Editorial Policy

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture is published by Faculty of Agriculture, University of Poonch Rawalakot, AJK, Pakistan.

 Journal Authorship

Authorship of the paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Transparency about the contributions of authors is encouraged, for example in the form of “Author’s Contribution”.

A complete author guideline is available at;

https://jkjagri.com/index.php/journal/information/authors

 Originality Plagiarism Policy

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Also, as per HEC plagiarism policy, 19% plagiarism is admissible in any submission to the journal.

Following declarations should be ensured by Author while submitting the manuscript in the open journal system of Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture;

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

  • The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one publication for simultaneous consideration.
  • The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work.
  • Provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
  • A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various publications or to one publication over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
  • Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Peer Review Process

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture is using online article submission, review and tracking system for quality and rapid review process of approx. 06-08 weeks followed by the publication of the research article.

The peer review process can be broadly summarized into 11 steps;

  1. Paper Submission

The corresponding author submits the paper to the journal using online article submission portal (OJS). Occasionally, the journal may accept submissions by email; jkj@jkjagri.com.

  1. Technical Assessment

The Journal Manager (Technical Editor) checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the “Author Guidelines” to make sure it includes the required sections and format. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.

  1. Role of Editor-in-Chief (EIC)

Editor-In-Chief is bound with ethical and honest accountability to support the researchers and interested individuals. The EIC checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further on editorial desk review.

  1. EIC assigns a Section Editor (SE)

Section Editors responsible to assign a academic editor to the manuscript on the basis of their subject expertise.

  1. Academic Editors (AE)

Academic Editors should be the subject experts and handle the peer review.

  1. Invitation to Reviewers

The Academic editor sends invitations to individuals he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the required number of acceptances is obtained – commonly this is two (2).

  1. Response to Invitations

Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline.

Review is conducted

The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise they will read the paper several more times, taking notes so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revisions (major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

  1. Evaluation of Review Reports

The academic editor considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

  1. Decision on the manuscript

The corresponding author is informed through e-mail as early as possible about the editorial decision including any relevant reviewer comments. The rejected article is always supported for a newer submission.

  1. Resubmission of Revisions

The revision should also be accompanied by a point-by-point response to referees explaining how the manuscript has been changed. The manuscript may then be sent back to the original referees or to new referees, at the Academic editor’s discretion.

  1. Final Decision/Production

When all editorial issues are resolved, the manuscript is formally accepted and the paper is sent to production. After acceptance, authors are sent proofs for only typo mistakes or scientific errors.

Publication Fee

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture is an open access journal, meaning unlimited use and reuse of articles, in addition to giving credit to the authors. Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs of peer review administration and management, professional production of articles in PDF and other formats, and dissemination of published papers in various venues, in addition to other publishing functions.

There are no submission charges, furthermore no charges for rejected articles, and also no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures or supplementary data. Authors are required to make payment only after their manuscript has been accepted for publication.

Article Processing Charge (APC) of Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture are;

Article Processing Charge (APC) for National Authors = PKR 15,000/-

Article Processing Charge (APC) for International Authors = USD 100/-

Publication Fee Waivers

Publication fee waiver requests should be made due to funding constraints prior to or at the point of submission to the journal via Email at; jkj@jkjagri.com.

 Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

All manuscripts for original articles, systematic reviews, short reviews, reports, and editorials that are submitted to Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture as well as the articles that are published in JKJAgri, must be accompanied by a conflict of interest disclosure statement or a declaration by the authors that they do not have any conflicts of interest to declare. Interests within the last three years of beginning the work (conducting the research and preparing the work for submission) should be reported.

All the “potential conflicts of interests” that are to be privately disclosed to the editors of Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture when submitting a manuscript, include all financial and non-financial interests and relationships, direct employment with a private sector entity and service on private sector and non-profit Boards and advisory panels, whether paid or unpaid.

Correction and Retraction of Research Articles

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud, the editorial office of Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after an investigation, there are valid concerns, the authors concerned will be contacted under their given email address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the journal’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

  1. If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
  2. If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:
  3. an erratum/correction may be placed with the article.
  4. an editor’s note or editorial expression of concern may be placed with the article or, in severe cases, retraction of the article may occur.

Information on COPE Retraction Guidelines can be found here: Retraction Guidelines.

Journal uses CrossMark to gives readers quick and easy access to the current status of an item of content, including any corrections, retractions, or updates to that record.

When an author discovers a serious error or inaccuracy in his or her own published work, it is the author's responsibility to contact the journal editor or publisher as soon as possible and to work with the editor to retract or make proper corrections in the manuscript.

 Standards of Reporting

Research papers should accurately describe the work done and objectively analyze its importance. The article should appropriately portray the data. A document should include enough details and references to allow others to replicate it. False or incorrect claims are unethical, unprofessional and are not acceptable.

Author Contribution Statement

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture encourages transparency by publishing author contribution statements. Authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript, including review-type articles, that specifies the contribution of every author. The level of detail varies; some disciplines produce manuscripts that comprise discrete efforts readily articulated in detail, whereas other fields operate as group efforts at all stages. Author contribution statements are included in the published paper.

The contributions of all authors must be described in the submitted manuscript following criteria for authorship recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Academic Editors reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture follows guidelines by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Journal takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise.

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture may use software TURNITIN to screen/verify the originality of content submitted.

Jammu Kashmir Journal of Agriculture works with PUBLONS to provide reviewers with credit for their work.