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    Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

    Funding of the JAS publication is exclusively from the Sabaragamuwa University funds. Also research funders should be acknowledged by the authors on all research papers.

    The Journal of Agricultural Sciences publishes only original works of the authors that have not been published earlier either in printed format or electronically. All authors of manuscripts submitted to the JAS must confirm that neither the manuscript nor any part of it, regardless of the language in which it was originally written or published, has been published or is under consideration for publication or accepted for publication elsewhere. Further, authors are expected to be knowledgeable of and comply with best practice in publication ethics specifically with regard to authorship, dual submission, plagiarism, manipulation of figures, competing interests and compliance with policies on research ethics.

    Authors should be followed applicable copyright laws and conventions. Copyright material should be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement. Relevant previous work and publications, both by other researchers and the authors’ own, should be properly acknowledged and referenced. The primary literature should be cited both in the text and in the reference list. Authors should inform editors if findings have been published previously or if multiple reports or multiple analyses of a single data set are under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors should provide copies of related publications or work submitted to other journals.

    Copy rights of the published papers are with the authors and JAS takes the responsibility of publishing the manuscript only. Editors of JAS is devoted not to make any kind of discrimination to the authors on the grounds of gender, age, experience, social status, occupation, sexual orientation, working institution, colour of the skin, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin. All the papers published by the JAS are solely on merit basis.

    Outline

    The Journal of Agricultural Sciences - Sri Lanka is a double blind peer reviewed journal dedicated to ensuring the highest values of publication ethics. All stakeholders of the journal such as the Editors, Authors, Reviewers and Publishers have to agree upon the total ethical behavior in this context. The Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractices of The Journal of Agricultural Sciences- Sri Lanka (JASSL) are based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE. (https://publicationethics.org/)

    Responsibilities of the Editor in Chief and the Coordinating Editors

    1. Making  initial evaluation of the manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic and intellectual merit, without considering the author(s)’ race, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnic origin, religious belief, citizenship, political orientation or social class.
    2. Deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal should be sent for reviewers’ evaluation following the initial evaluation based upon the policies and authors’ guidelines   of the journal and legal requirements with regard to vilification, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
    3. Ensuring appropriate peer reviewers are selected to evaluate the manuscripts.
    4. Guaranteeing a fair and unbiased double-blind peer review of the manuscripts and ensure all information related to the authors and reviewers are kept confidential and to ensure both authors’ and peer reviewers’ identities are secured.
    5. Provision of direction and guidance to members of the Editorial Board, authors and reviewers on their responsibilities and ethical expectations and also on the description of peer review processes.
    6. Developing and maintaining a database of appropriate reviewers and updating of the same on the basis of reviewer competence, punctuality and responsiveness.

    Responsibilities of the Editorial Board

    1. Ensuring the maintenance of overall quality of the journal.
    2. Assuring the international standards of both online and print publications of the journal by providing opinions to the executive editors of the journal.
    3. Making  a set of  clear guidelines available for  authors with regard to subject area of the journal  and the overall design of the issues.
    4. Establishing the journal policy and ensure the implementation of it.
    5. Assisting  to ensure the international recognition and acceptance of the journal
    6. Ensuring  the implementation of publication ethics of the journal by all the stakeholders 

    Responsibilities of the Authors 

    1. Authors should not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one publication at a time. This is  found to be an  unethical publishing behavior and is obnoxious.
    2. Authors must ensure and declare that their work is original and that any work or statement from other authors or sources has been appropriately acknowledged and referenced.
    3. Manuscripts submitted by authors  for publication in JASSL must be original articles and need to confirm that the submitted works represent their own contributions and that they have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or partially  from others’ work and such  must not be included with no clear cited sources.
    4. Authors should cite publications that are relevant to the submitted work only.
    5. Should understand and act towards the fact that plagiarism in all its forms that exhibits unethical publishing behavior is unacceptable.
    6. Authors need to submit a written statement that clearly states the manuscript has not been published elsewhere in any form of publishing.
    7. Authorship should be comprised with those who have made a significant contribution to the planning, designing, implementation or interpretation of the relevant research or study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.
    8. Main author and corresponding author must take all the responsibilities in ensuring all the ethical considerations of the journal. 
    9. Main author and corresponding author with the journal should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are included in the list of authors of the manuscript. Total consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication should be ensured.
    10. All sources of financial support of the work submitted to the journal should be disclosed and acknowledged.
    11. All the responsibilities with regard to the published material are vested upon the main author and co authors.
    12. The journal is freely available online. Authors should agree with the open access policy which enables unrestricted access and reuse of all published articles. The articles are published under the Creative Commons Copyright License Policy CC BY-SA. This license permits users to use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided it is licensed under the same terms and the original work is properly cited.

    Responsibilities of the Reviewers

    1. Peer reviewers should assist especially the Editor in Chief and Coordinating Editor, and Editorial committee whenever necessary, in making editorial decisions by submitting their recommendations on eligibility and relevance of the manuscripts for publication.
    2. Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents and should not be discussed on their content with outside parties and should not be multiplied in any form. 
    3. If a selected particular reviewer is not competent to review a given manuscript or knows that the timely review of the same will be impossible, should immediately inform to the Editor in Chief and Coordinating Editor without delay, enabling Executive Editors towards calling an alternative reviewer. 
    4. Reviewers are requested to report to the Editors, if they are aware of copyright breach and plagiarism on the author’s side.
    5. Reviewers must strictly evaluate the manuscripts, only based on content, without imagining the author’s race, age, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, citizenship, political orientation or social class.
    6. Peer review must be done very objectively, with a clear logic, so that authors can use them for improving the paper.
    7. Reviewers should not consider any manuscript for reviewing in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, establishments or institutions connected to the manuscripts.

    Responsibilities of the Publishers

    Publisher of the Journal of Agricultural Sciences- Sri Lanka is the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka

    1. To ensure and secure the autonomy of the decisions of Editorial Board.
    2. To protect the intellectual property rights, privacy of the authors and copy rights.
    3. To assist the Editorial Board to maintain the overall quality of the journal.
    4. To provide necessary logistic support to Executive Editors to maintain publication ethics of the journal.

    Errata and Retraction Policy

    An erratum refers to a correction of errors introduced to the article by the publisher.

    All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication.

    Authors who notice an error should contact the Coordinating Editor or Editor in Chief of the journal.

    Changes/Additions to accepted articles

    All content of published articles are subject to the editorial review process, organized by and under the auspices of the Editor in Chief. If the authors wish to add any content to their article after acceptance, they must submit a written request the Editor in Chief and the new content will be reviewed.

    1. If the new material is additional to the accepted article, it must be submitted for peer review as a new manuscript, referring back to the original manuscript
    2. If the new material should replace the original content of the accepted article, the Editor in Chief may consider the publication of an Erratum or a Corrigendum.
    3. Changes to articles after they have been published online may only be made under the circumstances outlined below.
    4. An Erratum is a statement by the authors of the original paper that briefly describes any correction(s) resulting from errors or omissions. Any effects on the conclusions of the paper should be noted. The corrected article is not removed from the online journal, but notice of erratum is given. The Erratum is made freely available to all readers and is linked to the corrected article.
    5. A Retraction is a notice that the paper should not be regarded as part of the scientific literature. Retractions are issued if there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, this can be as a result of misconduct or honest error; if the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper referencing, permission or justification; if the work is plagiarized; or if the work reports unethical research.
    6. To protect the integrity of the record, the retracted article is not removed from the online journal, but notice of retraction is given, is made freely available to all readers, and is linked to the retracted article. Retraction will be published by the decision of the Editorial team of the journal. In all cases, the retraction indicates the reason for the action and who is responsible for the decision. If a retraction is made without the unanimous agreement of the authors, that is also noted.
    7. In rare and extreme cases involving legal infringement, the Editor in Chief on behalf of the publisher will redact or remove an article. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the integrity of the scientific record.

    Data Set Policy 

    A submission to the Journal of Agricultural Sciences- Sri Lanka implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, may freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.

    The journal strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely to be available to readers, whenever possible. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Authors can find Springer Nature’s information (https://www.springernature.com/gp/products/database) on recommended repositories.

    Data availability

    All original articles must include a data availability statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the research or study. According to JAS data means the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We accept that it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access. Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

    1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the ………………( name of the  repository), and ………………………(Web link to the data base)
    2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to (Please give reasons why data are not publicly available) and are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
    3. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
    4. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
    5. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and are available with supplementary information files.
    6. The data that support the findings of this study are available with (name of the third party that data are available), however, restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of with (name of the third party that data are available)

    The journal also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs.

    Research data and peer review

    Peer reviewers are encouraged to check the manuscript’s data availability statement, where applicable. They should consider if the authors have complied with the journal’s policy on the availability of research data, and whether reasonable effort has been made to make the data that support the findings of the study available for replication or reuse by other researchers. Peer reviewers are entitled to request access to underlying data (and code) when needed for them to perform their evaluation of a manuscript.

    Indexing of Journal of Agricultural Sciences

    The Journal of Agricultural Sciences is indexed in the following databases:

    Summon Serial Titles (page number 2084)
    CAB Abstracts
    Index Copernicus
    AGRICOLA
    AGORA
    Research Bible
    The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL)
    Google Scholar
    DOAJ
    AGRIS: International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology
    SLJOL
    Scirus
    Ulrich
    OHSU Library
    Journals for Free
    JournalTOCs
    Dayang Journal System
    WZB
    LAURIER library
    Cabdirect
    Zurich Open Repository and Archive Journal Data Base
    JournalSeek
    Journals Metrics