Submissions

Author Guidelines

Legal notice

Plant Introduction is the international open-access journal under the BY 4.0 (attribution) Creative Common open license. Pdf versions of all published materials are freely available on the archive webpage under the CC BY 4.0 license too. Authors and other persons are eligible for self-archiving, distribution, and other legal use of these papers under the same CC BY 4.0 license. The journal allows the authors to hold the copyrights and to retain publishing rights without any restrictions.

All published articles are additionally archived and deposited on Zenodo and other open platforms and can be freely accessed from there.

The editorial office of Plant Introduction reserves the right to reduce, edit, and decline the manuscripts, which have formatting/contextual errors or do not correspond to the journal's aims and policy. The journal also reserves the right to decline or exclude from public access the papers in the case of violation of general principles of scientific ethics and/or copyrights, plagiarism detection, or any other legal offenses before or after publishing. Sending the manuscript(s) you accept and agree with the terms of Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.

Submission procedure

Please use our online submission system or contact directly the editorial office by e-mail.

Conflicts of interest statement

At submission, you are requested to declare any conflict of interest.

Funding policy

If funding has been received for the study, it shall be listed in the manuscript and has to be listed during the submission.

Charges policy

All publication charges are currently waived, and both processing and publication are absolutely free.

General requirements

The journal publishes original research articles, data papers, reviews, correspondings, reports, short communications, and chronicles, which are neither published before nor under consideration for publication in other journals.

Language rules. Starting from 2020, the journal accepts manuscripts written in English only. However, all manuscripts must be additionally supported by the Title, Author(s), Affiliation(s), Abstract of at least 1800 symbols, and Keywords in Ukrainian. All references must be represented in the Roman alphabet only, therefore all Cyrillic references must be translated, not transliterated (!), into English. If you experience difficulties with the translation of required materials into other languages, please ask the editorial office for free of charge help. The authors abroad Ukraine are not requested to provide Ukrainian abstract, title, etc. - in case of manuscript acceptance, these parts will be translated by our editorial staff for free.

Manuscript size. The size of manuscripts is normally limited to 15 pages, however, authors can request the extension in case of monographic revisions or presentation of huge data massifs.

Manuscript sequence. (1) UDC – (2) article title – (3) author(s) – (4) affiliation(s) including institution, full postal address, and e-mail of corresponding author – (5) abstract containing no less than 1800 symbols without spaces – (6) keywords – (7) main body text with figures and tables – (8) acknowledgments – (9) list of references – (10) article title, author(s), affiliation(s), abstract and keywords in Ukrainian. The body text of standard research article must be subdivided onto the sections Introduction, Material and Methods, Results and Discussion, and Conclusions.

Text requirements. Font – Times New Roman, size – 14 pt. Text indentation – 1.25, 1.5-spaced, width fitted, with margins of default size. File format – .doc or .docx.

Image requirements. All images must be provided as separate files with at least 300 dpi and at least 700x500 px resolution in .png, .jpg, .tiff, .psd, .eps or other image formats. They also should be added but not exceptionally placed in the main text to show the prefered organization. If the figure consists of more than one image, all parts of it must be sent as separate files.

Table requirements. Tables can be provided either in the body of the main text or as separated .xls or .xlsx files.

Measure units. Use SI units as far as possible.

Taxa citation. Citation of all taxa must follow the recent edition of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (in particular Articles 5, 28, and H.3). Following this code, the cultivar epithet must be enclosed by single quotes and should not be italicized, e.g., Cryptomeria japonica 'Elegans'. To check the valid names of taxa, please use IPNI, POWO, Euro+Med PlantBase, AlgaeBase, or IFPNI indexes.

The taxa of all levels must be italicized. All taxa must be supported by the author(s) citation in the first mention in the text, and later cited without author(s).

Funding. The author(s) obliged to indicate any financing (including grants, statutory and private funds, etc.) for published research without indication of money amounts.

Authors contribution. In the case of more than one author, it is required to clearly indicate the contribution of each of the coauthors (e.g., research designing, conducting experiments, writing the manuscript, etc.)

In-text references. All citations in the text must be in the Roman alphabet only. The journal does not allow Cyrillic in-text citations, and therefore all Cyrillic in-text citations and citations in the References List should be translated in English. Please note, that there no need to translate or transliterate any references in other Romanian alphabets with diacritics (e.g., Slovakian, Polish, Romanian, German, French, etc.).

In-text references must follow the APA Author-Year citation style (7th edition) and must be listed chronologically and different authors separated by a semicolon: (Smith, 1999, 2002; Dunn, 2000; Nilsson et al., 2017a, 2017b). For more details on citation style please see the APA guide.

In-text references for one author shall be represented as (Kuziarin, 1998) or Kuziarin (1998); for two authors (Johnson & Young, 2003) or Johnson & Young (2003); for three or more authors (Nilsson et al., 2017) or Nilsson et al. (2017). Also they can be represented with an indication of pages as (Kuziarin, 1998, pp. 25–27) or Kuziarin (1998, pp. 25–27).

The list of references. The list of references must be organized alphabetically and follow the rules of the APA citation style. In all possible cases, references must include the doi at the end of the citation.

Examples of citation:

Book

Allen, C., Prior, P., & Hayward, A. C. (2005). Bacterial wilt: the disease and the Ralstonia solanacearum species complex. APS Press.

Book chapter

Otegui, M. S. (2007). Endosperm: development and molecular biology. In O. A. Olson (Ed.), Endosperm cell walls: formation, composition, and functions (pp. 159–178). Springer-Verlag.

Journal article

Sabo, J. L., & Power, M. E. (2002a). River-watershed exchange: effects of riverine subsidies on riparian lizards and their terrestrial prey. Ecology, 83(7), 1860–1869. https://doi.org/10.2307/3071770

Baum, C., Hrynkiewicz, K., Szymańska, S., Vitow, N., Hoeber, S., Fransson, P. M. A., & Weih, M. (2018). Mixture of Salix genotypes promotes root colonization with dark septate endophytes and changes P cycling in the mycorrhizosphere. Frontiers in Microbiology, 9, Article 1012. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01012

Internet source

Williamson, R. C. (2004, June 8). Deciduous tree galls. University of Wisconsin-Madison. http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/pddc/files/Fact_Sheets/FC_PDF/Deciduous_Tree_Galls.pdf

Dissertation

Skrypchenko, N. V. (2002). Introduction of genus Actinidia Lindl. species in the Forest-Steppe of Ukraine (growth, development, peculiarities of propagation) [PhD thesis abstract, M.M. Gryshko National Botanical Garden of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine]. (In Ukrainian)

Conference proceedings

Vierstra, R. (2011, May 12–15). Atomic perspectives on phytochrome photoactivation and signaling. In Proceedings of the 35th Steenbock Symposium on Advances in Biomolecular NMR (pp. 97–98).

Legislation documents

Law of Ukraine on the Red Data Book of Ukraine. 3055-III. (2017). https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/3055-14#Text

Review process

During the submission of the manuscript, the author(s) should indicate three prospective referees. To avoid the conflict of interests, prospective referees cannot be employed at the same institution as the author(s). For this reason, the author(s) can indicate undesirable referees. However, this does not mean that exactly indicated referees will evaluate the manuscript, because the final decision on referees is made by the editor. The corresponding author will receive confirmation of successful submission by e-mail. After that, manuscripts will be evaluated by the editor and later send to the referees. The review process is blind (in cases of inevident potential conflict of interests  - double-blind) and usually takes up to 5-7 weeks. After receiving the notes of the referees, the corresponding author will be asked to make the required corrections and changes. After that editor will review the improved manuscript and make a decision to accept, reject, send for further improvement, or ask for additional referees. If the manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author will receive the respecting notification. After the layout, the corresponding author will receive the final draft to check for typos and make final corrections. Then the corresponding author must confirm that manuscript is ready to be published, and only after that, the paper will be published. Authors also can track all the changes in the status of their manuscript from an online managing system.

Journal sections

Plant Introduction considers a wide range of publications, subdivided into 6 main sections. Additional sections (i.e. Congratulations) are irregular and can be established on request. During the submission, the authors can choose the preferred section for their manuscripts, however, the final decision is after the editorial office.

Research articles

Publications that have a clear and logical structure, represent new scientific outcomes and are at least 5 pages long. Research articles should have a long list of recent references and are well supported by illustrations and/or tables.

Data articles

The articles with labile structure representing the massifs of research data for further application, reuse, and replication by other scientists. Such articles provide new insights for others and allow them to make new interpretations for their own research tasks; therefore they must be as possible precise.

Discussion papers

Publications, including the articles with labile structure and size, devoted to general questions, providing discussions and representing the author's point of view.

Review articles

Publications representing literature overviews, introducing new software, etc.

Correspondences

Correspondences are mails received by the editorial office and worthing publication.

Short communications

Short communications have a labile structure and usually limited by 1–3 pages. They usually represent commentaries on or additions/corrections to previously published articles, intermediate research outcomes, taxonomical and nomenclatural notes, etc.

Proceedings

Brief publications dedicated to scientific meetings, usually without text subdivisions and references. Proceedings in a strict sense correspond to abstracts and usually have the same look.

Archiving

The journal encourages self-archiving and free distribution of published materials by authors. The journal is also archived on Zenodo and V.I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine platforms.

Advertising

The journal does not accept and does not publish adverts. The only exception is the advert for event sponsors that is published free of charge with a special indication of advertising content.

Award for international publications
To encourage foreign authors, we introduce 100 Euros (or equivalent, excluding taxes and transfer dues) award for one best publication per each volume of the Plant Introduction journal. Only corresponding authors affiliated outside Ukraine are eligible to receive this award. The best publication is chosen by the editorial office of Plant Introduction journal based on the citation and read indices calculated for the one year after publication. Warning! Due to the Russian invasion, the award was temporarily postponed.