Editorial Policies

Plant Science Horizons (PSH) maintains policies designed to support independent editorial decision-making, rigorous peer review, responsible authorship, transparent reporting, research integrity, open access, appropriate correction of the scholarly record, and fair treatment of authors, reviewers, editors, and readers.

A central gateway to PSH editorial standards

This page summarizes the journal's principal editorial policies and directs readers to the relevant detailed guidance. It should be read together with the Author Guidelines, Submissions information, publication policies, and other specific PSH policy pages.

Where a specific policy gives more detailed requirements than this overview, the more specific policy governs that issue.

Core editorial policy areas

Independent double-blind evaluation

Suitable research manuscripts are normally evaluated under a double-blind peer-review model by at least two independent reviewers. Reviewers assess scientific validity, methods, evidence, interpretation, reporting quality and relevance.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. Editors retain responsibility for the final decision and may seek additional expertise when reports conflict or specialist assessment is required.

Not all submissions proceed to external review

Editors may decline a manuscript before external review when it is outside scope, scientifically weak, methodologically inadequate, substantially descriptive without sufficient contribution, poorly reported, ethically incomplete, or otherwise unsuitable for the journal.

Desk decisions are editorial decisions and should be based on journal standards rather than author identity, institutional prestige, nationality, or financial circumstances.

Originality, evidence and integrity of the scholarly record

• Plagiarism, fabricated or falsified data, manipulated images, fabricated citations and undisclosed duplicate publication are prohibited.
• Similarity reports are interpreted contextually rather than by one automatic percentage threshold.
• Editors may request raw data, original images, laboratory records, code or other source material when necessary.
• Serious unresolved concerns may be referred to institutions, funders, ethics bodies or other appropriate authorities.

Credit must reflect genuine scholarly contribution

Authorship is limited to individuals who made substantial scholarly contributions and who accept responsibility for the work. Guest, honorary, purchased and ghost authorship are inconsistent with PSH standards.

A CRediT contribution statement is strongly encouraged. Requests to add, remove or reorder authors after submission require explanation and agreement from affected authors and remain subject to editorial approval.

Disclosure and conflict management

Authors, reviewers and editors must disclose interests that could reasonably be perceived to affect their judgment. Relevant interests may be financial, personal, professional, institutional, advisory, competitive, supervisory or related to intellectual property.

Editors with relevant conflicts should not handle the manuscript or post-publication case concerned.

Evidence should be sufficiently transparent to evaluate the claims

Research articles require a Data Availability statement. Where suitable repositories exist, authors should provide accession numbers or persistent identifiers for underlying datasets.

Custom code, scripts, models or workflows central to the conclusions should be made available with sufficient documentation whenever reasonably possible, subject to legitimate legal, privacy, biodiversity, proprietary or contractual restrictions.

Compliance beyond manuscript preparation

Human or animal research, where relevant to a submitted plant-science study, must include appropriate ethics and consent statements. Field collection, protected species, genetically modified or gene-edited materials, quarantine organisms, pathogens and other regulated biological materials must comply with applicable permits and biosafety requirements.

PSH may request supporting documentation when ethical or legal compliance is unclear.

Human accountability cannot be delegated to AI

• AI systems cannot be listed as authors.
• Authors remain responsible for all text, references, figures, analyses and conclusions.
• Substantive generative-AI use should be disclosed with sufficient detail to understand how it was used.
• AI-generated or AI-modified scientific data, images or citations must not be presented as authentic experimental evidence.
• Editors and reviewers must protect manuscript confidentiality and should not upload confidential content to external AI systems when this would disclose protected material.

Immediate reader access under CC BY 4.0

Current PSH articles are published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This permits sharing, adaptation and commercial reuse when the license conditions and any separately identified third-party rights are respected.

Open access does not alter requirements for attribution, copyright compliance, research integrity or version-of-record stewardship.

Author-retained copyright with publication rights granted to PSH

Authors retain copyright under the journal's current model and grant PSH the rights necessary to publish and maintain the version of record. Authors are responsible for securing permission for third-party material when required.

Material excluded from the article's CC BY 4.0 license should carry an appropriate credit line or separate rights statement.

Current APC waiver through 2029

PSH currently waives Article Processing Charges through 2029. Authors are not charged an APC under the current waiver policy.

Financial arrangements must remain separate from editorial decisions. The journal does not offer a payment route that guarantees acceptance or preferential peer review.

Correcting the scholarly record transparently

Depending on the nature and severity of a post-publication problem, PSH may publish a correction, Expression of Concern, retraction or another appropriate amendment.

Retraction normally preserves the bibliographic identity of the article and clearly marks its status rather than silently deleting the scholarly record.

Helping readers identify significant post-publication updates

PSH uses a Crossmark update-policy DOI to support transparent status information for Crossmark-enabled content. Significant post-publication changes should be reflected in the article record and Crossref metadata where the journal's Crossmark workflow applies.

The same scientific and ethical standards apply

Special Issue and Thematic Collection manuscripts follow the same scientific thresholds, conflict-of-interest requirements, peer-review standards and research-integrity policies as regular submissions.

Guest Editors should not handle manuscripts where their independence is materially compromised, and journal leadership retains oversight of collection integrity.

Scientific disagreement and process concerns are handled separately

Authors may appeal a decision when they identify a substantive scientific misunderstanding, material procedural error, relevant conflict or important evidence that was not considered appropriately.

Complaints about editorial conduct, ethics, publication practice or process are considered separately from a scientific appeal.

Scientific decisions must remain independent

Editorial decisions should be based on scientific quality, validity, originality, relevance, reporting quality and compliance with journal policies.

Publisher interests, author payment status, advertising, institutional relationships, personal relationships and citation considerations must not determine manuscript acceptance.

Independent handling is required

An Editor-in-Chief, editor, Editorial Board member, Guest Editor or other journal-affiliated author must not manage, select reviewers for or decide their own manuscript. An independent editor should handle the submission under the normal standards for its article type.

References should serve the scholarship, not journal metrics

References should be relevant and should support the statements for which they are cited. Excessive self-citation, citation padding, coercive reviewer or editor citation requests, citation cartels and citation practices intended primarily to manipulate metrics are inconsistent with PSH editorial standards.

Journal or article metrics should not be manipulated through editorial pressure.

Manuscripts and peer-review materials are confidential

Editors, reviewers and staff should protect unpublished manuscripts, data, reviewer reports and editorial correspondence. Confidential material must not be used for personal advantage or disclosed outside the editorial process except where necessary for legitimate expert, legal or integrity assessment.

Preservation claims should match actual technical participation

PSH aims to preserve published content, metadata and post-publication notices through its publishing infrastructure and formally configured preservation arrangements.

The journal should identify a named preservation network such as PKP PN, LOCKSS or CLOCKSS as active only when participation has been technically enabled and verified.

Author, submission and publication information

Use of recognized publication-ethics guidance

PSH policies may be informed by recognized publication-ethics guidance, including relevant guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), together with applicable research, copyright, data, legal and institutional requirements.

Reference to external guidance does not imply organizational membership, certification, accreditation or endorsement unless separately confirmed.

Where to send editorial-policy questions

Routine manuscript, peer-review and policy questions may be directed to the Editorial Office. Serious research-integrity or senior editorial matters may be escalated to editorial leadership.

Key PSH editorial standards currently in effect

One policy framework, consistent editorial standards

Plant Science Horizons applies its editorial policies across regular issues, Special Issues, invited content and post-publication review. The journal's objective is to evaluate manuscripts fairly, protect the integrity of the scholarly record, communicate decisions transparently and ensure that scientific, ethical and editorial standards are applied consistently.