About the Journal
Policies
Focus and scope
Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas[1] has as an objective to be a resource for the transference of corollary knowledge on agricultural science studies. It publishes original and unpublished manuscripts related to this discipline, in view of disseminating results of research on the agricultural field among the academic community. For this reason, the journal is addressed to researchers and academicians specialized in agricultural sciences.
Section policies
Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas publishes original and unpublished manuscripts related to studies on agricultural sciences. These manuscripts are presented as scientific articles, research notes, essays and description of cultivars, which are described below. Every section undergoes a peer review process.
Scientific research: an original and unpublished text substantiated on research results, in which the interaction of two or more treatments over several experiments, localities and years has been studied in order to obtain valid conclusions. The articles have a maximum extension of 18 pages (including tables and figures) and must include the following sections:
Title
Author(s)
Authors’ ascription institutions
Authors’ addresses (email address)
Abstract
Key words
Introduction
Materials and methods
Results and discussion
Conclusions
Cited literature
Research note: a text that contains preliminary and transcendent results the author(s) want to publish before concluding their research. The extension is eight pages (including tables and figures). It contains the same sections as a scientific article, but sections 7 to 9 are written as a continuous text; this is to say, without the section title.
Essay: a recapitulative text produced from the analysis of important and current topics for the scientific community, where the author expresses their opinion and establishes conclusions on the topic dealt with. It will have a maximum extension of 18 pages (including tables and figures). It includes the sections 1 to 6 and 10 and 11 of scientific articles. The development of the contents is undertaken in the sections according to the topic with which conclusions are generated.
Description of cultivars: a text produced in view of providing the scientific community with the origin and characteristics of a new variety, clone, hybrid, etc. A maximum extension of 8 pages (including tables and figures). It has sections 1 to 6 and 10 and 11 of scientific articles. Cultivar descriptions are a continuous text, with relevant information on the importance of the cultivar, origin, genealogy, method of production, phenotypical and agronomic characteristics, quality (commercial, industrial, nutritional, etc.) as well as seed availability.
Editorial review
The authors who submit an article for possible publication in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas shall send the documents —in full and in their final versions— indicated in requirements for manuscript submission. Once the editorial team verifies that the submission meets all the submission requirements, the text will be sent to editorial review, which contemplates the following stages:
1. Accredit plagiarism detection under a tool approved by the Editorial Committee, only after this will it be possible to go on to the next stages of academic review.
2. It will be verified that the submitted text correlates with the journal’s focus and scope. Works which do not explicitly regard the regional dimension as a relevant component will not be considered.
3. It will be checked that the text meets each and every format indication stated in requirement for manuscript submission and delivery of originals, as well as those in guidelines for authors.
4. It will be revised that the reported bibliography is relevant and updated and that it is duly presented standardized according to the journal’s guidelines and APA.
5. In accordance with the editorial policy guidelines, approved by the editorial committee, priority will be given to texts whose cited literature is delivered using reference management software and with active hyperlinks to the respective DOIs, where appropriate.
Once the submitted article accredits editorial review, the corresponding author will be formally notified about the beginning of the process of academic review over the OJS platform.
Academic review
The articles must favorably accredit the process of academic review, which works under a modality of quadruple blind peer review, where the identity of both the authors and reviewers will remain anonymous:
1. The articles that accredit editorial review will be sent to academic experts in the same discipline and topic as the submitted text; they will produce comments about the relevance and academic quality of the submitted text and will decide on the feasibility of publishing the text in question.
2. The reviewers will be in charge of revising and analyzing the academic, theoretical and methodologic relevance of each and every article assigned to them. They will be responsible for verifying the explicit presence of the theoretical-methodological section, consistency between academic output and the findings’ relevance, as well as the up-to-dateness and relevance of the bibliography resorted to.
3. All the texts will be sent to at least four experts, ascribed to institutions other than the text’s author(s); they will comment on the text. Finally, on the basis of their recommendations, the decision of the editorial board of Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas will be:
4. Recommend its publication without modifications.
5. Recommend its publication with minor changes and which do not make a second peer review necessary.
6. Condition its publication on making major changes, which makes a new peer review necessary. This process can be repeated up to two rounds, if upon reaching this point the document is not recommended for publication yet, the article will be rejected without option to resend it.
7. Not recommend its publication.
8. For a text to be approved for publication it is indispensable that at least three of the four reviewers’ rulings are positive.
9. The editorial board will ensure, in all cases, that the rulings delivered to the authors contain sound arguments to support the editorial decision.
10. The results of the academic review process will be unappealable in all cases.
11. If observations are received, the author(s) will have a 10-working-day deadline to send the new version of the work to the editor. Failing to meet this deadline will mean the automatic disqualification of the document.
12. The time for the document to be sent to review will be in function of the number of articles in waiting list. The referees, once receiving the article, will have six weeks to carry out the review and deliver their ruling.
13. The accepted documents will start the edition process (proofreading, metadata marking up, layout and typesetting) to later be included in the corresponding fascicle, according to the decision of the editorial board, which is
a) Recommend its publication without modifications.
b) Recommend its publication with minor changes and which do not make a second peer review necessary.
c) Condition its publication on making major changes, which makes a new peer review necessary. This process can be repeated up to two rounds, if upon reaching this point the document is not recommended for publication yet, the article will be rejected without option to resend it.
d) Not recommend its publication.
14. Once the editorial process concludes (proofreading, metadata marking up, layout and typesetting), the formatted article will be sent to the corresponding author for their approval, after this no changes at all will be accepted. The journal does not sent galley proofs.
Open access policy
The authors who publish in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas accept the following conditions:
In accordance with copyright laws, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas recognizes and respects the authors’ moral right and ownership of property rights which will be transferred to the journal for dissemination in open access. Invariably, all the authors have to sign a letter of transfer of property rights and of originality of the article to Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP) [National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research]. The author(s) must pay a fee for the reception of articles before proceeding to editorial review.
All the texts published by Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas —with no exception— are distributed under a Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), which allows third parties to use the publication as long as the work’s authorship and its first publication in this journal are mentioned.
The author(s) can enter into independent and additional contractual agreements for the nonexclusive distribution of the version of the article published in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas (for example include it into an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as it is clearly and explicitly indicated that the work was published for the first time in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas.
For all the above, the authors shall send the Letter-transfer of Property Rights for the first publication duly filled in and signed by the author(s). This form must be sent as a PDF file to: revista_atm@yahoo.com.mx; cienciasagricola@inifap.gob.mx; remexca2017@gmail.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license.
Filing
Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas uses LOCKSS system to create a storing system distributed among participant libraries and allows the creation of permanent files in the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.
Legal notice
Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas. It is a continuous publication, published by Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP), Avenida Progreso No. 5. Barrio de Santa Catarina, Delegación Coyoacán, Mexico, Distrito Federal, 04010. http://www.inifap.gob.mx/. Responsible editor: Dora María Sangerman Jarquín, revista_atm@yahoo.com.mx. Legal Reservation for Exclusive Use: 04-2013-112211374700-203. ISSN: 2007- 9230, both granted by the National Copyright Institute. Responsible for the last update of this issue, Dora María Sangerman Jarquín. Campo Experimental Valle de México. Carretera Los Reyes-Texcoco, km 13.5. Coatlinchán, Texcoco, Estado de México, 56250.
The opinions expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect the journal editor’s stance. The total or partial reproduction of the contents and images of the publication is strictly forbidden without the prior authorization of the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research.
Code of ethics
Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas adheres to the code of ethics for the actions and performance of personnel involved in this journal’s publication process (editors, editorial committee, authors and reviewers) established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and available at publicationethics.org.
Plagiarism detection
In Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas specialized software for plagiarism detection is used. The texts submitted will undergo a review before being sent to editorial and academic review; they will be rejected if the percentage of similarity with other published text or available on the internet is over 35%. If possible plagiarism is reported or detected in a published text, the procedure to follow is the one established by COPE.
Guidelines and best editorial practices
These guidelines refer to the policies of best editorial practices by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available at: http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.
Functions of the editorial council
- Promote among the national and international academic community the submission of articles to be published in the journal.
- Suggest academic guidelines for the journal’s editorial policy.
- Promote the dissemination of the journal in national and international academic media.
- Participate as reviewers of the works submitted for publication or to recommend other experts as reviewers.
Functions and responsibilities of the editorial committee
- Promote among the national and international academic community the submission of articles to be published in the journal.
- Support in the selection of reviewers for the works received, as well as deliberate on the best options of possible reviewers where required.
- Decide on the relevance of publishing the submitted materials on the basis of the experts’ reviews
- Approve the content proposed for each number of the journal.
- Revise and assess each number published.
- Collaborate with the corresponding instances to maintain the periodicity established for the journal.
Functions and responsibilities of the director
- Coordinate actions toward the fulfillment of the journal’s goals.
- Ensure high academic level in the published content.
- Receive the works submitted for possible publication and ask for the reviews.
- Monitor compliance with the reviewers’ recommendations.
- Inform the editorial committee on the review process of all the materials received, ensuring confidentiality.
-Propose the content of each number to the editorial committee from the texts corrected and approved at the time.
Functions and responsibilities of the editor
- Plan and coordinate the journal’s editorial production process.
- Monitor the technical processing of the materials approved by the editorial committee, once the established academic requirements are accredited.
- Monitor proofreading and the journal’s technical quality.
- Collaborate to maintain the journal’s publication periodicity and to begin with the distribution of each journal’s number the first month of the corresponding period.
Responsibilities of the authors
- Follow the journal’s publication requirements regarding originality, not being published, relevance.
- Present their results with honesty and without lying, falsifying or manipulating data.
- Take collective responsibility, if this is the case, for the work submitted and published.
- Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest must be stated in the article.
- Cite the work of others accurately and only refer publications used in the text.
- The authors must inform the editors if the results have been previously published or if any report or multiple analyzes of the same dataset are under consideration for publication somewhere else. The authors must provide copies of the publications or related works submitted to other journals.
Responsibilities of the reviewers
- Accept the review of texts that fall into their specialty area so that an adequate assessment is carried out.
- Declare from the start of the process if there is any conflict of interest.[1]If the identity of any author is suspected, the journal shall be notified if this piece of information poses any conflict of interest.
- Decline any review immediately if it is not possible for them to deliver it within the established deadline.
- Produce their assessment on the basis of originality, contribution of the article to the topic, methodology resorted to, relevance and up-to-dateness of the reported bibliography, style, coherence and quality in the structure and drafting.
- Immediately inform the journal if over the review process, they discover they do not have the necessary experience to assess all the text’s aspects.
- Their criticisms will be objective, specific and constructive.
- Clearly define the approval, rejection or conditioning of the text.
- Deliver their assessment within the established deadline.
- Respect confidentiality during and after the review process.
- Must not use content of an under-review or reviewed text.
- Will not involve third parties in the assigned review.
- Inform the journal if similarity with other text they have reviewed is noticed or if they identify any sort of plagiarism.
- Transferring the responsibility of undertaking a review to any other person, assistant or collaborator is not allowed whatsoever.
[1] Conflicts of interest appear when authors, reviewers or editors have nonmanifest interests, which may influence their judgment on the material submitted for publication. These can be personal, academic, economic, political or religious. If such interests are relevant, they have be communicated to the editors.
[1] Mexican Journal of Agricultural Sciences
