Guidelines for Author

Phytolife Journal is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that provides an advance forum for studies related to plant sciences.

The scope of this journal is wide and includes, but not restricted to:

• plant physiology, development, phenotypic plasticity, ecology and biodiversity
• plant responses to environmental signals and abiotic stress factors
• plant pathogens, plant interactions with microorganisms and insects, structure and functions of microbial communities
• genomics analysis, systematic and molecular phylogeny, molecular biology, quantitative genetics
• phenomics of plants, multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, greenhouse to field based high throughput phenotyping
• molecular breeding, functional marker development
• plant hormones signaling, flowering plasticity, fruit development, postharvest biology and technology
• soil biochemistry, nitrogen fixation and denitrification, biochemistry of pesticide and pollution decomposition in soil, microbial aspects of soil pollution, soil microbiota
• phytoremidiation, heavy metals, application of nanoparticles in agriculture

Submission checklist

Please:

1. Read the aims and scope section before submitting your manuscript.
2. Prepare manuscripts using compatible Microsoft Office Word (word 97-2003) and insert continuous line numbers for review.
3. To assist the Editors in deciding whether to send the manuscript for peer review, authors should prepare a cover letter answering the following questions (max. 50 words per question):
   
   1. What are the hypotheses/questions that this work addresses?
   2. How does this work advance our current understanding of plant science?
   3. Why is this work timely and important?
Without a cover letter, manuscripts will be returned to authors immediately.
4. The corresponding author must create an account before submitting the manuscript online.

Manuscript submission and review procedure

To simplify review of initial submissions, we encourage authors to submit a single manuscript file in Microsoft Word (word 97-2003), with tables and figures embedded in the text where appropriate.

Submit your manuscript via the Phytolife Journal submission page (manuscript portal link). Note that submissions must be made from the account of the Corresponding Author.

Type of Papers

Regular papers: Original, full-length research papers that provide a substantial amount of new information and have not previously been published. Every submitted manuscript will be checked through iThenticate for text-overlap scores.

Review articles: Review articles are welcome on hot and specific topics that fall within the scope of this journal.

Free Format Submission

Phytolife Journal does not have strict formatting specifications for initial submissions, but all manuscripts must include the following sections: Title, Author names with email address and affiliation, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions and Conflict of Interest.

If your manuscript reaches the revision stage, you will need to format it according to the journal guidelines (see below).

Review Process

Manuscripts that pass the initial editorial review will be sent out for review to two or three independent reviewers. Potential reviewers may be nominated by authors, but we cannot guarantee that these individuals will be invited. They should not generally have been co-authors or collaborators within the past three years, nor should they have any other conflicts of interest.

Research Manuscript Sections

Research manuscripts should comprise:

Title: The title of your research article should be concise, specific and self-explanatory.

Author List and Affiliations: All authors' first and last names, their full address details including city, state, zip code, and country must be included. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author, and his/her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section. After acceptance of manuscript, no updates to author names or affiliations will be permitted.

Graphical abstract: Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical abstract (GA), which is an eye-catching image that represents the topic of the article.

Abstract: The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. It should be an objective summary of the article.

Keywords: Include five keywords related to the article after the abstract. They should not be in the title.

Introduction: Introductions should briefly explain the context of the study and why it is important.

Materials and methods: They should be described in enough detail so that other researchers will be able to replicate and build upon published results.

Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, and any conclusions that can be drawn from them.

Discussion: Authors should discuss how the findings relate to previous studies and how they should be interpreted in light of the working hypotheses.

Conclusions: This section is mandatory

Acknowledgments: This section contains acknowledgements of any support not covered by the author contribution.

Funding: The sources of funding for the study should be disclosed.

Author Contributions: Research articles with more than one author must specify the contributions of each author in a short paragraph.

Data Availability Statement: Data accession numbers are required from authors (if any).

Conflict of interest: If there is a conflict of interest, the authors must identify it and declare it. In the event of no conflict of interest, the authors should state "The authors declare no conflict of interest".

References: References must be cited in the text (including table captions and figure legends) and listed separately at the end of the manuscript.

Citations in the text should take the following format:

• Single author (Fierer, 2017)
• Two-author (Cary & Fierer, 2014)
• Three or more authors (Fierer et al., 2021).

Order lists of references in date order (oldest first), and alphabetically when of the same date: (Carini et al., 2016; Hazard et al., 2021; Mason-Jones et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2021).

List references at the end of the text alphabetically (up to a maximum of 3 authors per citation) using these standard forms:

Regular research articles:

Fierer, N. (2017). Embracing the unknown: disentangling the complexities of the soil microbiome. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 15(10), 579–590.

Cary, S. C., & Fierer, N. (2014). The importance of sample archiving in microbial ecology. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 12(12), 789–790.

Fierer, N., Wood, S. A., & de Mesquita, C. P. B. (2021). How microbes can, and cannot, be used to assess soil health. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 153, 108111.

Mason-Jones, K., Robinson, S. L., Veen, G. F., et al. (2021). Microbial storage and its implications for soil ecology. The ISME Journal, 1–13.

Book:

Smith, S. E., & Read, D. J. (2008). Mycorrhizal symbiosis. Cambridge, UK: Academic Press.

Book chapter :

Eckert, C. G., Samis, K. E., & Dart, S. (2006). Reproductive assurance and the evolution of uniparental reproduction in flowering plants. In: Harder, L. D., & Barrett, S. C. H., eds. The ecology and evolution of flowering. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 183–203.

Thesis:

Darbah, J. N. T. (2007). Impacts of elevated atmospheric CO2 and/or O3 on carbon gain and reproductive capacity in northern forest ecosystems. PhD thesis, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA.

Web document

Webb, C., Ackerly, D., & Kembel, S. (2009). Phylocom. Software for the analysis of phylogenetic community structure and character evolution. [WWW document] URL http://phylodiversity.net/phylocom/ [accessed on: DD/MM/YYYY].

Research Figures and Tables

Figures: Figures should have a resolution of 300ppi and be of good quality. Figures should be divided by lower case letters and bolded (e.g. (a), (b)) and referred to in the text in the form (Figure 1a), (Figure 1a,b). Don't include explanatory material in the figure. This should go in the legend. Figures that are submitted in black-and-white will be published as such in the online article. Where colour figures are submitted, please ensure they are accompanied by a legend that refers to the colour where appropriate. Please ensure that the file you provide is in RGB format in order to ensure optimal reproduction. Common formats TIFF, JPEG, EPS and PDF are preferred.

Tables: Tables should be self-explanatory and presented on a separate page after the main text, but within the same document. They should have concise (single-sentence) informative headings.

Supporting Material

Supplementary material may be included if it is necessary to present data that are integral to the manuscript but unpractical to include within the main text and typeset article. The manuscript must contain all data necessary for supporting the central claims and conclusions of the article.

Article Publishing Charges (APCs)

The standard article publishing charge (APC) of PKR 13,000 / US$50 will apply to accepted papers after peer review to provide free access to readers and defray the costs associated with copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving, and journal management. There is no submission charge.

We offer discounts and waivers for authors depending on the quality of manuscript.