Journal of Fruit Science publishes new results of current research on improvements in fruit growing technology, promoting the high-quality production of fruits, and newly released selections and cultivars. This journal sticks to a high standard of academic ethics, disapproving all forms of academic misconducts. In case academic misconduct is found within an already published paper in the journal, the editorial office will publish a statement in the journal or its website, announcing retract of the paper involved and delete all data related to the paper from all relevant databases, so as to terminate the dissemination of the paper.
Duties of Authors
(1) Authors should ensure that the paper is an original work, and the contents in the manuscript are true, reliable and free of any academic misconducts (such as plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, duplicate submission/multiple submission or redundant publications, etc.). If the manuscript has included the work and/or words of other articles, there should be appropriate citation or references. The submitted manuscript should not have been published at home and abroad. All submitted articles shall be tested by the Academic Misconduct Literature Check (AMLC) system. The overall repetition rate shall be less than 10%. Should any plagiarism/multiple submission/redundant publishing be found, the manuscript shall be rejected at any stage of the review or publishing process, or be retracted if the manuscript has already been published. All data related to the paper will be deleted from all relevant databases, so as to terminate the dissemination of the paper. Authors could have their manuscripts pre-tested by Wanfang Detection System, for which the login page can be found on the journal’s website.
(2) Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included, and that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to submission for publication. All authors must participate in determining the order of authorship. The organizations and individuals contributed to this research should be mentioned. For detailed guidelines, please refer to Authors Contribution Form on this website.
(3) All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing / personal status / affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization / employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is involved, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products. For detailed guidelines, please refer to Statement of Competing Interests on this website.
(4) All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. The information of funding projects should be included in the manuscript.
(5) All authors are obliged to provide assistance for retractions or corrections if problems are found in published papers.
Duties of Reviewers
(1) Reviews should be conducted objectively. The reviewer should give an advice about whether the paper meets the publication standard. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others unless authorized by the editor. Information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should avoid evaluating manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript.
(2) This journal adopts a peer review system in processing manuscripts. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions. The reviewing experts are to review manuscripts scientifically, scrupulously, objectively and fairly, and must report it to the editorial office if multi-submission, misconceptions, intellectual errors, suspected plagiarism or fabrication is found within a manuscript. Referees should respect diversity of academic views, and not make impolite or aggressive comments. Personal attack of authors is prohibited. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
(3) Reviewers should guarantee relevant published work has not been plagiarized by authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
(4) Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or expect the review may not be complete in time should notify the editorial office and excuse himself from the review process. For paper with conflicts in interests or having shared benefits, avoidance of peer review is required.
Duties of Editor Office
(1) The editorial office should follow the objective and requirements of the journal, process manuscripts objectively and fairly. The editorial office has complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article according to its quality, originality and relevance of scope. The author's appeal on the final decision is allowed. Significant findings, frontier and hot issues shall be given priority for publishing. Editors or editorial office members should avoid processing manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript.
(2) Editorial staff should encourage discussion and contention between different academic viewpoints, handle the manuscripts fairly and feedback the experts' review comments to authors timely, and keep the quality of publication.
(3) The editors and any editorial staff must not disclose any information of a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher.
(4) Editorial staff should try to enlarge the reviewers list, and to treat reviewers' comments objectively. Offensive or defamatory comments are unacceptable.
(5) The editorial office uses the "Misconduct Literature Detection System (AMLC)" to screen and check the manuscripts so as to prevent any potential academic misconduct in the journal. Every reported unethical publishing behavior must be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.
(6) Prior to publication of the paper that has passed the review, the editorial office should sign the "Copyright License Agreement" with authors, in line with the "Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China" so as to protect the rights of the authors and the publisher.
(7) Editors should always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.