Publication Ethics for Editor and Reviewer

 

The Journal of Agrometeorology (JAM) follows the code of conduct and best practice statement as prescribed by the COPE Guidelines. The Editorial decisions are not affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors.

General duties and responsibilities of Editors

Editors should be accountable for everything published in their journals. This means editor should

• strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
• strive to constantly improve their journal;
• have processes in place to assure the quality of the material they publish;
• maintain the integrity of the academic record;
• always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Relations with authors

Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, and the study's validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal.

Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission.

New editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.

A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.

Editors should publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them. This guidance should be regularly updated.

Editors should provide guidance about criteria for authorship and/or who should be listed as a contributor following the standards within the relevant field.

Relations with reviewers

Editors should provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.

Editors should require reviewers to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.

Editors should have systems to ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected unless they use an open review system that is declared to authors and reviewers.

 

 General guidelines for Reviewers

The Journal of Agrometeorology (JAM) is committed to publishing good research manuscripts based on well-explained review reports. The purpose of a good review is to help the editors to reach a decision and provide a brief and valid explanation of manuscript's areas of improvement which can strengthen the chances of acceptance or provide valid reasoning for rejection to the author. Reviewers are requested to make them aware about the reviewers guidelines provided by COPE.

The journal considers every submitted manuscript as a confidential document and the reviewers are also expected to abide by this rule. The manuscript's work cannot be implemented in reviewer’s own research or some personal advantage

According to the journal's policies, the reviewer's names are not disclosed to the authors. Reviewers are asked to adopt the same policy by not mentioning their name or any other personal information in the reviewer's comments of a manuscript.

The research article given for review should match the area of expertise of a reviewer and the reviewer must accept the article only if he/she feels competent enough to do the assigned work. The journal may only have the information about a reviewer's work in a broader aspect and thus journal gives the freedom to reviewers to deny the review request from the editor on this basis.

Journal of Agrometeorology holds the right to edit in or out the comments in a review report if the Editor-in-Chief finds the use of an offensive language or the disclosure of confidentiality. Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject a paper at any stage without assigning the reason and his decision would be final.

The journal appreciates the prompt response of review request from the reviewer and the submission of the review report within the specified time period. If the reviewer feels that a particular manuscript might take a long time due to some other professional or personal prior commitments and preventing him/her to submit a timely review, he/she should inform the editor before the deadline.

A conflict of interest eliminates the purpose of an objective evaluation of a manuscript. If a reviewer has some professional, personal or financial affiliations to the manuscript or the author or the sponsoring organization/agency, a full disclosure of this information to the editor at the time of response to review request is mandatory.

A reviewer must have the knowledge of policies for authors of writing a manuscript (Guidelines for Authors, Authors declaration). It mainly includes the originality of data, novelty of conclusions, paper's written presentation and the ethical issues of data collection.

The reviewer will use Microsoft Word track changes feature to suggest/include all the changes and recommendation in the manuscript along with the comments in the space provided by the online system.

 

Peer Review Process

The articles received by the editorial office are initially screened and if found not as per guidelines or out of scope of the Journal of Agrometeorology, are rejected without review. After initial screening, each article is sent to 2 independent reviewers for peer review. The journal follows the double-blind review process in which authors and reviewers’ names are not disclosed. Hence, authors names, affiliations and other potentially identifying information are removed from the text of the manuscript before sending it to the reviewers.  

Reviewers are expected to respond to the editor's request within a week time (7 days) to accept or decline the request and if the request is accepted, 4-week time (28 days) to submit the reviewers’ comments. Any delay in the time lines, the reminders are sent. If any reviewer declines the request or does not respond to the request, the manuscript is withdrawn and is sent to the third reviewer.

A reviewer’s guidelines has been provided in the system. Reviewers are requested to submit the detail comments in space provided “For Authors and Editor”. A separate space is provided for specific comments “For Editor only”. Reviewer is also advised to add the comments, if he/she wishes, on the manuscript in Review track mode and upload the file.

After receiving the comments from both reviewers, the manuscript is sent to author for modification along with the reviewer's comments. Authors are also advised to adheres  to the guidelines on presentation of title, affiliations, present address, abstract, scientific nomenclature, text and reference presentation etc as per journal style in the online system as well as on the manuscript.

If the reports of both referees disagree with regard to the suitability of the paper for publication, the editor gives his/her own remark over and above the reviewer’s comments. The article is rejected on the basis of comments of reviewer(s).

The revised manuscript submitted by the Author along with the reply of author to comments of reviewers, is again sent to one of the reviewers for checking and verifying the modification made by the author. The favourable comments received from the reviewer on the revised manuscript is taken into consideration for accepting the manuscript.

The manuscript is again sent to the Author if reviewer/editor ask for inclusion of more information in the form of table, figs or references etc.

Editor's decision independently or in consultation with editorial board, is final.

Journal of Agrometeorology holds the right to edit in or out the comments in a review report if the Editor-in-Chief finds the use of an offensive language or the disclosure of confidentiality. Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject a paper at any stage without assigning the reason and his decision would be final.