorial Staff hold a conflict of interest regarding a submitted manuscript, these members of the Editorial Staff shall withdraw from the selection of reviewers and all decisions related to the manuscript.
Editor shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.
The Editor and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
Duties of the Editorial Council are that actively contributes to the development of the journal. The tasks and duties of the Editorial Council include: the support to the development of the journal, its promotion, encouraging experts in the area of agriculture to get involved as journal’s authors and/or reviewers, writing editorials, reviews and commentaries.
AUTHORS’ RESPONSIBILITIES
Author’s warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and are is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Contemporary Agriculture.
The Authors also warrant that the manuscript is not and will not be published elsewhere (after the publication in Contemporary Agriculture) in any language without the consent of the copyright holder.
In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in "Acknowledgements". A paper that has already been published in another journal cannot be reprinted in Contemporary Agriculture.
It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to Contemporary Agriculture are written with ethical standards in mind (EC Recommendation on guidelines for the accommodation and care of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes and/or legislation related to animal welfare, which are applied in the country where the research was conducted).
Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
Reporting standards
A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.
Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public.
Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Authorship
Authors must make sure that all only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section.
Acknowledgment of Sources
Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.
Conflict of interest
Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.
By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Contemporary Agriculture, Editorial Policies.
PLAGIARISM
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 or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.
Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism by CrossCheck screening.
Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and authors will be permanently or temporarily (depending on the case) forbidden to publish in the journal.
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. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same paper to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.
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. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
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. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
Peer Review
The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assists the Section Editors, Editorial Board and Editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author it may also assist the author in improving the paper.
The peer review is double-blind, and carried out by two reviewers. The period for review of a manuscript is 20 days, from the date of acceptance by reviewer.
The peer reviewing process is on voluntarily basis, and for reviewer is not provided financial support.
The choice of reviewers is at the Section Editors' and Editorial Board discretion. 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.
Review process
In the main review phase, the Section Editors sends submitted papers to two experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist in order to help referees cover all aspects that can decide the fate of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers.
All of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process.
All of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
Reviewers can enter some observations in a paper in the form of comments. After completing the Reviewer Form, reviewers send it to the Section Editor's mail address.
PROCEDURES FOR DEALING WITH UNETHICAL BEHAVIOUR
Anyone may inform the Editors and/or Editorial Staff at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.
Investigation
Editor will consult with the Section Editors or Editorial Board on decisions 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
Minor misconduct will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:
Communicating to authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding fairly minor misconduct.
Major misconduct
The Editor, in consultation with the Section Editors and Editorial Board, and, when appropriate, further consultation with a small group of experts should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):
Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct by means of a formal letter.
The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
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 behaviour, the Editorial Staff will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics
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. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The main reason for withdrawal or retraction is to correct the mistake while preserving the integrity of science; it is not to punish the author.
Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by Contemporary Agriculture: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged; save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
OPEN ACCESS POLICY
Contemporary Agriculture is an Open Access Journal. All articles can be downloaded free of charge. This journal is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
The journal does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages.
SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY
The journal Contemporary Agriculture, allows authors to deposit Author's Post-print (accepted version) and Publisher's version/PDF in an institutional repository and non-commercial subject-based repositories, or to publish it on Author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) and/or departmental website, at any time after publication. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI.
COPYRIGHT
Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, authors shall transfer the copyright to the Publisher. If the submitted manuscript is not accepted for publication by the journal, all rights shall be retained by the author(s).
Authors grant to the Publisher the following rights to the manuscript, including any supplemental material, and any parts, extracts or elements thereof:
the right to reproduce and distribute the Manuscript in printed form, including print-on demand;
the right to produce prepublications, reprints, and special editions of the Manuscript;
the right to translate the Manuscript into other languages;
the right to reproduce the Manuscript using photomechanical or similar means including, but not limited to photocopy, and the right to distribute these reproductions;
the right to reproduce and distribute the Manuscript electronically or optically on any and all data carriers or storage media - especially in machine readable/digitalized form on data carriers such as hard drive, CD-Rom, DVD, Blu-ray Disc (BD), Mini-Disk, data tape - and the right to reproduce and distribute the Article via these data carriers;
the right to store the Manuscript in databases, including online databases, and the right of transmission of the Manuscript in all technical systems and modes;
the right to make the Manuscript available to the public or to closed user groups on individual demand, for use on monitors or other readers (including e-books), and in printable form for the user, either via the internet, other online services, or via internal or external networks.
Authors retain copyright of the published article and have the right to use the article in the ways permitted to third parties under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported International Licence. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI.
The authors and third parties who wish use the article in a way not covered by the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 International Licence must obtain a written consent of the publisher.
DISLAIMER
The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. 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.