Editorial Policies

Skyfox Publishing Group journals (International Journal of Agricultural and Life sciences) framed its publication policy based on the standards established by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, etc.

The policy is as follows:

Authorship and change in authorship

An author should have a substantial contribution in the framework of research to be carried, designing the methodology, selection of appropriate statistical tool and interpretation of data, etc. critical revision is also one of the criteria for authorship. The author should be accountable for the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work. The responsibility of investigating the conflicts and resolving them is also a part of authorship.

Submission of Manuscript

Authors should prepare the manuscript according to the specifications given on the journal policies page. All manuscripts submitted through the appropriate channel will be entertained for review. Manuscripts sent to the editor’s email should not be accepted.

Authors listed on the manuscript should have met the requirements for Authorship specified above. Without final acceptance from the corresponding author, no manuscript will be published. Once the document is submitted to our journal, it is expected that all the authors were accepted and they will bound to the terms and conditions of the journal. The contact information of all authors and Declaration of Conflicts of Interest should be stated in the manuscript.

Manuscript Withdrawal Policy

Once the corresponding author has confirmed to withdraw the submitted article, the author has to communicate with the Editor in Chief via e-mail. A manuscript withdrawal form will be sent to the author’s email following which all the respective authors should sign and express their interest for withdrawal. Upon receiving the completed form from the corresponding author, further processing of the article will be stopped. No processing charges will be collected if the article is withdrawn within 7 days of submission. After this period, if the author requests for withdrawal, the article processing charges (APC) need to be paid by the author.

Peer Review

Skybox Publishing Group journals employ a double-blind review process, in which the author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

Redundant or duplicate publication

Duplicate or redundant publication is a publication that overlaps substantially with one already published, in press, or in an electronic media submission. (International Committee of Medical Editors. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html)

Duplicate or redundant submission is the same manuscript (or the same data) that is submitted to different journals at the same time. International copyright laws, ethical conduct, and cost effective use of resources require that readers can be assured that what they are reading is original. (International Council of Medical Editors. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html)

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published or currently submitted elsewhere. Duplicate publication is a violation of the APA code of ethics (APA Publication Manual, 2010) and will be grounds for prompt rejection of the submitted manuscript. If the editor was not aware of the violation and the article has been published, a notice of duplicate submission and the ethical violation will be published.

Retraction policy

Skyfox publishing journals corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern as appropriate, and as quickly as possible. We follow the ICMJE and COPE guidelines where applicable.
A notice of correction will be issued by Skyfox to document and correct substantial errors that appear in online articles when these errors significantly affect the content or understanding of the work reported (e.g., error in data presentation or analysis) or when the error affects the publication’s metadata (e.g., misspelling of an author’s name). In these cases, Skyfox will publish a correction that will be linked to the original article.

In very rare cases, we may choose to correct the article itself and re-post it online. If that course is taken, a correction notice will also be created to document the changes to the original article.

Authors who wish to alert Skyfox to a situation where a correction may be warranted are requested to contact us with the relevant details (journal, full citation of the article, and description of the error) at: corrections@skyfox.org.in

Authors are encouraged to post comments to their articles to note typographical errors, and other problems that do not significantly affect the scientific integrity of the work.

Conflicts of interest

At the point of submission, policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.

If the manuscript is accepted, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a published statement.

Permissions to reproduce previously published material

Permission is required to reproduce material (such as illustrations) from the copyright holder. Articles cannot be published without these permissions.

Patient consent forms

The protection of a patient’s right to privacy is essential. Please collect and keep copies of patients’ consent forms on which patients or other subjects of your experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for your research did not specifically include this, please obtain it or remove the identifying material.

A statement to the effect that such consent had been obtained must be included in the ‘Methods’ section of your paper. If necessary, the Editors may request a copy of any consent forms.

Role of Plagiarism Committee

All the submitted articles are initially scanned with Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate. Upon completion of the plagiarism scan, they analyze the quality of the manuscript and report to the editor, after which the manuscript gets assigned for the review process. A plagiarism report is created which is emailed to the author along with a review report. The committee looks into plagiarism related issues and deals with them according to COPE guidelines.

Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment should cover the persons other than those who climes authorship, especially Individuals who worked for manuscript development, funding agency or persons who provided resources, Organizations that provided support for the smooth run of the research.

Confidentiality

Skyfox Publishing Group journals (International Journal of Agricultural and Life sciences) will not disclose any research paper submitted to it. Once the original research after proper registration in any clinical registry or scientific agency, submitted to us will be treated as the most confidential material and maintaining its confidentiality is our responsibility. We will share the article with manuscript developers, reviewers and editors in various stages of processing after the submission is confirmed.