Publication Policy

The journal accepts original papers which have not been published, submitted, and or not considered to be submitted elsewhere. The authors have to submit a declaration showing a guarantee not to submit the paper to any other journal until it is under consideration by this journal.  The authors are also required to declare that the work presented in the paper is a part of any funded research project, thesis work, or research report. It is mandatory to acknowledge such resources.

The names of authors with the affiliation must be given in full on the first page of article. The author’s primary affiliation should be the institute, where the majority of work has been done. If author has moved to any other institution, the current affiliation should be provided. All authors are required to clearly define their role (i.e. contribution) for the publication and they have to declare the responsibility for all the work from conception or design to analysis and manuscript development to submission. However, all authors are not required to sign on the covering letter submitted during submission process. The corresponding author will be responsible for approved declarations from the co-authors and all the correspondence with editorial office. All authors including corresponding author, are required to submit valid email with contact numbers. All the authors will be notified through email for the submission of article by corresponding author. Authors are required to set the order of authors. Once article is submitted author order will not be changed at any cost. Moreover, no author names will be allowed to be added once the article is submitted and processed.

Once submitted, the manuscript will be assigned to an associate editor of the particular section to which the manuscript belongs. The associate editor will be responsible to read and decide whether it is suitable for the journal. On initial assessment, the scope, technical suitability, and scientific soundness of the article will be assessed by the associate editor. If the article is found perfect for this journal it will be sent to at least three external reviewers. 

Disclosure and conflict of interest

a. Conflict of interest

Authors should declare any conflict of interest at the end of the manuscript. This will be published with the published article text.

b. Funding

The authors are strictly advised to mention the funding sources either for research execution or for publication. The details of the funder should be provided while submitting an article. If no funders are available, authors can simply declare “there is no funding source for this research or publication”.

c. Ethics

Research involving human and animal subjects should provide a bioethics certificate duly signed by the bioethics committee/office of the institute. If copyrighted material is used in a manuscript, it is mandatory for authors to seek permission from the original source before using it in their manuscript. 

Corrections and retraction of articles

 The journal follows a strict correction/retraction policy in the following cases

a. Publishers corrections

This defines an important error, which affects the publication’s original record or the scientific integrity, made on the side of editorial office or publisher at any stage of publication. The publication office will notify the error and correct accordingly. The corrected version of the article will be made available online (only) with embedded notification of the correction.

b. Author corrections

This defines the notification by the authors on an important error which affects the originality, integrity of the research publication or the reputation of journal or authors. The errors will be corrected once notified and if found compulsory. No any change in author list (deletion or addition of name of any author) is allowed. The corrections will be made in online version of article only. The decision of editorial board will be final.

c. Additions

This defines an additional information (addendum), other than originally provided in publication, notified by authors or required by editors or reviewers. This information will be made available online with the publication.

d. Retractions

This defines the inclusion of invalid, misleading, or un-appropriate information or results in the publication. Authors (including co-authors) are required to sign a retraction agreement once the article is accepted. If such errors are found the authors will be communicated and asked to justify. If authors fail to justify, the editors will seek suggestions from the reviewers and editorial board. On the basis of recommendations, the decisions will be made.

Policy and Principle on research data

The data is defined as a minimal dataset (numerical or qualitative) on which the findings reported in article are interpret and which can be used to replicate the findings easily. This dataset is termed as “supporting data” which should be made available to all members of editorial board when and where required. All original articles must include a Data availability statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study. A valid hyperlink of public repositories should be included in data availability statement for following types of data;

1. DNA, RNA, Protein sequences
2. Macromolecular structures
3. Crystallographic data for small molecules 
4. Biological data (cell lines, flow cytometry) 
5. Computer code and Algorithms 
6. Digital images 
7. Microscopy 
8. Plant and animal datasets (herbarium repositories/voucher specimen repositories).

Author contributions

Author contributions are the intellectual contribution each author put into the publication from conceiving, designing, execution, data collection to data analysis and interpretation of results. The drafting of article and revising it is also included in this list of contributions. Each author is required to submit his/her contribution in a separate author contribution statement or the corresponding author may take this responsibility to give a contribution statement on behalf of all the co-authors. But remember the approval will be verified at any stage by the editorial board members. Authors are required to agree to be personally accountable for all the contributions and to ensure that all the questions related to the accuracy and integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated.

Other guidelines

a.  Author copyright and Agreement

The journal does not require any author copyright or agreement because the publication is fully open access and published under the CC BY license (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 internal license). This license allows you to share and disseminate the articles freely by any means.

b.  Security concerns

The content related to national security, biosecurity, bioethics, or which can fall under the legal implications can be published only if the authors agree to take full responsibility of the later consequences.