Publication ethics

Current Agronomy publication ethics is designed to counteract unfair practices throughout the publication process and embraces all participants: authors, reviewers and editors. The principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics - COPE and the recommendations of the Polish National Science Centre (Research Integrity and Respect for Intellectual Property) have been adopted as the cornerstone of publication ethics.

Principles for authors

Submission of a paper constitutes acceptance of the ethical principles of the Current Agronomy (CA).
The authors declare that the paper submitted to the CA has not been previously published in whole or parts, is not under review in other journals and will not be contributed to another journal without notification to the CA editorial board (link to the declaration).
All authors who participated in the development of the article must be included in the authors’ team or the acknowledgements attached to the paper.
Individuals who were not engaged in the creation of the article are not allowed to be included in the authors’ team.
Any change in the author team after submission of the paper to the journal is required to be approved by all authors.
Authors provide the funding sources used to develop and publish the article and disclose potential conflicts of interest (link to the conflict of interests declaration).
The manner of acquisition, selection, interpretation and discussion of results are based on scientific principles and are not influenced by other factors, particularly financial dependencies. Manipulation of data and statistics to falsify results is not permitted.
Authors are obliged to respect others' copyrights. They must carefully verify and cite the sources of the data used; direct quotations, including from their published works, should be enclosed in inverted commas.
Authors keep the research data used to compile the articles for at least five years after submission of the paper to CA and make them available to the editors if necessary. We also recommend depositing them in open repositories (e.g. Polish RepOD, international Zenodo or Mendeley Data).
Authors respect the deadlines required by the editors and inform the editorial secretary in case of problems in meeting them.
Authors are obliged to inform the editorial office of significant errors in their articles identified after publication.

All authors' ethical violations are recorded, and the editors are committed to reducing their negative impact. According to the COPE diagrams, each case is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If a deliberate unethical act by the authors is proven and the allegations are serious (plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication of data, undisclosed conflict of interests, unethical research), the editors will withdraw the paper and communicate the offence to the authors' affiliation institution.

Principles for reviewers

The consent to conduct a review is tantamount to acceptance of CA's ethical principles in this regard. The review is required to be impartial, objective, fair, transparent and confidential. Therefore:

The reviewer is obliged to inform the editor of any potential conflict of interest or knowledge of the author's identity.
The reviewer is not permitted to condition the assessment of the paper on non-meritorious premises (e.g. lack of citation of the reviewer's work, place of research, the anticipated background of the author).
The reviewer assesses the content and value of the work. Critical remarks about the author personally, e.g. his/her qualifications or education, are unacceptable.
The reviewer is expected to screen the paper carefully for correct citation of information references and to inform the editors if plagiarism is suspected.
Comments and allegations in the review must be formulated clearly and precisely to allow for unambiguous interpretation.
The reviewer is obliged to submit his/her assessment of the manuscript to the editorial board promptly. If circumstances arise that make this impossible, they are expected to notify the editorial secretary immediately.
A reviewer is not allowed to use pre-publication data from the assessed work without the author's consent unless this is obtained in writing through the editorial office. Furthermore, the reviewer is not permitted to share the work and the data associated with it with third parties. Both of these stipulations also apply if the reviewer abandons the paper assessment after receiving it.

In the case of a proven deliberate material breach of ethical principles by a reviewer, for example, misappropriation of data from a peer-reviewed paper, the reviewer is removed from the journal's list of contributors and the reviewer's employing institution is notified of the incident.

Principles for editors

Objectivity – editors' decisions are not influenced by considerations other than merit. Editors are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest before accepting an assigned paper for editing.
Confidentiality – editors must not reveal or use confidential data concerning authors, reviewers, papers and reviews accessed in the context of their editorial duties.
Punctuality – editors are required to complete tasks assigned in the editorial cycle on time and to prevent the consequences of delays.
Ensuring ethical principles are adhered to throughout the editorial cycle and concerning all participants.
Advancing knowledge of systems and regulations relevant to editorial work.

In the case of an editor's proven, deliberate, substantial violation of ethical principles, the editor is removed from the list of contributors to the journal and the editor's employing institution is notified of the unethical behaviour. Examples of inappropriate, unethical editor's practices might be as follows: disclosure of confidential editorial data for one's benefit and misappropriation of authors' data.

Editors as authors

The editor-in-chief does not publish in his or her journal, even as a co-author, unless it concerns non-peer-reviewed historical or memoir articles. However, we encourage the publication of other editorial staff members. In such cases, the editor is treated like other authors and does not act as a representative of the editorial office: he or she does not appoint reviewers, does not communicate directly with reviewers, and does not make editorial decisions regarding submitted work. He or she also does not participate in the evaluation of competition entries if the submission includes an article he or she authored.

Editorial process

All scientific articles published in the Current Agronomy are peer-reviewed in a double-blind model (the editors do not disclose the authors’ names to the reviewers, nor the reviewers’ names to the authors).

All manuscripts submitted to Current Agronomy undergo an initial assessment by the Editors to determine their alignment with the journal’s scope and their suitability for publication (quality of the work). At this stage, a manuscript may be rejected by the Editor due to its subject matter or sent back for revision before peer review.

Once accepted for review, each paper is sent to at least two independent reviewers appointed by the Editors. The editorial team makes every effort to ensure that at least one of the reviewers is affiliated with an institution outside Poland.

Once the reviewers’ feedback has been received:

Positive – Revise the paper in line with the reviewers’ comments and submit it for editorial processing

Positive and negative – The process depends on the nature of the reviewers’ objections – forwarding to editorial processing after revision or re-review. The reviewer at this stage may be the reviewer who made the negative assessment.

Negative – Rejection of the paper. Depending on the nature of the reviewers’ objections – final rejection or with the possibility of resubmission after revision.

If the manuscript receives positive reviews but requires revisions, it is returned to the author. The editor also forwards the reviewers’ comments and suggestions to the author. The author addresses the reviewers’ suggestions, revises the manuscript in accordance with the suggestions, and provides the Editors with detailed explanations. Once the author has made the revisions, the article is either sent back to the reviewer or accepted by the Editors, depending on the number and complexity of the required revisions. Where necessary or justified, the revised version of the paper is also checked by a statistical editor. Necessary editorial corrections are made, and the article is checked for linguistic accuracy. The edited version is sent to the author for final proofreading. The final version of the manuscript is received by the Editor-in-Chief. Once approved, the article is published on the journal’s homepage and then submitted to Paradigm and external databases.

At every stage of the assessment of the manuscript’s suitability for publication, the Editor-in-Chief’s decision is final.