Journal of Fruit Science disseminates 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 pays high attention to academic ethics, boycotts academic misconducts. In case academic misconduct is found with an already published paper in the journal, the editorial board will publish a statement in the journal or its website, announcing repeal of the paper involved and delete all the data related to the paper from all the related databases, so as to terminate the dissemination of the paper.
Duties of authors
(1) The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and the contents in the manuscript were true, reliable and free of any academic misconducts (such as plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, duplicate submission/multiple submission or overlapping publications, etc.). If the author have involved the work and/or words of other articles, there should be appropriately cited or quoted references. This manuscript haven’t been published at home and abroad.
(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 in the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. All authors must participate in determining the order of authorship. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. The organizations and individuals contributed to this research should be mentioned.
(3) All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes, in case of detection.
Duties of reviewers
(1) Reviews should be conducted objectively. The reviewer should give an advice about whether the Paper reach the publication level. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the editor. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider evaluating manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the submission.
(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 report to the editorial board if multi-submission, misconceptions, intellectual errors, suspected plagiarism or fabrication is found with a manuscript. Respect for diverse academic views, do not make rude, aggressive comments. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
(3) Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the 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 knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor 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 editors
(1) The editorial board should follow the objective and requirements of the journal, process manuscripts objectively and fairly. According to the quality, originality and relevance degree of paper, editorial board has complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article. The author’s appeal on the final decision is accepted. Give priority to publication of significant findings, frontier and hot issues.
(2) Editorial board should encourage discussion and contention between different academic viewpoints, handle the manuscripts as soon as possible, feedback the experts’ review comments to the author timely, ensure the timeliness of publication.
(3) The editors and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
(4) Editorial board should improve the reviewers’ database constantly, refer to reviewers’ comments objectively. Offensive or defamatory comments are rejected.
(5) The editorial board should use the “Misconduct Literature Detection System (AMLC)” to screen and check the manuscripts so as to prevent the existence of any potential academic misconduct in the journal. Every reported act of 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 board should sign a copyright transfer agreement with the author of the paper, in line with the “Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China” so as to safeguard the rights of the author and the publisher.
(7)Editors should always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.