Review Procedures and Criteria

Guiding principles

AoBP is a sound-science journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of basic and applied plant biology, and is committed to fair and transparent peer review. We publish research that has been rigorously conducted and clearly presented, and which represents a substantive contribution to knowledge. We base decisions to accept or reject papers solely on scientific rigor, clarity and substance, and leave judgements about the wider importance of published works to the scientific community.

We believe that the personal characteristics of authors (e.g., gender, ethnicity, home institution, seniority and reputation) should not influence peer review. Thus, since its establishment, the journal has evaluated manuscripts using a double-anonymised process, wherein the identities of both authors and reviewers are not revealed during peer review.

The intent of these principles is to reduce the effect of pernicious biases common in academic publishing; for example, biases against confirmatory or negative results, or against authors from certain backgrounds. We believe that all good data and sound arguments deserve a voice.

Initial screening

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial screening by the journal’s editorial staff to ensure the following: (1) the content of manuscripts is appropriate for AoBP; (2) manuscripts adhere to all instructions outlined in the Author Guidelines; and (3) manuscripts are well written and comprehensible to a diverse scientific readership.

Publishing criteria

Papers published in AoBP must meet the following criteria:

• The work has been conducted rigorously, is presented in clear and grammatically correct English, and represents a substantive contribution to objective knowledge;
• The authors' conclusions are supported by their data and/or their logical arguments, in the epistemic context of the published literature and established theory;
• The authors cite, discuss and relate their work to relevant published literature; and
• The paper encourages further research and/or debate in the field.