Forefront in Agricultural Research & Technology is an open-access peer-reviewed journal research communications on a broad range of topics. after comprehensive review by referees in the relevant fields of crop improvement, crop production and protection, post-harvest management, value addition, agriculture, Agricultural Economics and other research. The journal also issues invitations to reviews and comments/opinions written by scholars with longstanding expertise in the fields within its scope, to identify and suggest possible directions for future research or new ideas.
For Editors
For Editors
Editors of journals are the captains who steer the journal in its journey. Editors play a key role by setting up the focus of the manuscript, assessing the manuscript, making recommendations based on the peer-reviews, structuring the journal. The editorial board holds the collective accountability to ensure that the published research stays within the focus of the scope of the journal, all fair publishing principles and policies are followed.
Editors Responsibilities
The Journal management team will assist the editorial board in the entire range of editorial process. The team will reach out to the potential reviewers for peer-review assessment, communication the editorial decisions to the authors on behalf of the editors, circulate article calls, invite articles and reviews for special issues on behalf of the office of the editor. Editors of the journal will have a contact person who is also the member of journal management team, with whom the editor can liaison.
Handling manuscripts
The journal management team assigns the invited/submitted manuscripts after careful consideration to the field of study and the editorial workload to an editor. In the role of Editor, the editor performs an initial assessment of the manuscript and checks for the following
Relevance to her/his expertise
It is not always essential that the editor is an expert with in-depth knowledge, however a certain level of knowledge and relevance to their academic expertise is recommended. If the editor is uncomfortable and unable to assess the manuscript as an editor, then the editor should decline to handle the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest
While the journal management team aims to avoid potential conflicts based on the available information, as an Editor, you are probably more aware of your situation and any potential conflicts there might be. We also ask that the editor declines to handle the manuscript if you have recently coauthored a paper, affiliated to same employer as the authors of the paper.
Initial Assessment
The journal management team upon receiving a manuscript, they perform primary assessment and screening prior to assigning the manuscript to an editor. The editors should assess the manuscript for fitness to scope of the journal and quality of the manuscript. Manuscripts should be rejected if they do not meet these criteria.
Reviewer Assignment
Editors are recommended to at least engage two peer reviewers to review the manuscript. Depending on the manuscript and the discipline, you may choose to engage more/less reviewers.
While assigning the manuscript to an editor, the journal management team shall provide you with the list of potential reviewers that are available in the reviewer database of the journal. Authors may also provide potential reviewers for the manuscript and may also wish to avoid certain reviewers due to conflict of interest or competition.
As editor you can choose the reviewers from any of these suggestions or may also invite other reviewers. However, while inviting reviewers, you should consider that the reviewers are impartial and possess the necessary expertise to be able to review the manuscript. For instance, reviewers who have same academic affiliations or work for same employers, recently published co-authors, academic supervisors should be avoided. The Journal management team shall check for such conflict of interests before sending out the invitation for review and if found, may require you to assign a different reviewer.
It is also essential that the reviewers possess the necessary expertise to review the manuscript. The editor of journal may choose several reviewers to cover all aspects of the manuscript. The reviewers may also choose to co-review the manuscript in accordance with the confidentiality policy. The reviewers can reach out to the editor prior to engaging the co-reviewer.
A note on timing
It may be possible that the peer-reviewers invited to review the manuscript may decline to review due to several reasons (often due to lack of time) or a potential reviewer may accept to review the manuscript but does not meet the deadline for submitting the peer-review report after several reminders. Therefore, it is only fair to authors that the editors reach out to different peer-reviewers considering the essence of time.
Decision
The Editors decision is derived based on the recommendation of reviewers. The editors may also take into consideration the impact of the article, originality of the findings and quality of the research. The manuscripts shall accepted/rejected by the editor. The editors shall invite the authors to improve the manuscript based on reviewer inputs with major, minor changes or no changes. This is done to make the manuscript suitable for publication in the journal.
