Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • All co-authors have approved the present version as ready for submission and agreed to co-authorship.
  • The user profile for each author includes their ORCID and valid affiliation and contact information.
  • The contribution is original (has not been published elsewhere neither in part or in whole), or if not original the original publication details are given in the message to the editor, including DOI and/or ISBN, and URL.
  • You own the copyright to all text and illustrations, or have obtained permission and have a written proof of it.
  • You have provided DOIs for cited articles, book chapters and books, if they are available, and ISBNs for books. (Be aware that almost all old articles available on-line have been assigned DOIs retrospectively. If DOI is provided other details are uninportant and formating of the list of references is free.)
  • In the case of PhD thesis abstracts a short bio (1/2 to 1 page) and a portrait photograph are included. (For other sections, bio and portraits of authors are welcome, but not required.)
  • Spell checking and grammar checking has been done on the text, and if needed, the text edited by a native English speaker or someone with excellent command of the English language.
  • Illustrations (diagrams, figures, photographs, plots) will be available as individual files separate from the manuscript for the final submission. Illustrations fulfil the requirements mentioned in the Authors' Guidelines with respect to design, quality and file format.

Author Guidelines

Language

The language of the Bulletin is English, but authors at their discretion may provide an exact translation of the Abstract in their native/local language, to be published alongside the English abstract. In the case of textual quotations, the inclusion of the quoted text in the original language, accompanied by a translation is preferred to the inclusion of the translation alone.

Guidelines for text

The text should be written clearly and concisely, using language that can be expected to be widely understood. Spelling should be thoroughly checked, and authors should have the text revised by a native speaker who is well-versed in academic writing so as to avoid delays in publication and/or rejection. In all cases, a semantic markup should be used instead of a visual markup: for example mark section headings as such, rather than using bold. Do not worry about how the text looks on your screen, just make sure that the logical order of heading levels is correct. Be aware that as typesetting is done by the editor, manuscripts will be returned to authors for editing if this requirement is not closely followed.

Bibliographic data must include DOI for articles and book chapters (and books if available) and ISBN for books. Be aware that many old articles have been retrospectively assigned DOIs (These retrospectively assigned DOIs can be found at the publishers web sites, like Springer Link, etc. They do not appear on the PDF files as they were not available at the time of printing, but instead they can be found in the page where the on-line abstract is displayed.) References, even if already included in the text, should be also be submitted in a separate plain-text file as a list of DOIs and ISBN, one per line. 

Acceptable file formats for body text: Submission of manuscripts should preferably be as Markdown, Rmarkdown, Rnw, LaTeX, open-doc,  MS-Word (.docx), HTML, or plain text. In the case of Rmarkdown (.Rnw) files, all R packages used should be provided, for example using packrat. For final publication, illustrations should be supplied as separate files (see below), which can be linked, but should not be embedded in MS-word files. Those graphs which are provided as source code in LaTeX, Rmarkdown or Rnw files are exempt from this restriction: in this case make sure that you have included all data files needed. More information about how Markdown fits into the production of the final page output is available at http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2014/01/23/plain-text/, but remember that we will take care of all steps after the writing of the .md markdown file. You need to submit only the .md file plus any illustrations to be included as separate files. A simple template is shown here

Guidelines for illustrations

Design of illustrations and sizing of their elements

Illustrations should be designed taking into account the text area for either single or double column inclussion in pages. All text and markings on illustrations should be present in the supplied files. Text on illustrations should use a san-serif font and the x-height should be at least 2.5 mm at the final published size. Colours should be chosen with care to ensure readability. The possibility of printing or photocopying in black and white, and discrimination of colours by readers with colour blindness, should be considered. For example, if using colours to indicate treatments, use an additional visual cue like symbol shape or line type to cater for these special cases.

Data plots: any designs that detract from visualization of data values are disallowed, including the use of 3D effects and shadows in bar plots. Pie charts are discouraged, as human beings are much worse at comparing angles than lengths, and allowed only with at most 5 slices per pie. Actual axes, or a box formed by the axes, and possible a grid when useful, are allowed. However, scatter plots, bar plots, histograms, and other plots should not the enclosed in extraneous additional boxes or use background colours or graying outside the plotting area. Axes should be labelled with the name of the displayed quantity followed by units enclosed in parentheses. Be aware that the scale and units should match the tick labels, i.e. even if logarithm based distances are used along an axis, if tick marks are given in the original units, "log" should not the mentioned in the axis label. Axis limits close to zero, but not quite at zero should be always extended to zero. It is preferible to use sparse tick labels along axes, in our view including more than five tick labels is in most cases of no help, or detrimental by making plots cluttered. One last point is to always be careful when checking for possible overlap between figure elements which could hide observations or labels.

Accepted files formats

Illustrations embeded in PowerPoint, MS Word and similar application files are not acceptable unless accompanied by the same individual figures in separate files in one of the formats mentioned later in this section.

Vector graphics such as data plots, line diagrams, flowcharts, should not be submitted as bitmaps. Acceptable file formats for vector graphics: EPS (with embedded fonts), PDF (with embedded fonts), or svg. For online publication vector based formats yield smaller file size allow smooth re-scaling.

Illustrations like photographs, scanned handwriting or hand-drafted graphics are best submitted as high resolution bitmaps. Acceptable file formats for bitmaps are TIFF (16 bit or 8 bit), EPS, PDF with embedded TIFF, PSD (photoshop), png, jpeg (highest available quality for compression). If the original graphic fails to meet the desired resolution or quality, do not attempt to nominally fulfill the requirements by rescaling, just submit the originals and they will be used at the size that their quality allows. Please, aim to submit bitmaps that have a resolution of 300 dpi to 600 (dots per inch) at the size the figure will be printed. For composite figures comprising several bitmaps, a single combined bitmap prepared by the authors should normally be submitted instead of several individual images. Of the compressed file formats use .png whenever the bitmap contains a discrete number of colours or shades of grey.

Every illustration should have a caption. In every data plot the units of expression should be clearly shown, and if error bars are included, it should be clearly explained what they represent.

Permissions for use of illustrations

Before publication authors should make sure that: 1) either they own the copyright, and that any earlier transfer of copyright to other parties, allows publication under the chosen CC licence for the article, 2) that for every photograph not taken in a public place, authorization in writing for publication has been obtained, 3) if the illustration is already publicly available under a compatible licence this should stated, and the original author named in the legend, 4) that any reuse of data has been explicitly authorized in writing or is allowed by the licence used in the original publication. Payment of any damage or costs, including all legal costs, incurred by the UV4Plants association caused by authors' failure to comply with these requirements will be the full responsibility of the authors.

Supplementary files

Supplementary files can be submitted. All the same guidelines as described above for the main text and illustrations apply to supplementary files. If the supplementary file contains mostly text, it should be submitted as a ready to publish PDF. The exception is that additional file formats are accepted as long as they can be oppened and viewed without need to purchase software. In general original raw data and data analysis scripts should be deposited public depositories like Zenodo, while short examples used in tutorials can be included as supplementary files. Videos are accepted as supplementary material only as long as the files are reasonably small and an integral part of the submission.

Commentaries

a) Commentary- and opinion papers refering to other published articles in the UV4Plants Bulletin or elsewhere, including responses to earlier articles in this section. b) Informal presentation of new ideas or hypotheses for open debate. c) Opinions on science policy and other broader issues affecting research or reseachers working on the responses of plants to UV radiation. d) Short reports from participants on the highlights from major conferences, workshops and similar events.

Reviews and Perspectives

Reviews attempt to objectively and broadly assess the current state of a field of research. The depth and bredth of coverage of the literature may vary but should attempt to be selective only with respect to the quality or strength of evidence. A review should provide an original synthesis of the current state of knowledge, highlighting gaps and new openings, providing an integrated view that is "more than the sum of its parts".

Perspectives review the literature with a hypothesis as starting point, evaluating the existing and missing evidence. The aim is to propose an original idea and justify how and why it needs to be studied further. Use of literature should avoid cherry-picking, and the article should objectively assess the hypothesis proposed as far as is allowed by currently available scientific evidence.

In practice, submissions that fall somewhere in-between these extremes will also be considered for publication. What must be remembered in all cases is that opinions should be described in a way that ensures that readers will not take them as facts. In particular, publication precedence should be recognized, and attribution of developments and ideas carefully researched in the literature.

Articles

a) Reseach-related articles. b) Historical accounts about research progress. c) Articles related to applications and use of UV radiation in horticulture, farming and other related industries, and the equipment and facilities used.  d) Articles on how to teach to students at any level and/or communicate to the general public research results and their implications. e) Articles within the scope of the journal not matching any of the other sections of the Bulletin. Peer reviewed.

Reports

a) Reports on UV4Plants activities such as workshops, training schools, conferences, etc. b) Reports on research projects' progress. c) Reports on workshops, training schools, conferences, etc. not organized by the UV4Plants Association. d) Profiles describing current projects and interests of researchers and research groups, or accounts of the career of notable researchers, including obbituaries. e) Other updates that are too long or detailed to be published under News. Peer-reviewed.

Doctoral thesis abstracts

Abstracts of doctoral theses recently defended will be reproduced unchanged from those submitted with the thesis to the univeristy where the degree was awarded. Thesis subject must be within the scope of the UV4Plants Bulletin. If the thesis has been assigned an ISBN and or DOI, these should be provided together with the full bibliographic information. For unpublished theses or monographs, if deposited on-line a DOI or handle or URL should be provided. Date and place of defence, university, department or faculty, and supervisors names should also be included. The abstract should uploaded as a file. A short abstract, of at most 100 words, should be entered in the abstract field and will be used for indexing and on-line display.

Book, software and equipment reviews

Critical reviews of recently published books and software, or of equipment by an independent author. (Short summaries of books or software written by book publishers, authors or editors should be submitted as News. Short descriptions of new equipment or materials submitted by sellers or manufacturers should be submitted as News.)

Copyright Notice

Authors, or their employers, will retain ownership of copyright. However, original publication in the Bulletin should be always cited upon republication in unaltered or altered form. The UV4Plants Bulletin contents will be published under one of the Creative Commons Licenses, by default CC BY-SA 4.0, but at the request of the authors, other more restrictive (CC BY-ND 4.0, CC BY-NC 4.0) or less restrictive (CC BY 4.0) licenses can be used for individual articles. https://creativecommons.org/

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