Botanica Pacifica - a journal of plant science and conservation

BOTANICAL GARDEN-INSTITUTE
FAR EASTERN BRANCH
RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

ENGLISH - RUSSIAN

ISSN 2226-4701 (Print)
ISSN 2410-3713 (Online)

Journal doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17581/bp

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Journal Secretariat
Botanica Pacifica
Botanical Garden-Institute
Makovskii Str. 142
Vladivostok 690024 RUSSIA
http://www.geobotanica.ru/bp
botanica.pacifica@botsad.ru
botanica.pacifica@icloud.com

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Botanica Pacifica
A journal of plant science and conservation

Statement of peer review policies

Botanica Pacifica (BP) publishes peer-reviewed, significant research of interest to a wide audience of plant scientists in all areas of plant biology (structure, function, development, diversity, genetics, evolution, systematics), all levels of organization (molecular to ecosystem), and all plant groups and allied organisms (cyanobacteria, fungi, and lichens). BP requires authors to frame their research questions and discuss their results in terms of contemporary problems of plant biology. While the geographic focus of the journal is the Pacific region, research submissions that demonstrate clear linkages with other regions are welcome. BP aims to foster the exchange of research ideas between countries with diverse cultures and languages.

The editors of the journal are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editors may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editors may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Instructions for reviewers

We are grateful to you for agreeing to evaluate the manuscript submitted for review by the editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica. This guide is intended to help you complete the reviewer's report, but if you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact the editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica by email (botanica.pacifica@icloud.com).

Confidentiality

The manuscript that you are evaluating is sent to you in confidence and should not be shared with anyone without the editor's consent. If for any reason you want to contact the authors directly, please first discuss your intentions with the editor. The policy of Botanica Pacifica is to conduct an independent one-way blind peer review: the anonymity of reviewers is maintained in all cases, unless the reviewer clearly indicates the intention to disclose their name to the authors of the manuscript. Please keep in mind that your review (as well as the estimates of other reviewers) is also confidential and not subject to disclosure. Information obtained in the course of reviewing should not be used to advantage or disadvantage anyone. Please read the Botanica Pacifica security and privacy policy at the link.

Conflict of interest

Please refer to the conflicts of interest guide to find out what is considered a conflict of interest when reviewing Botanica Pacifica manuscripts. If you are not sure if there is a conflict of interest when reviewing the manuscript, please explain the circumstances and we will let you know.

Deadline for submitting a review

Reviewers of Botanica Pacifica are given three weeks to submit their review. A reminder will be sent if you haven't sent your review yet 3 days before the deadline. If you feel that you cannot complete your report or you need additional time to complete it, please contact the editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica. Timeliness is important for authors, so please try to submit your report on time.

Types of manuscripts reviewed by the editorial Board of the journal Botanica Pacifica

Article type	Criteria	Page number
Research Papers	Should provide new insights into underlying biological processes or functions at the molecular, cellular, organism or ecosystem levels.	10
Monographic Studies	Should provide a highly detailed and thoroughly documented study about a limited area of a biological system at the molecular, cellular, organism or ecosystem levels.	No limit
Survey Papers	Should provide a survey of the current research work done in a particular area and provides a critical assessment of the work that has been done.	No limit
Review Papers	Should provide a synthesis of recent developments in areas of intensive current research.	No limit
Taxonomic Novelties	Should provide paper a sequence or new combination of traits that forms a new clade of organisms with respect to a particular taxonomic level, or a clade that is not nested within a clade of previously described organisms.	8
Opinion Papers	Should express a particular point of view on a controversial topic relevant to any aspect of plant science.	No limit
Methodology & Applications	Should provide new techniques, software, approaches, changes to existing methods or the discussion of quantitative and data analytic approaches in plant science.	8
Biodiversity Studies	Should provide new information on the variability among plants or fungi from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part at different spatial scales: region, continent, and globe.	No limit
Plant Nomenclature	Should provide new information on formal, scientific naming of plants and fungi.	5
Short Communications	Should provide original and significant material for rapid dissemination.	3
Chromosome Numbers	Should provide precise number of chromosomes for studied georeferenced plants for a given species	10
In Memoriam	An article written in memory of a dead person, who had valuable achievements in plant science; an obituary.	3

Reviewer's responsibilities

By agreeing to review a manuscript, you undertake to evaluate the scientific information in the manuscript and give advice to the editor, who will use your comments to justify their decision. You should also take into account the subject matter and editorial policy of Botanica Pacifica and evaluate whether the manuscript meets them. Reviewing is especially important in science, and even if the article is rejected, constructive feedback can be useful to the author in future work.

The editor-in-chief or the editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica will inform reviewers if they need to pay attention to a particular part or aspect of the manuscript. If for some reason you have read only a part or a certain aspect of the manuscript, please indicate this in your report.

Filling out the reviewer's review form

Allow sufficient time to read and evaluate the manuscript.

When submitting a reviewer's report, please answer all questions in the "reviewer's Form" to provide maximum assistance to the editor. If necessary, explain any problems in more detail in the "Confidential comments for the editor" or "comments for the author" sections of the Reviewer's form.

"Confidential comments for the editor": in this section, please include your recommendations on suitability for publication. Botanica Pacifica rejects 60% of submitted manuscripts, so, please recommend a manuscript for publication only if you believe it is of value to the scientific community and if you would like to quote it yourself if necessary. In some cases, you may want to include other confidential information that you think the referral editor should know about, but include any information that is useful to the authors in the "comments for the author" section. Please note that the referral editor may use your comments from the "confidential comments for editor" section in their decision letter, but the comments will remain anonymous and will not be submitted as reviewer comments.

"Comments for the author" should include your reviewer's report, but please do not include your recommendation of suitability for publication in this section. Please be as polite as possible and provide constructive feedback. Please tell us what you liked about the manuscript and what you think can be improved. The ideal format for providing feedback is a sequence of numbered comments, preferably with a link to the line and page numbers in the manuscript. Please also distinguish between the main and secondary comments. This format allows authors to easily provide responses to your comments. Some reviewers find it useful to summarize the main topics / results of the manuscript in order to convey a complete understanding to the authors.

Botanica Pacifica will be grateful to reviewers for recommendations to improve the English language of the manuscript.

The editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica expects that the reviewers 'reports will fully address the issues in the "reviewer's Form", as well as provide answers to the following questions:

Is there a reasonable justification for the work done?
Are the methods for data processing sufficiently described?
Is it wise to plan experiments?
Have any datasets been placed in open online databases?
Is the level of English sufficient to understand the manuscript?
Does the length of manuscript reasonable?

For certain types of articles, additional manuscript evaluation criteria may be sent to you.

Please, immediately inform the Editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica if you suspect that an unethical practice has occurred - this includes manipulation of images and data, as well as plagiarism. Please refer to the statement on publication ethics by this link.

After sending the reviewer's report

After you submit your comments, you will be offered a free hard copy of the recent issue of Botanica Pacifica.

Your report will be sent to the referral editor, who will use it along with the reports of other reviewers to make a decision on the manuscript.

All reviewers' reports are read by members of the Botanica Pacifica Secretariat. If we suspect that the reviewer acted with bias (i.e., deliberate bias) or failed to declare a conflict of interest, we will immediately investigate such a case.

In some cases, the editorial Board of Botanica Pacifica may edit the "comments for the author" before sending it to the authors. We may remove offensive comments or statements of an excessively personal nature. We also removed the recommendation for decision-making, so make sure that they are presented only in the "Confidential comments for the editor".

You will be notified when the referral editor has made their decision. You will be able to see the decision made.

If the referral editor decides to "Reject / resubmit" or "Major revision required", you may be invited to review the new version of the manuscript, and we very much hope that you will accept this, as it provides a more efficient review procedure.

Thanks again for the review for Botanica Pacifica!