Author Guidelines
EDITORIAL POLICY
The Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas (Colombian Journal of Horticultural Science) is the official scientific journal of the Sociedad Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas (SCCH) (Colombian Society for Horticultural Science; country member of ISHS), and the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia (UPTC), is published three times a year. The journal is geared toward horticultural science researchers, extension workers, and all professions related to the development of science and technology needed, with an emphasis on horticulture (floriculture, olericulture [vegetable production], fruit growing [pomology], aromatic, medicinal and culinary plants, and landscaping), proposed by national and international authors. No articles will be received whose themes are related to industrial perennial crops, annual industrializable crops, generalities of rural development, integrated crop management practices in general, phytochemistry and animal production.
The journal seeks to disclose unpublished work developed by researchers from different universities and research centers. It is a publication open to discussion and dissemination of technical and scientific studies in the area of agricultural sciences in order to contribute to the consolidation of an academic community centered on the disciplines related to horticulture and for the benefit of rural productivity and horticultural producers.
Original and unedited papers must be submitted according to the rules laid out in the instructions to authors. The Editorial Committee reserves the right to accept or reject contributions to the journal. The manuscripts will be sent to least two peer reviewers, who are experts in the specific area of knowledge, and they will decide whether the manuscript has the necessary scientific standards for publication. If there is a difference of opinion regarding the concepts for the approval for publication, the manuscript will be sent to the reviewer odd number, who will deliver the final decision. The Editorial Committee reserves the right to accept or reject contributions of a reviewer. If the article is accepted for publication, the author must make the suggested corrections within the time indicated by the editor.
Article Publication Charges
The articles published in the journal will be sent to different databases and indexing systems. After publication, a pdf file of the paper will be sent, free-of-charge, to the corresponding author.
The editors of the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas are committed to the scientific community in ensuring the ethics and quality of published articles. The journal has as a reference, the code of conduct and good publishing practices for editors of scientific journals, defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); and furthermore, is dedicated to ensuring an adequate response to the needs of readers and authors, ensuring the quality of the publication, protecting and respecting the content of the articles and the integrity thereof. The Editorial Committee will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
The copyright of the articles and illustrations are the property of the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas. The editors authorize the use of the contents under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The correct citation of the content must explicitly register the name of the journal, name (s) of the author (s), year, title of the article, volume, number, page of the article and DOI. Written permission is required from publishers to publish more than a short summary of the text or figures.
INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
The authors of the articles submitted to the journal Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas must be aware of and avoid scientific misconduct related to: scientific fraud in all or part of the data of the study and data falsification and manipulation; dishonesty due to fictitious authorship or gifting or exchange of coauthorship, duplicate publications, partial or complete, in different journals and self-plagiarism by reusing portions of previous writings; citation omission, citation copying without consultation and excessive selfcitation, among others. The authors have the following rights: fair and impartial evaluation of articles done in a reasonable amount of time, correspondence shall be taken seriously and requests for changes and corrections shall be respected, subject to review by the evaluators, and articles shall remain unaltered.
The contents of articles/manuscripts submitted to the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas must not have been previously published in a refereed publication and submission to the Revista implies no concurrent submissions to other journals. Manuscripts already published in other journals or technical or extension reports will not be accepted. For this, software specialized in identification is used.
The Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas publishes articles of the following types, according to the program: Publindex, Colciencias (Colombia):
- Scientific and technological research papers: those documents presenting detailed original research results. The most generally applied structure has four main parts: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, and conclusions. At a minimum, 18% of the total text should correspond to the cited references, 60% of which must have been published in the last 10 years.
- Reflection paper: document presenting research results analyzed from an author’s interpretative and critical perspective about a specific subject, resorting to original sources. This type of article must always have a clear contextual introduction coupled to a pertinent objective within the topic. The development of said objective should include a broad and updated perspective on the topic and a hypothetical statement or proposal backed up by recognizable references (no article will be accepted without references). The reflection article should include suggestive and pertinent subtitles.
- Review articles: documents written for a general, albeit well-informed audience. The review article should analyze, systematize, or summarize the published or non-published results of an area of science or technology for the purpose of providing information on the current state and perspectives of development of a particular research. The review article should be supported by not less than 50 references.
- Scientific note: brief document introducing original preliminary or partial results of a scientific or technical research, which usually need immediate publication.
Format and organization of text
Research papers should not exceed 5,200 words (including literature and tables), except for review articles, which can contain up to 6,500 words; in letter size, double-spaced, Times New Roman font size 12, margins of 3 cm at the top, 2 cm at the bottom and 2.5 cm in the left and right side margins. Tables and figures (graphs, drawings, diagrams, flow charts, pictures and maps) must be presented and numbered consecutively (Tab. 1, Tab. 2, ... Tab. n. Fig. 1, Fig. 2, ..., etc.) in the order cited in the text in archive .doc or .docx.
Texts and tables should be prepared using an MS-Word® processor. Graphs and diagrams of frequency (bar and circular diagrams) should be included in the mentioned Word file, as well as in their original MS-Excel® or other vectorial format as: .eps, .dxf, .dwg, .wmf, .emf, .cdr, .svg, .odg, .vml, .dcs 1.0, .dcs 2.0, .swf, .pict, .hpgl, .fh9, .fh10, .fh1, .iges. Other figures including photographs and drawings, should be submitted in digital .tif or .jpeg with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for a size 7x10 cm. As a general rule, tables and figures should only be submitted in black and white. The .doc or .docx file of the manuscript must be sent through the Portal de Revistas UPTC in step 2, along with the other files of the article, format of personal data of all authors (included in step 3), letter of commitment and representative image of the manuscript as cover (preferably unpublished, with author-year and short review of 4 words).
Languages, units, and style
From 2019 the official language of the journal is English. British or American English spelling and terminology may be used, but either should be consistently used throughout the article. The metric system (SI) should be consistently utilized throughout the manuscript. All abbreviations should be explained when they first appear in the manuscript. The style of writing should be impersonal, in the past tense for the introduction, procedures and results.
Title and authors
The translation of the title into Spanish is mandatory. The scientific name of plants and animals should be italicized and written in Latin with the generic name starting with a capitalized letter and including the descriptor’s name. Under the titles, the authors’ names (first and last names) should be listed and parameterized with IraLIS or e-LIS, in the order in which they contributed to the investigation and preparation of the manuscript. Next, the affiliation is made up of the name of the institution, at least one sub-dependency and the city of location to which they provide their services. Identify each affiliation through a numerical superscript and the author. In case of Colombian researchers it must coincide with the CvLAC. In addition, it is mandatory to include the ORCID of each author and the email address of the author of contact with the journal.
Abstract and additional keywords
The abstract should briefly describe the problem, the methods used, the justification and the relevant results obtained; and should not exceed 250 words written in a single paragraph. It’s obligatory to accompany the abstract with a maximum of six keywords, which have not been used in the title and belonging to a specialized Thesaurus such as Agrovoc or CAB. Equally, abstract y additional keywords appear in the Spanish-version.
Introduction
The text should contain the current situation of the problem, its definition and review of the studied area, the objectives, scope and justification for the research. Common names of plants and animals must be accompanied with the corresponding scientific ones, plus the abbreviation of the species author surname when mentioned for the first time.
Materials and methods
Besides a clear, precise and sequential description of the materials used for the research (plant or animal materials, agricultural or laboratory tools), this section illustrates the procedures and protocols followed, and the experimental design chosen for the statistical analysis of the data (where possible, include them as annexes). In addition, indicate the place of origin and date of the investigation.
Results and discussion
The results shall be presented in a logical, objective, and sequential order, using text, tables and figures. The latter two should be easily understandable and self-explanatory, regardless of a thorough explanation in the text. The graphics should be two-dimensional and prepared in black and white, using varying tones to illustrate variations between columns. Diagram curves must be prepared in black, dashed or continuous lines (- - - - or ____), using the following conventions: ∆, □, ◊, ○, ●, etc.
The tables should contain few columns and lines. Averages should be accompanied by their corresponding standard error (SE) values. The discussion of results must be complete and exhaustive, explaining the results obtained, limitations and importance, in contrast to the most up-to-date literature on the subject.
Conclusions
This section should summarize in a brief and concise form the most important findings of the research, such as those containing the most significant support in the studied area.
Acknowledgements
When considered necessary, the authors may acknowledge the researchers or entities that contributed - conceptually, financially or practically - to the research: specialists, commercial organizations, governmental or private entities, and associations of professionals or technicians. Include the sponsor of the investigation. In case of projects, the name and identification code.
Conflicts of interest and authorship contributions
Mention possible conflicts of interest (personal or contractual) that place at risk the validity of the results presented, and the individual contributions of the authors in the conception, start-up, execution of the research and writing of the manuscript.
Autoarchive
This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among partner libraries, allowing them to create permanent archives of the journal for conservation and restoration purposes. More
Once the edited pdf document is available, the self-archive is deposited in the information systems:
- Open Journal System (OJS).
- Repository of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnologica de Colombia.
Additionally, self-archiving is recorded in the other information systems that are required in this procedure. All bibliographic data for each article are cataloged in the database of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnologica de Colombia with the corresponding links to the respective repositories.
The dates on which said self-filing is carried out correspond to January 1 and July 1 of the corresponding year.
For authors: After an article is published, authors can deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice.
Bibliographic references
For short citations located in the text, use the system: author(s), year uniformly. When the publication cited has three or more authors, please mention the name of the first author accompanied by the Latin phrase et al., with the year (e.g. Garcia et al., 2003). When using texts from other authors, use double quotes and mention the location page. It is recommended to paraphrase with several authors and avoid the literal inclusions.
The complete list of the references listed must be included at end of article. The initials of the first names and the surnames of all authors must be written in alphabetical order for the last names; when several publications are cited, the author(s) should be listed in chronological order, from most recent to oldest. Each citation must contain a digital object identifier (DOI) at the end. Furthermore, the text of the manuscript must contain a minimum of 30% of the citations found in the Bibliographic References section with their respective DOI. Examples of literature citations are given below:
- Books: Author(s), year. Title of the book, edition, publisher and the place of publication, pages consulted (pp. # - #). Example: Taiz, L. and E. Zeiger. 2006. Plant physiology. 4th ed. Sinauer Associates Publishers, Sunderland, MA.
- Book chapters: Author(s), year. Title of the chapter, pages (pp. # - #). In: Last name(s) and initial(s) of first name(s) of contributors or authors (eds.), title of the book, publisher and the place of publication. DOI. Example: Engels, C., E. Kirkby, and P. White. 2012. Mineral nutrition, yield and source-sink relationships. pp. 85-133. In: Marschner, P. (ed.). Marschner´s mineral nutrition of higher plants. 3rd ed. Elsevier, Amsterdam. Doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-384905-2.00005-4
- Journal articles: Author(s), year. Title of the article, journal number ISO, volume(issue), pages. DOI. Example: García, S., W. Clinton, L. Kukshin, and R. García. 2004. Inhibitory effect of flowering and early fruit growth on leaf photosynthesis in mango. Tree Physiol. 24(3), 387-399. Doi: 10.1093/treephys/24.4.387
- Database: Corporate author. Year. Title of database. Referred item. Consultation date. Example: FAO. 2019. FAOSTAT. Pesticides Use. Consulta: marzo de 2019.
- For citing proceedings: Author(s). Year. Name of the dissertation. pp. #-#. Title. Publisher, City (and country, if the city is not a capital). Example: Peet, M. 2008. Physiological disorders in tomato fruit development. p. 101. In: Book of abstracts, International Symposium on Tomato in the Tropics. Sociedad Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas. Villa de Leyva, Colombia.
- For theses: Author(s). Year. Title. Thesis degree. Academic institution, city (and country, if the city is not a capital). Example: Hernandez, M. 2001. Conservación del fruto de arazá (Eugenia stipitataMcVaugh) durante la poscosecha mediante de aplicación de diferentes técnicas. Doctoral thesis. Faculty of Agronomy, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia.
International unit system (SI) or metric unit system
The Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas requires the use of SI units (Système international d’unités).
- The numbers of multiplication and the negative numbers of the superscripts should be used only in conjunction with SI units (for example, kg ha-1). Do not place non-SI units in SI units, because the units are mathematical expressions. Reorganize the phrase respectively, for example:
- P at 20 g L-1, but not 20 g P L-1, nor 20 g P/L.
- The yield measured in dry mass was 10 g d-1, but not 10 g of dry mass d-1.
- The active ingredient was applied at 25 g ha-1, but not 25 g a.i./ha.
- Each plant received water at 30 g ha-1, but not irrigation was applied at 30 g H2O/ha per plant.
- The slant line (/) is a symbol of mathematic operation that means “division”; in science, it may be substituted by the word “per ” in the meaning of “per each” and indicates rates or degrees. Use the slant line to connect SI units with non-SI units (for example: 10°C/h or 10 L/plant). Never use the raised period and slant line in the same expression. If you mix SI and non-SI units, use the slant line first and then the word “per ” in the second terminus. Never use two or more slashes (/) or the word “per ” more than once in the same phrase to avoid redundancy, for example: irrigation/day per plant should be changed to: each plant was irrigated two times per day. For the totally verbal units, use one slash, such as: three flowers/ plant or 10 fruits/branch.
- To cite units based on names, use lowercase, such as: “one siemens represents...”. However, Celsius (ºC) and Brix (ºBrix) units should be written with the first letter capitalized.
- Use the same abbreviation or symbol for the singular and plural forms of a unit (for example, 1 kg and 25 kg). Leave a blank space between the numerical value and the symbol (for example, 35 g, but not 35g). In a series of measures expressed with the same variable, place this at the end, such as: between 14 and 20°C or growth up to 3, 6, and 9 m.
The style adopted by the Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas for some units of measurements refers to the table of abbreviations and symbols of ASHS Publications Style Manual or can be consulted in Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas 4(1), 2010, pp. 181-184.