Duties of the Publisher

The journal does not publish any advertisement. Commercial revenue as processing charges etc, has no impact or influence on editorial decisions.

Duties of Editors

  • The editor of a learned journal is solely and independently responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published, often working in conjunction with the Indian Ecological Society. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers (or society officers) in making these decisions.
  • The editorial policies of the journal encourage transparency and complete, honest reporting, and the editor will ensure that peer reviewers and authors have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. The editor shall use only the journal’s standard electronic submission system for all journal communications.
  • The editor shall protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and all communications with reviewers, unless otherwise agreed with the relevant authors and reviewers.
  • Editors shall not  be involved  making decisions about the papers they have written themselves or their colleagues. Any such submissions will be subject to the journal's usual procedures and peer review will be handled independently of the editor involved.

Peer Review

  • The editor shall ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely. Research articles must typically be reviewed by at least two external and independent reviewers, and where necessary the editor should seek additional opinions.
  • Journal follows a single anonymized review process. Your submission will initially be assessed by our editors to determine suitability for publication in this journal. If your submission is deemed suitable, it will typically be sent to two reviewers for an independent expert assessment of the scientific quality. In case of contradictory review reports from two reviewers, editor will send the manuscript to third reviewer. The final decision as to whether your article is accepted or rejected will be taken by our editors.
  • The editor shall select reviewers who have suitable expertise in the relevant field. The editor shall follow best practice in avoiding the selection of fraudulent peer reviewers. The editor shall review all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions for self-citation made by reviewers to determine whether there is any potential for bias.

Duties of Reviewers

  • Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate and reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
  • Reviewers should declare potential conflicts of interest to the editor before agreeing to review a manuscript and should discuss with the editor whether they need to recuse themselves because there may be a concern of potential bias. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) collaborations between the reviewer and author(s) in the previous three years, reviewers and author(s) who are based in the same institution, and reviewers and authors who have close personal relationships or associations.
  • Reviewers should not suggest citations to the reviewer’s (or their associates’) own work unless the suggested citations are for genuine scientific reasons and not with the intention of increasing the reviewer’s citation count or enhancing the visibility of their work (or that of their associates). Editors may remove inappropriate citations from reviewer comments.
  • Reviewers must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly without permission from the editor. Reviewers must also respect the confidentiality of the peer review process.
  • Reviewers must not use AI to write reviews and must disclose any AI use and remain personally accountable for the review's content.

Duties of Authors

  • Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. All manuscripts submitted to the journal will be checked for plagiarism.
  • Authors will be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper for editorial review and/or to comply with the open data requirements of the journal. Authors should be prepared to retain data for a reasonable number of years ( at least 3 years) after publication.
  • Authors should ensure not having indulged in any research misconduct and must follow publication ethics. Author(s) should not submit for consideration in another journal a paper that has been published previously, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint.

Authorship of the paper

Authorship criteria: Authors should only be listed on a manuscript if they have made a significant contribution to the research and the writing of the manuscript. Please follow the ICMJE definition of the authorship  or Contributor Role Taxonomy (please see https://credit.niso.org/ ). All authors should agree to the final version of the manuscript and its submission for publication.

Author contributions

Corresponding authors are required to acknowledge each author’s contributions using:

  • Conceptualization
  • Data curation
  • Formal analysis
  • Funding acquisition
  • Investigation
  • Methodology
  • Project administration
  • Resources
  • Software
  • Supervision
  • Validation
  • Visualization
  • Writing – original draft
  • Writing – review and editing. 

Changes to authorship 

  • The Corresponding Author must ensure  the correct  order of authors at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors at later stage are generally not permitted.
  • Authorship changes must be requested by the corresponding author and should include an explanation for the change, along with written approval from all authors, including those being added or removed. Explicit explanation for the change must me explained.
  •  Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. 

Generative AI or use of AI tools in writing , figures/ images and artwork

  • The journal does not permit the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts.
  • Author(s)should not use AI tools in writing the manuscript. The author(s) must insert at the end of the manuscript, immediately above the references, entitled ‘Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process” that no use of AI tools have been used in the writing process. Basic checks of grammar, spelling and punctuation need no
    declaration.