About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Revista de Agricultura Neotropical (ISSN: 2358-6303) is published quarterly by the State University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UEMS), Sustainable Development Center of Bolsão Sul-Mato-grossense (CEDESU), of the University Unit of Cassilândia (UUC). It is aimed at the public with scientific training in Agrarian Sciences that participates and acts in several agriculture sectors. Professionals are attentive to guidance and eager to seek new proposals to solve problems related to the development of agricultural activities.

Through the publications of the works, it aims to generate and disseminate scientific research to improve and search for new technologies in the area of Neotropical Agriculture - fostering production levels, agricultural productivity, quality of systems, production processes - in a way that can meet regional, national and international demands. The areas covered are Agronomy, Agricultural Engineering, Forestry Engineering, and Animal Science. Manuscripts submitted for evaluation by the Revista de Agricultura Neotropical must be original and unpublished, and simultaneous submission to other journals is prohibited. The reproduction of manuscripts is allowed as long as the source is explicitly cited. There are no processing and publication fees.

Peer Review Process

Double Peer-review is defined as obtaining technical-cientific advice on individual manuscripts from two or three reviewers’ expert in the field, named ad hoc advisors. They will review manuscripts without know author´s name.

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer review, the journal takes all possible care not to reveal the identity of authors and reviewers during the process. For this, the journal requires that authors, editors, and reviewers take some precautions with the text and properties of the document:

  1. The document authors must exclude names from the text, replacing them with "Author" and the year in references and footnotes, instead of author names, manuscript title, etc.
  2. In Microsoft Office documents, the author identification must be removed from the document properties (in the File > Properties menu), starting in File, in the main menu, and clicking on the sequence: File > Save As... > Tools (or Options on Mac) > Security Options... > Remove personal information from file on save > OK > Save.
  3. For PDF documents, author names must also be removed from Document Properties under File in the Adobe Acrobat main menu.

Then, if reviewers find no evidence of misconduct, the editorial processes should proceed in the normal way.

In this process, reviewers must consider the following items: a) originality and clarity in title, objectives, and conclusions; b) assessment of potential impact or interest that the study may arouse in the scientific community); c) assessment of the adequacy of the research design and data analysis); d) evidence of results supporting the conclusions; e) quality of the textual composition. Each ad hoc reviewer will manifest itself, in its opinion, through one of the following options: a) Accept Submission; b) Revisions Required; c) Resubmit for Review; or d) Decline Submission.

Reviewers will be speedy, accurate, courteous, unbiased and justifiable reports. In his opinion or the text of the manuscript, the reviewer is entirely free to propose changes, correct, suppress or add excerpts and sections, point out ambiguous, redundant, incoherent, or misuse of terminology, and request more detailed explanations, etc. Respectfully, the opinions will be critical and constructive about the manuscript under analysis.

The decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript for publication is fundamentally based on the recommendation of the ad hoc reviewers. All opinions, in total, omitting the identification of reviewers, will be forwarded to the corresponding Author. In the case of only two opinions, if there is a tie (one opinion favorable to the publication and the other unfavorable), the opinion of a third reviewer will be required. If there is a majority of unfavorable opinions, the manuscript will be archived.

With a majority of favorable opinions, the decision is to accept the publication of the manuscript. Such acceptance, however, is subject to compliance or justification based on the requested technical or editorial recommendations; these suggestions aim to add improvements to the quality of the manuscript. If they disagree with the suggestions, the Authors must write a reasoned justification and send it to the editor, together with the reformulated version. Such referral must be made within the deadline established by the Editors; otherwise, the manuscript will be archived. If there are justifications, the Editors will analyze these, who can forward them to the respective reviewers for analysis.

Upon receipt and analysis of the reformulated version, the manuscript is accepted for publication if the editorial and content suggestions are duly incorporated or justified. It then proceeds to the diagramming/layout step. During the editing phase of the manuscript, any changes in the text order are made for a better layout. Before the online publication, proofreading of the manuscript is sent to authors, and it only consists of making the requested corrections, not being accepted by the Editorial Comittee any change in the structure/writing of the text and figures and/or tables. Thus, it is recommended that Authors carefully read the entire manuscript, making the corrections proposed in it and highlighting possible errors/corrections to be made by the editor. Authors have a period of 5 days to respond to these requests and return the manuscript.

Open Access Policy

This journal offers immediate free access to its content, following the principle that making scientific knowledge freely available to the public provides greater global democratization of knowledge.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Revista de Agricultura Neotropical supports and follows the principles and standards recommended by Comittee of Publication Ethics' (COPE) Code of Conduct, available here.

We have edited this statement (Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement/PEMS), to define best practice in the ethics of scientific publishing in Revista de Agricultura Neotropical. They address: study design and ethical approval, data analysis, authorship, conflict of interests, the peer review process, redundant publication, plagiarism, duties of editors and how to deal with misconduct. In no case this journal or its editors encourage misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

About authors responsibilities, it is forbidden to publish same research in another journal.

Fabrication and falsification of data constitute misconduct. Editorial Comittee can decide what action to take. It might not simply reject papers that raise questions of misconduct. It might ethically pursue the case.

Redundant publication (two or more papers) without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions constitute misconduct.

Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others’ published and unpublished ideas, including research grant applications to submission under “new” authorship of a complete paper, sometimes in a different language. It may occur at any stage of planning, research, writing, or publication. All sources must be disclosed, and if large amounts of other people’s written or illustrative material is to be used, permission must be sought.

If Editorial Comittee/editor or review is presented with convincing evidence of misconduct, they must immediately pass this on to the journal managers/editor-in-chef and they will notify the author(s) by letter of explanation where there appears to be a genuine misunderstanding of principles and an editorial giving full details of the misconduct.

Authors will be given the opportunity to respond to any charge of minor misconduct.

 

SUBMISSION AND EVALUATION

When filling out the registration of authors in the journal system and submitting a manuscript, a confirmation email is sent to the corresponding Author. The editorial review process only starts if the manuscript follows the established norms (Guide for authors); otherwise, it is returned for adequacy.

Manuscripts that comply with the prescribed standards will be submitted to similarity detection software and analyzed by the Editorial Comittee, which will decide whether or not to proceed with the editorial analysis.

Editorial Comittee´s decision to accept or reject a submission paper will be based only on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, and the study’s relevance to the remit of the journal.

Papers not suitable for the journal scope will be returned to the Authors, even before the technical-scientific analysis. Manuscripts with problems regarding the textual composition structure will be returned and, if corrected, can be resubmitted.

The submitted manuscript will not be retained or copied. Editors will treat all submitted papers as confidential.

Initially approved by the Editorial Comittee, the manuscripts will proceed to the next phase where the evaluators will be chosen by this same Comittee, among researchers of recognized competence in the specific area of each work and, preferably, linked to different institutions from those where the manuscript under analysis was originated.

Considering that Judgments must be objective, reviewers must not present any bias and no conflict of interest.

The Editorial Comittee asks the reviewers, before starting the analysis of a manuscript, to consider the possibility of some situations and/or relationships that may compromise the impartiality of the evaluation process, such as regular collaboration with possible authors in activities of research, advisor-student association, commercial interest in the publication, family relationship. In these cases, the reviewer is asked to immediately return the manuscript, communicating the impossibility of analyzing it.

 

PEER-REVIEW

Double Peer-review is defined as obtaining technical-cientific advice on individual manuscripts from two or three reviewers’ expert in the field, named ad hoc advisors. They will review manuscripts without know author´s name.

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer review, the journal takes all possible care not to reveal the identity of authors and reviewers during the process. For this, the journal requires that authors, editors, and reviewers take some precautions with the text and properties of the document:

  1. The document authors must exclude names from the text, replacing them with "Author" and the year in references and footnotes, instead of author names, manuscript title, etc.
  2. In Microsoft Office documents, the author identification must be removed from the document properties (in the File > Properties menu), starting in File, in the main menu, and clicking on the sequence: File > Save As... > Tools (or Options on Mac) > Security Options... > Remove personal information from file on save > OK > Save.
  3. For PDF documents, author names must also be removed from Document Properties under File in the Adobe Acrobat main menu.

Then, if reviewers find no evidence of misconduct, the editorial processes should proceed in the normal way.

In this process, reviewers must consider the following items: a) originality and clarity in title, objectives, and conclusions; b) assessment of potential impact or interest that the study may arouse in the scientific community); c) assessment of the adequacy of the research design and data analysis); d) evidence of results supporting the conclusions; e) quality of the textual composition. Each ad hoc reviewer will manifest itself, in its opinion, through one of the following options: a) Accept Submission; b) Revisions Required; c) Resubmit for Review; or d) Decline Submission.

Reviewers will be speedy, accurate, courteous, unbiased and justifiable reports.

In his opinion or the text of the manuscript, the reviewer is entirely free to propose changes, correct, suppress or add excerpts and sections, point out ambiguous, redundant, incoherent, or misuse of terminology, and request more detailed explanations, etc. Respectfully, the opinions will be critical and constructive about the manuscript under analysis.

The decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript for publication is fundamentally based on the recommendation of the ad hoc reviewers. All opinions, in total, omitting the identification of reviewers, will be forwarded to the corresponding Author. In the case of only two opinions, if there is a tie (one opinion favorable to the publication and the other unfavorable), the opinion of a third reviewer will be required. If there is a majority of unfavorable opinions, the manuscript will be archived.

With a majority of favorable opinions, the decision is to accept the publication of the manuscript. Such acceptance, however, is subject to compliance or justification based on the requested technical or editorial recommendations; these suggestions aim to add improvements to the quality of the manuscript. If they disagree with the suggestions, the Authors must write a reasoned justification and send it to the editor, together with the reformulated version. Such referral must be made within the deadline established by the Editors; otherwise, the manuscript will be archived. If there are justifications, the Editors will analyze these, who can forward them to the respective reviewers for analysis.

Upon receipt and analysis of the reformulated version, the manuscript is accepted for publication if the editorial and content suggestions are duly incorporated or justified. It then proceeds to the diagramming/layout step. During the editing phase of the manuscript, any changes in the text order are made for a better layout. Before the online publication, proofreading of the manuscript is sent to authors, and it only consists of making the requested corrections, not being accepted by the Editorial Comittee any change in the structure/writing of the text and figures and/or tables. Thus, it is recommended that Authors carefully read the entire manuscript, making the corrections proposed in it and highlighting possible errors/corrections to be made by the editor. Authors have a period of 5 days to respond to these requests and return the manuscript.

 

Privacy Policy

The names, postal addresses, and electronic addresses informed in Revista de Agricultura Neotropical will be used exclusively to meet the purposes of this periodical concerning the services that will be provided, not being made available for other purposes or to third parties.

 

Copyright Statement

Authors will not be reimbursed for publishing papers in the Revista de Agricultura Neotropical, giving up their copyright in favor of this periodical. However, the published contents are the sole and exclusive responsibility of their authors, although the editors have the right to make textual adjustments during the editing process of the manuscript.

ISSN: 2358-6303