Author Guidelines

Sections

1. Submission
2. Aims and Scope
3. Preparing your Submission
4. Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations
5. Author Licensing
6. Publication Process After Acceptance
7. Post Publication
8. Editorial Office Contact Details

1. SUBMISSION

Thank you for your interest in Plant Biotechnology Journal (PBJ). Note that submission implies that the content has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere except as a brief abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting/symposium or on a preprint server such as BioRxiv.

New submissions should be made via the Research Exchange submission portal. You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission.wiley.com and clicking the “My Submissions” button. For technical help with the submission system, please review our FAQs or contact [email protected].

Format Free Submission

PBJ now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process. You can submit your manuscript in the format of your choice, and Wiley will update the formatting for you into journal style when your manuscript is accepted for publication. Once you have prepared your submission, or resubmission, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/PBI.

The submission system will prompt you to use an ORCID iD (a unique author identifier) to help distinguish your work from that of other researchers – its use is mandatory. Click here to find out more.

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected]

We look forward to your submission.

2. AIMS AND SCOPE

PBJ aims to publish high-impact original research and incisive reviews by leading researchers in applied plant science, with an emphasis on molecular plant sciences and their applications through plant biotechnology. We aim to provide a forum for the most important advances in this field, including curiosity-driven studies with the potential for application, strategic research in plant biotechnology, scientific analysis of key issues for the beneficial application of plant sciences and scientific analysis of the performance of the products of plant biotechnology in practice.

PBJ publishes four categories of papers:

Research Articles

To be accepted for publication in PBJ, original research papers will need to present major new findings with conclusions thoroughly supported by critical experimental evidence and make a substantial contribution to plant biotechnology and/or scientific understanding.

Review Articles

Reviews are normally invited and must provide a high level of insight and synthesis beyond a summary of published work. Sciences underpinning plant biotechnology include functional genomics and proteomics, molecular genetics, physiology, biochemistry, and cell biology, with applications through the molecular marker, mutant and transgenic approaches. Applications may involve agriculture, horticulture, forestry, biodiversity and conservation, enhanced yield, reduced environmental impact, phytoremediation, environmental sensors, improved foods and food-processing, biofuels, and biomaterials including pharmaceuticals from terrestrial, aquatic, or marine plant systems including industrial crops and natural systems. If you would like to submit a Review paper, please email a outline of your review proposal to [email protected] and a member of the Editorial Team will be in touch to discuss further.

Brief Communications

Brief Communications should be no more than 1500 words including the figure/table legend and references, should not have an abstract, and should contain no more than one illustration/table (with up to 6 panels only) and a maximum of 10 references. The final article should take up no more than 3 printed pages. Supplementary material is permitted for this article type. Guidelines for presentation are as for Research articles above.

Special Issue articles

PBJ aims to publish special issues, typically comprising specially commissioned review papers on an emerging topic identified by the Editorial Board.

3. PREPARING YOUR SUBMISSION

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files – whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract (which does need to be correctly styled), introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. If the figures are not of sufficiently high quality your manuscript may be delayed. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• Cover letters are mandatory and should be supplied on submission. Cover letters should specifically describe the novelty of the paper and the broad appeal to the readership.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
• Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
• Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
• A data availability statement: PBJ mandates data sharing, and authors are required to provide a data availability statement at the submission stage and must include links to the repositories where all data referenced in the manuscript are stored. Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.
• A funding statement
• Conflict of interest disclosure
• Ethics approval statement
• Permission to reproduce material from other sources

Word limit

PBJ recommends that Research Articles are no longer than 7000 words with no more than 7 Figures and Tables in total. We also recommend that Review Articles should be no more than 9000 words, with a total of no more than 15 Figures and Tables.

To support this process all manuscripts must have a word count immediately following the covering page listing the authors and their affiliations. The word count must include all sections including table legends, however, figure legends, references and supplementary/supporting data should not be included in the word count.

Brief Communications must be no more than 1500 words in total, should not have an abstract, and should contain no more than one illustration/table and a maximum of 10 references. Brief Communications that are more extensive than this will be returned to the authors without review.

Parts of the Manuscript

Text file

The text file should be presented in the following order: (i) Summary, not exceeding 250 words; (ii) Introduction; (iii) Results; (iv) Discussion; (v) Experimental procedures; (vi) Accession numbers; (vii) Acknowledgements; (viii) Short legends for Supporting Information; (ix) References; (x) Tables; (xi) Figure legends; (xii) Figures. The Results and Discussion sections may be combined and may contain subheadings. Figures and Supporting Information should be supplied as separate files, and not incorporated into the main manuscript text file. Authors should also refer to the Editorial Policies section below before preparing their manuscript.

Title

The title should be a short informative title that contains the major keywords. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips).

Authorship

Please refer to the journal’s authorship policy in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section for details on eligibility for author listing. A separate subsection entitled ‘Author Contributions’ should be inserted at the end of the main text and before the Acknowledgement section to indicate the contribution that each individual author has made to the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section. Financial and material support should also be mentioned. Thanks to anonymous reviewers are not appropriate.

Conflict of Interest Statement

You will be asked to provide a conflict of interest statement during the submission process. See the section ‘Conflict of Interest’ in the Editorial Policies and Ethical Considerations section for details on what to include in this section. Please ensure you liaise with all co-authors to confirm agreement with the final statement.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of no more than 250 words containing the major keywords.

Keywords

Please provide up to 10 keywords, listed in order of importance.

Main text

• The journal uses British/US spelling, however, authors may submit using either option as the spelling of accepted papers is converted during the production process.
• Footnotes to the text are not allowed and any such material should be incorporated into the text as parenthetical matter.

Manuscripts can be uploaded either as a single document (containing the main text, tables and figures), or with figures and tables provided as separate files. The main manuscript file can be submitted in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTeX (.tex) format.

LaTeX Guidelines for Submission 

If submitting your manuscript file in LaTeX format via Research Exchange, select the file designation “Main Document – LaTeX .tex File” on upload. When submitting a LaTeX Main Document, you must also provide a PDF version of the manuscript for Peer Review. Please upload this file as “Main Document - LaTeX PDF.” All supporting files that are referred to in the LaTeX Main Document should be uploaded as a “LaTeX Supplementary File.”  

LaTeX Guidelines for Post-Acceptance: 

Please check that you have supplied the following files for typesetting post-acceptance:  

• PDF of the finalized source manuscript files compiled without any errors. 
• The LaTeX source code files (text, figure captions, and tables, preferably in a single file), BibTeX files (if used), any associated packages/files along with all other files needed for compiling without any errors. This is particularly important if authors have used any LaTeX style or class files, bibliography files (.bbl, .bst. .blg) or packages apart from those used in the NJD LaTeX Template class file.  
• Electronic graphics files for the illustrations in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PDF or TIFF format. Authors are requested not to create figures using LaTeX codes. 

Your main document file should include: 

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations;  
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted; 
• Acknowledgments; 
• Abstract structured (intro/methods/results/conclusion) or unstructured; 
• Up to seven keywords; 
• Practitioner Points (optional) Authors will need to provide no more than 3 ‘key points’, written with the practitioner in mind, that summarize the key messages of their paper to be published with their article;  
• Main body: formatted as introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusion;  
• References; 
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);  
• Figure legends: At initial submission, figures can be included in the manuscript or can be submitted in separate files. Should your manuscript reach revision stage, figures and tables must be provided as separate files.

References

Submissions are not required to reflect the precise reference formatting of the journal (use of italics, bold etc.), however, it is important that all key elements of each reference are included. Please see below for examples of reference content requirements:

Journal Article

Chan HT, Xiao Y, Weldon WC, Oberste SM, Chumakov K, Daniell H (2016) Cold chain and virus-free chloroplast-made booster vaccine to confer immunity against different poliovirus serotypes. Plant Biotechnology Journal 14: 2190–2200.

Book

Singh BP (ed) (2013) Biofuel Crop Sustainability, 2nd edn. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Oxford, UK. doi: 10.1002/9781118635797

Chapter in a Book

Lu A, Diehn S, Cigan M (2014) Maize protein expression. In: Recent Advances in Gene Expression and Enabling Technologies in Crop Plants (Azhakanandam K, Silverstone A, Daniell H Davey MR, eds), pp 3–40. New York: Springer.

Tables

Tables should be self-contained and complement, but not duplicate, information contained in the text. They should be supplied as editable files, not pasted as images, and appear on separate pages at the end of the main document. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the table, legend and footnotes must be understandable without reference to the text. No vertical rules should be used. Units should appear in parentheses in the column headings, not in the body of the table. Repeated words or numerals on successive lines should be written in full. All abbreviations must be defined in footnotes. Footnote symbols: †, ‡, §, ¶, should be used (in that order) and *, **, *** should be reserved for P-values. Statistical measures such as SD or SEM should be identified in the headings.

Figure Legends

Figure legends should be included below each figure. Legends should be concise but comprehensive – the figure and its legend must be understandable without reference to the text, but should not contain excessive methodological detail. Each should begin with a short title for the figure. Include definitions of any symbols used and define/explain all abbreviations and units of measurement.

Where figures have been embedded in the manuscript text file, please include the legend directly underneath each figure. When uploading figures separately as individual image files, the online system presents you with the opportunity to include the figure legend, meaning it will then be incorporated automatically underneath each figure when the PDF is generated for the reviewers.

All figures will be assessed for potential improper image manipulation as part of the review process.

Preparing Figures

Although we encourage authors to send us the highest-quality figures possible, for peer-review purposes we are happy to accept a wide variety of formats, sizes, and resolutions.

Click here for the basic figure requirements for figures submitted with manuscripts for initial peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements.

With the exception of composite photographs suitable for full-page reproduction (maximum width, including lettering, 16.8 cm), all other figures will be typeset to a maximum width of 8 cm (including all lettering). Labelling on the figures should be in 8pt Helvetica if possible. Figure sections should be designated with lower case letters. Magnification bars should be given on electron and light microscope photographs. Error bars must be included on graphs, and the method used to derive the error bars included in the legend.

Colour figures: Figures submitted in colour will be reproduced in colour online free of charge.

Upon acceptance of your manuscript in PBJ, all figures of your manuscript will undergo an integrity check. In case of any doubt, raw data will be requested. Publication will only proceed on the condition that all final files comply with the journal integrity checks. In the event that any file does not comply with our integrity checks, the journal reserves the right to rescind this decision, or, alternatively, you may be contacted to resolve any concerns raised by these checks.

Best practices for the preparation of manuscript figures:

1. Splicing together separate images to present them as a composite image is not acceptable. Wherever multiple images belonging to different source micrographs, or gel blots, or photographs are grouped together, please add clear dividing space or dividing lines between separate images and indicate in the legend where and what the images represent.
2. In instances where specific lanes are removed from gel images or marker lanes added to a gel image- this should be made clear in the image by adding clear dividing space or dividing lines between separate images and indicating in the legend where and what the images represent. If loading controls are used, these should be included in the image; if grouped together, any adjustments made to the loading control and the rest of the image should be the same.
3. Removal, addition, alteration, enhancement, or obstruction of any particular feature within an image is not acceptable. This is also applicable for features that are part of the background of an image- please do not alter/clean the background of an image for a presentational purpose.
4. Gel blot and immunoblot images with extreme adjustments to contrast (white background) are not acceptable. In the interest of transparency, please use original and unedited gel blot images in the manuscript figures.
5. Linear adjustments made to the image as a whole are acceptable if they do not misrepresent the originally captured information in the image. Selective, non-linear adjustments to only parts of the image are not acceptable.
6. Re-use of an entire image or part of an image (e.g. loading controls or marker lanes) in the same figure or multiple figures within the manuscript is acceptable only when clearly stated and justified in the figure legend or methods section of the manuscript.
7. Images from previously published articles (e.g. loading controls or marker lanes) should not be re-used.

Statistics

All statements concerning quantitative differences between experimental conditions should be based on quantitative data and adequate statistical treatment. Where relevant, blots should be scanned to obtain quantitative data. Statistics should be based on independent biological samples. The deviation parameter, the number of biological samples and the statistical procedures should be provided for each dataset either in the Experimental Procedures section or in the figure legends. Technical replicates should be averaged before statistical treatment and not used to calculate deviation parameters. In the case of multiple comparisons (e.g. microarray data), the probability of false positives should be considered in the analysis. Experimental procedures should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced.

Reporting of large-scale microarray and omics data

Reporting standards for large-scale omics datasets are constantly evolving and PBJ will follow common sense standards currently accepted in the field. PBJ currently adopts the microarray data guidelines developed by the Functional GEnomics Data Society (FGED) and requires that all authors using microarray data in their manuscript submit a complete data set to one of two databases prior to manuscripts submission: the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) or the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) ArrayExpress repository. The procedure is mandatory for all papers using microarray data. Authors including microarray analysis should refer to the MIAME recommendations (http://fged.org/projects/miame/ ) for guidance in preparing their manuscripts. Guidelines for the preparation of proteomics data can be found at http://www.psidev.info/miape/. For the current recommended practice on the preparation and reporting of metabolomics data, authors are referred to the publication by Fernie et al. (http://www.plantcell.org/content/23/7/2477.full).

Supporting Information

Supporting information is information that is not essential to the article but that provides greater depth and background. It is hosted online-only, and appears without editing or typesetting. It may include datasets, tables, figures, videos, datasets, etc. Click here for Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information. Only material that is a valuable addition to the article should be included. Supporting Information will be reviewed.

Note, if data, scripts or other artifacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper are available via a publicly available data repository, authors should include a reference to the location of the material within their paper.

The availability of Supporting Information should be indicated in the main manuscript by a paragraph, to appear after the references at the end of the manuscript file, headed 'Supporting Information'. Legends should list the titles of all supporting figures, tables, data, etc. In order to protect reviewer anonymity, material posted on authors’ websites cannot be reviewed.

Supporting Information items should be referred to in the text as follows:

Supporting figures: Figure S1, Figure S2 etc. Supporting tables: Table S1, Table S2 etc.
Supporting data: Data S1, Data S2 etc.
Supporting experimental procedures: Methods S1, Methods S2 etc.
Supporting animations: Movie S1, Movie S2 etc.
Any other text-based Supporting Information: Appendix S1, Appendix S2 etc.

The above order should be used when listing the Supporting Information legends, both in the short versions in the main manuscript text file, as well as in the separate full legends file.

On initial submission, in order to aid the review process, Supporting Tables should be submitted as a single PDF file, or as multiple PDF files in the event of multiple tabs within an original Excel file. Authors will be required to resupply Supporting Tables in an editable format (Word/Excel) in subsequent revisions or on acceptance.

General Style Points

The following links provide general advice on formatting and style.

• Abbreviations: In general, terms should not be abbreviated unless they are used repeatedly and the abbreviation is helpful to the reader. Initially use the word in full, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Thereafter use the abbreviation only. Acceptable abbreviations that do not need to be defined are listed here: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/em1.pdf.
• Units of measurement: Measurements should be given in SI or SI-derived units. Visit the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) website at http://www.bipm.fr for more information about SI units.
• Numbers: numbers under 10 are spelt out, except for measurements with a unit (8 mmol/l); age (6 weeks old), or lists with other numbers (11 dogs, 9 cats, 4 gerbils).
• Scientific, protein, gene and trade names: Complete scientific names should be given when organisms are first mentioned. The genus name may subsequently be abbreviated to the initial. It is important to differentiate between genes and proteins. All gene names and loci should be written in italic type; proteins should be upright. Chemical substances should be referred to by the generic name only. Trade names should be capitalized, and the manufacturer’s name and website given.

Wiley Author Resources

Wiley has a range of resources for authors preparing manuscripts for submission available here. In particular, authors may benefit from referring to Wiley’s best practice tips on Writing for Search Engine Optimization.

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.       

4. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Editorial Review and Acceptance The acceptance criteria for all papers are the quality and originality of the research and its significance to our readership. Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts are single-blind peer-reviewed.

Authors are given the option to select a preferred Associate Editor to handle their manuscript though should note that Editors are allocated to manuscripts based upon various criteria including availability, workload and expertise, and preferred Associate editors cannot be guaranteed.

All submissions will be considered by the Editor-in-Chief and/or an Associate Editor to determine whether they fall within the scope of the journal and to ensure homogeneity in terms of scientific standards. Submissions that do will be sent out for full external review; those that do not will be returned to the submitting author quickly so that submission elsewhere will not be delayed. Manuscripts sent out for external review will be assessed by at least two subject experts; however, in extenuating circumstances (e.g. because of a delay caused by an overdue reviewer or the inability to secure two external reviews despite best efforts), the Associate Editor may make a recommendation based on the comments of only one reviewer plus his/her own assessment of the manuscript, or return the submission to the author to submit elsewhere so not to delay publication further.

Revisions and resubmissions of previously rejected manuscripts will typically be sent to the same reviewers who saw the original version, providing those reviewers are available. However, in some cases, the Associate Editor may decide that it is not appropriate to re-invite one or more of the original reviewers and/or may judge that a fresh reviewer is needed.

Revised manuscripts must be submitted within 1 month of authors being notified of the ‘Minor revision’ decision. Revised manuscripts submitted after this time will be considered as completely new submissions, and be subject again to the full review procedure. This time limit will be rigidly adhered to except under unusual circumstances, which must be explained in full, in writing, to the Editor-in-Chief.

Resubmissions of previously rejected manuscripts will typically be sent to the same reviewers who saw the original version, providing those reviewers are available. However, in some cases, the Associate Editor may decide that it is not appropriate to re-invite one or more of the original reviewers and/or may judge that a fresh reviewer is needed. Resubmissions should be made within 1 year of the original decision as the impact of the work, and hence its suitability for publication in PBJ may be lessened as knowledge advances.

Revised manuscripts must be in their final form when submitted, using a red font to indicate the revised sections of the manuscript. Note that the files submitted should be in their final format for publication as the files accepted within the Research Exchange system will be the files that are supplied to the publisher. The proofs received later are for correction of typographical errors only. They should not be used for final changes to articles; such changes must be made to the manuscript before it goes to the publisher. Major alterations to the text at the proof stage may be charged to the author and may delay publication.

Wiley's policy on confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Refer and Transfer Program

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant. 

Use of ‘unpublished’ or ‘not shown’ data

The statements ‘data not shown’ or ‘unpublished’ should be avoided; instead, the data should be included in the Supporting Information.

Species Names

Upon its first use in the title, abstract and text, the common name of a species should be followed by the scientific name (genus, species and authority) in parentheses. For well-known species, however, scientific names may be omitted from article titles. If no common name exists in English, the scientific name should be used only.

Genetic Nomenclature

Sequence variants should be described in the text and tables using both DNA and protein designations whenever appropriate. Sequence variant nomenclature must follow the current HGVS guidelines; see http://varnomen.hgvs.org/, where examples of acceptable nomenclature are provided.

Data storage and documentation

PBJ mandates data sharing and authors are required to provide a data availability statement at the submission stage and must include links to the repositories where all data referenced in the manuscript are stored. 

To facilitate data access, PBJ fully supports the use of preprint servers such as BioRXiv.

In general, the broad and systematic analysis of microarray datasets or RNA sequence datasets in papers published by PBJ must be accompanied by a complete dataset deposited in a publicly accessible repository. However, if the function of a specific gene or gene family is described that became first apparent in a microarray or RNA sequence experiment, and no further description of the analysis of the full dataset is provided in the manuscript, public deposition of the full dataset is not necessary for publication by PBJ.

For all data made publicly available authors should ensure that appropriate linking details and identifier(s) are included in the publication and where possible the repository, to facilitate linking between the journal article and the deposited data. If such a repository does not exist, data should be included as supporting information to the published paper or authors should agree to make their data available upon reasonable request.

If the study includes original data, at least one author must confirm that he or she had full access to all the data in the study, and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Availability of biological and chemical material

Publication of a paper in PBJ explicitly requires that authors will provide, for non-profit research, all the biological and chemical materials not commercially available, including all plant cultivars, cell lines, DNA, antibodies, and other similar materials, that are used for the experiments reported. Seeds of mutants described must be deposited at the appropriate stock centre and accession numbers provided. PBJ expects that all authors will conform to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) guidelines for Dual Use Life Sciences Research.

To ensure complete transparency of this requirement, PBJ requires authors to state that these materials will be available on request. Requests must be reasonable with regard to the amount of material that can be provided and the sharing of costs, particularly when materials have required substantial effort for their production.

Registration of Nucleotide Sequence Data

Nucleotide sequence data can be submitted in electronic format to any of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ, EMBL or GenBank. It is only necessary to submit to one database as data are exchanged between DDBJ, EMBL and GenBank on a daily basis. The suggested wording for referring to accession-number information is: ‘These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number U12345’. Addresses are as follows:

DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp

EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Submissions http://www.ebi.ac.uk

GenBank http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Papers containing amino acid sequences must supply a UniProt/Swiss-Prot accession number. To obtain an accession number, please use the UniProt/Swiss-Prot data submission tool (SPIN) at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/swissprot/Submissions/submissions.html.

Nucleotide and amino acid sequence accession numbers should be incorporated into manuscripts after the Material and Methods section. Any paper that does not have accession number(s) by proof stage will not be published until they have been provided.

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include but are not limited to, employment with or funding from a commercial entity, patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission and include a statement in the Acknowledgements section. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships. Discovery of the failure to adequately disclose a conflict of interest at submission or during the review process may result in the rejection of a manuscript or other author sanctions.

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/

Authorship

The list of authors should accurately illustrate who contributed to the work and how. A section entitled ‘Author Contributions’ should be added to the manuscript before the Acknowledgement section to indicate the contribution that each individual author has made to the manuscript.

1. Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;

2. Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

3. Given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; and

4. Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section (for example, to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support). Prior to submitting the article, all authors should agree on the order in which their names will be listed in the manuscript.

Additional authorship options

Joint first or senior authorship: In the case of joint first authorship a note should be added to the author listing, e.g. ‘X and Y should be considered joint first author’ or ‘X and Y should be considered the joint senior author.’

ORCID

As part of the journal’s commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, the journal requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This takes around 2 minutes to complete. Find more information here.

Publication Ethics

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Note this journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript may be screened for similarity against previously published works. Read our Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors here. Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines can be found at https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html

5. AUTHOR LICENSING

PBJ is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. With Creative Commons licenses, the author retains copyright and the public is allowed to reuse the content. The author grants Wiley a license to publish the article and identify it as the original publisher. 

Open Access Fees: For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

If a paper is accepted for publication, the author identified as the formal corresponding author will receive an email prompting them to log in to Author Services, where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS), they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

To find out which Created Commons Licenses are available for the journal, click here. To learn more about Creative Commons Licenses and to preview the terms and conditions of the agreements, please click here. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license is used; to check this, please click here.

6. PUBLICATION PROCESS AFTER ACCEPTANCE

When your accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking him/her to log in or register with Author Services. The corresponding author will then be asked to sign a publication license at this point.

Proofs

Once your paper is typeset you will receive email notification of the URL from where to download a PDF typeset page proof, associated forms and full instructions on how to correct and return the file. Please note that the authors are responsible for all statements made in the work, including changes made during the editorial process and thus authors must check the proofs carefully. Note that proofs should be returned within 48 hours from receipt of the first proof.

Early View

Once the proof is corrected the journal offers rapid publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View (Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion into an issue. Note there may be a delay after corrections are received before your article appears online, as Editors may also need to review proofs. Once your article is published on Early View no further changes to your article are possible. Your Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI.

Cover Images

Photographs of high quality suitable for the cover of PBJ are welcomed. They should be sent to the Editorial Office and be accompanied by a brief descriptive summary. It is preferred, but not essential, that these should be related to submitted papers.

7. POST PUBLICATION

Access and sharing

When your article is published online:

• You receive an email alert (if requested).
• You can share a link to your published article through social media.
• As the author, you will have free access to your paper (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, you can view your article).
• The corresponding author and co-authors can nominate colleagues to receive a publication alert and free online access to your article.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Measuring the Impact of an Article

Wiley also helps authors measure the impact of their research through specialist partnerships with Kudos and Altmetric.

8. EDITORIAL OFFICE CONTACT DETAILS

Plant Biotechnology Journal Editorial Office

John Wiley & Sons, Inc
9600 Garsington Road
Oxford, OX4 2DQ,
UK

Editorial Office Staff

Andrea Lewis, Associate Managing Editor
Email: [email protected]