Instructions to Authors

Aims and Scope

Acta Botanica Plantae publishes articles that provide substantial and novel insights into medicine. The journal also welcomes submissions concerning the molecular and cell biological research of all human diseases. Submissions with good originality, well-designed experiments and rigorous data are particularly welcomed. Please ensure that your submission is within the scope of the journal. More information is available at Aims and Scope.

Open Access

Acta Botanica Plantae is an open-access journal and all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

Copyright and License to Publish

Journal articles are published under the CC BY license. Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions and agree to make their original works completely available and free to use, copy and/or redistribute in all formats without permission, as long as the authors and the original source are properly cited. A copyright statement is published on full text files including HTML, PDF and XML.

Authors are required to sign a License to Publish agreement before formal publication of an article. This grants Open Exploration the right to publish the article and associated supplementary materials in Exploration of Medicine under the CC BY license. 

Permission for use of copyrighted materials (Figures or Tables) from other sources in the work, including re-published, adapted, modified, or partial tables from the internet, must be obtained. It is authors’ responsibility to acquire such permission, to follow any citation instruction requested by third-party rights holders, and to cover any supplementary charges. For more details, please refer to License to Publish.

Peer Review

The journal adopts a single-blind peer review model meaning that reviewers’ identities are kept concealed from authors, but authors’ identities are known to reviewers. All accepted articles (except for some Editorials released by the Editors) will have undergone a rigorous and thorough review process to evaluate their novelty, scientific content, academic integrity, etc. For more information on Peer Review, please refer to Editorial Policies.

Archive

To ensure long-term digital preservation, all published articles will be archived on the Portico platform. Authors are also encouraged to deposit their articles in PubMed Central/Europe PMC, and other appropriate archives. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that any Institutional or funders requirements for archiving are met.

Preprint Policy

The journal allows authors to post preprints of the Original Version, Accepted Manuscript, and Version of Record, on preprint servers, authors’ or institutional websites, and open communications between researchers whether on community preprint servers or preprint commenting platforms. Readers should visit Sherpa Romeo to view our preprint policy. For detailed information on our preprint policy, please refer to Editorial Policies.

Cover Letter

A cover letter is welcomed to be submitted accompanying each manuscript. We suggest authors include the following contents in a cover letter:

★ The title and type of the manuscript; 

★ A brief summary of the background and content of the work, and an explanation of why it warrants publication in the journal (e.g., novelty, importance etc);

★ Whether the article should be considered as part of a Special Issue;

★ A statement that this paper has not been submitted or published elsewhere;

★ A statement will be required if there are other cases need to be explained, for example, if the manuscript or part of it has been posted on preprints, conference, etc. Please find more cases at Duplicate Publication policy.

Research Ethics

For any study involving human subjects, authors should provide a statement to state that the study is approved by institutional ethics. Written informed consent to participate should be obtained from all participants.

For manuscripts involving privacy issues (e.g., including individuals’ details in images or videos), authors must obtain consent to publication from the participants. Authors need to provide a statement to attest that they have obtained such consent.

Any research involving animals should be approved by an animal care and use committee and conducted according to the approved protocol and acceptable research standards for animal experimentation. An ethical statement should be included at the end of the manuscript stating that the study was approved by an animal care and use committee.

For details on how to prepare such statements, please refer to the Declarations part in Structure of Manuscripts.

More specific information of Research Ethics can be found in the Editorial Policies of the journal.

Registration of Clinical Trials

The journal requires that all clinical trials should be registered in a public trials registry (WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) or in ClinicalTrials.gov) at or before the time of first patient enrollment. The trial registration number should be listed at the end of the Abstract. Secondary data analyses of primary (parent) clinical trials should not be registered as separate clinical trials, but instead should reference the trial registration number of the primary trial. Please refer to Editorial Policies for further information.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors should provide a statement to disclose any potential or existing conflict of interest. The corresponding author must ensure that all authors have been asked to disclose any conflict of interest.

Manuscripts submitted by the editorial board members are handled separately by other editors, and the concerned editor is not involved in the decision-making or the review process.

All sources of funding should be declared, including the role of the study sponsor(s) in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Please refer to Editorial Policies for further information.

Authorship

The journal endorses the authorship criteria defined by ICMJE. Individuals who fulfill the following criteria can be defined as authors.

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

Final approval of the version to be published; AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Author Contributions statement should be provided to specify the contribution of each author. The journal adopts the CRediT Taxonomy to describe each author’s individual contributions to the work. More information is available at Structure of Manuscripts.

Other individuals who have participated in the generation of the research paper but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section with a brief description of their contributions. Minors who have been involved in a piece of research (for example, children using technology) are typically acknowledged as they cannot be fully accountable for all aspects of the research.

AI and AI-assisted technologies in scientific writing: 

For AI-assisted work, author(s) should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot replace the tasks of researchers, such as developing scientific insights, analyzing and interpreting data, drawing scientific graphs, or drawing scientific conclusions. Author(s) should only use AI technologies to improve the readability and language. Author(s) are ultimately responsible and accountable for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of the article, and should disclose the use of AI and AI-assisted technology in the writing process in the Declarations section at the end of the manuscript by following the instructions below:

AI-Assisted Work Statement: During the preparation of this work, author(s) used the [name tool/service] for [reason]. After using the tool/service, author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.

This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references etc. If there is nothing to disclose, there is no need to add a statement. 

Note: A violation of this policy will be considered as scientific misconduct. The journal deals with any scientific misconduct on a case-by-case basis according to the guidance by COPE, WAME and ICMJE.

Please refer to Editorial Policies for further information.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is not acceptable and includes, but is not limited to, copying or reusing text, ideas, images or data from other sources without clear attribution, and goes against the principle of academic publishing. Reuse of parts of text from an author’s previous research publication without clear attribution is a form of self-plagiarism.

The journal uses iThenticate to screen submitted content for originality before publication. Any issues detected by the software will be addressed by a follow-up investigation in line with COPE Guidelines and if plagiarism is detected the manuscript may be rejected, corrected or retracted, as appropriate. In some cases, the journal may inform the authors’ institutions about the case. We expect that the editors and peer reviewers will inform the journal about any concerns related to plagiarism at any stage of peer-review, publication, or post-publication. We also encourage readers to report suspicious plagiarism after publication. For more information on plagiarism and how we handle it, please refer to Editorial Policies.

Duplicate Publication

The journal considers only original content meaning that articles must not have been previously published or submitted for publication, including in a language other than English. If related materials are under consideration or in press elsewhere, the authors should point this out in their cover letter.

If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they must cite the previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work. Reuse of the authors’ own figures or substantial amounts of wording may require permission from the copyright holder and the authors are responsible for obtaining this.

Several exceptions do not constitute duplicate publication if justified and made clear in the cover letter. Please find such exceptions at Editorial Policies.

If a manuscript is published and later found to be redundant, the editor should refer to the COPE Flowcharts and work with the publisher to retract the duplicate paper.

Misconduct

The journal endorses the summary of misconduct provided by WAME. Misconduct includes, but is not limited to: Falsification of data, Plagiarism, Improprieties of authorship, Misappropriation of the ideas of others, Violation of generally accepted research practices, Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research, Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct, Duplicate publication, Lack of declaration. The journal adopts iThenticate to detect possible plagiarism, which ensures the originality of submitted content. We encourage all reviewers to report potential misconduct of the manuscripts they reviewed. We also encourage all the readers to contact us to report potential misconduct related to published content. Open Exploration deals with all allegations of potential misconduct severely based on the COPE Flowcharts. Please refer to Editorial Policies for further information.

Citation

Authors must cite relevant literature to support any statement that relies on external sources of information in their manuscripts. However, citation manipulation may exist when articles are found to contain references that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely as a mechanism of increasing citations. Please refer to the COPE document to identify Citation Manipulation and legitimate self-citation. Citation manipulation will result in the article being rejected, and the journal may report the case to authors’ institutions.

Corrections and Retractions

Corrections will be published where honest errors are detected. Retraction will be published when seriously flawed or erroneous content or data are detected, such that the findings and conclusions are unreliable. Unreliable content or data may result from honest error, naive mistakes, or research misconduct.

More guidelines about when and how to publish Corrections/Retractions, please refer to Editorial Policies.

Appeals and Complaints

Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions or review reports during the editorial process. Please contact the editorial office at editor@actabotanica.org to submit your appeals. Complaints on editorial process or publication ethics should be delivered to the editorial office, and will be handled by the Editor who responsible for the journal. If the editor is involved in your complaints, please contact the publisher at editor@actabotanica.org. For complaints about publication ethics, we will follow guidelines published by COPE.

The journal publishes Original Article, Review, Meta-Analysis, Systematic Review, Case Report, Protocol, Perspective, Editorial, and Letter to the Editor. 

Read more details about manuscript types and the specific requirements of each type in the following table.

If you have an article that requires more words/tables/figures/references than the recommendation below, please contact the editors at editor@actabotanica.org before submission.