The corresponding author should make sure to provide the following information and documents at the time of submission:

1. A covering letter addressed to the Editor-in-Chief explaining the significance and objective of the manuscript.
2. Title Page (to be provided separately from the main manuscript)
   • Full title and a Short running title
   • One author earmarked as the corresponding author.
   • The full address along with the designation and email address of the corresponding author
   • The email address and Orcid IDs of all the authors.
   • The names of at least three probable referees for a fast and fair review of the manuscript. The selection of the suggested referees will be at the discretion of the Editors.
3. Manuscript file complete in all respect (Follow the Author Guidelines)
4. Original Figures and supplementary files

The NBU Journal of Plant Sciences (NBUJPS) publishes peer-reviewed Original Research, Review and Short communication in the areas of plant and microbial sciences. Review articles from specialists in the subject will be considered for publication. Generally, submission or papers will imply that it contains unpublished original work and that are not submitted elsewhere even in part for publication. If any related paper is published or is in the press, a copy of the same must be enclosed along with the manuscript. The journal uses software to screen for plagiarism and any manuscript found to be plagiarized will be immediately returned.

Categories of manuscripts

Full-Length Research Papers (not exceeding 6000 words excluding Tables, Figures and References):

1. The paper should describe new and confirmed findings. The article should comprise -

• (a) Abstract – In 200-250 words to precisely present the summary of the paper,
• (b) Keywords – not more than 5,
• (c) Introduction – This section should precisely introduce the subject, background and significance of the work with citation of the relevant literature,
• (d) Materials and methods – This section should describe the experimental procedures with sufficient details for others to repeat the work,
• (e) Results – This should include tables and figures to present the findings in simple language. The results should be presented comprehensively along with the statistical interpretation. Don’t repeat the same data in tables and figures,
• (f) Discussion – This section should present the outcome of the study by comparing and deriving meaningful interpretation of the results by citing previously published works,
• (h) Acknowledgements – The acknowledgement to funding agencies and others should be included in this section,
• (i) Other disclosures – Declaration of competing interests, authors contribution, and ethical approval should be presented in this section,
• (g) References – References should be incorporated in the correct format in the text and also in the reference section as described below.

2. Review articles (not exceeding 8000 words excluding Tables, Figures and References):
Review articles should be comprehensive i.e. up to date and critical on a recent topic of importance. It should cite the latest references and identify the gaps for future research. It should also contain an abstract, keywords, acknowledgements and references. Review articles will be generally solicited by the Editors, however, interested authors can share their review ideas with the Editors before submission of their articles.

3. Short communication (not exceeding 1500 words):
Short communication should be a record of a completed short investigation giving details of new methods or findings. It should not exceed 4 to 5 typed pages with an abstract followed by the keywords. The body of the texts will not have any title, like material and methods, results and discussion except the acknowledgements and references.

4. Text Formatting:

• Manuscripts should be submitted in Word (.doc/ .docx format).
• Use 12-point Times Roman, 1.5 line spacing for text.
• Use the automatic page numbering and continuous line numbering function.
• Use the tab for indents for all the paragraphs except the first paragraph of any section.

Referencing

1. Citation in text:

• (a) Cite references in the text by name and year in parentheses.
• (b) (Alscher 1989) / Alscher (1989) or
• (c) (Upadhyay and Panda 2004) / Upadhyay and Panda (2004) or
• (d) (Upadhyay et al. 2008) / Upadhyay et al. (2008)

2. Journal article:
Alscher RG (1989) Biosynthesis and antioxidant function of glutathione in plants. Physiol Plant 77:457–464. DOI of the article (if available)

2. Book:
South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

3. Book chapter:
Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J, Morris B (eds.) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp. 230-257.

4. Tables:
Tables should be numbered with a brief title. The placement of tables in the manuscript should be clearly indicated. The Table should be cited in the text as “Table 1” and likewise.

5. Figures:
Illustration/ Graph/ Photo/ diagram should be of good quality and presented as Figures. The figures should be written as Fig. 1 and likewise in the text and the position of the Figures should be clearly indicated.

** Articles will be returned immediately without any further review if all the sections are not correctly represented.

Submission of manuscript
The articles following the journal guidelines along with the original figures and supplementary files should be directly submitted to [email protected]

Review process
All the manuscripts are subject to the peer-review process, and the Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision concerning acceptance or rejection. The journal follows a double-blind peer-review system i.e. the identity of both authors and reviewers are completely masked from each other during the review process. This ensures an unbiased review system at the end of the reviewers.

Open Access policy
All the articles published in NBUJPS are fully open access: immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CCBY 4.0) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Proofreading
The articles will be sent to the corresponding author once the article is accepted for publication. The authors' responsibility is to check for typesetting and correctness of text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., the inclusion of new results, changes in title and authorship are not allowed.

Online First
The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After the release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

Copyright
Acceptance of a manuscript for publication in NBUJPS shall automatically mean the transfer of copyright to NBU. NBU shall not be responsible for the authenticity of the results and conclusions drawn by the authors.

Page charge
All the accepted articles are published free of charge.

All correspondence should be made to:
Editor-in-Chief
NBU Journal of Plant Sciences
Department of Botany
University of North Bengal, Siliguri 734013, WB, India
E-mail: [email protected]

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The journal follows a double-blind peer-review system i.e. the identity of both authors and reviewers are completely masked from each other during the review process. This ensures an unbiased review system at the end of the reviewers.

Plagiarism is a matter of grave concern in the scientific community. The journal follows a strict policy on plagiarism, any article found to be plagiarized in any way will be straightforwardly rejected without any consideration. The journal uses standard software to check for any sort of similarity with previously published articles.

The names and email addresses of the authors and reviewers will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other third party in any circumstances.

The Department of Botany, University of North Bengal is the sole copyright owner of all the published articles. The Department of Botany reserves the right to decide on the reuse of the published materials.

Authors should strictly aware of not misrepresenting the data and results which could violate the scientific ethics and trust of the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour.

All the research articles published in NBUJPS are fully open access: immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CCBY 4.0) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

All the articles published in NBUJPS are published free of charge i.e. no APC has to be borne by the authors. The cost of publication of the journal in both print and online mode is solely covered by the financial support received from the University of North Bengal.

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