Preamble, Vision, Aim, Scope and other Policy Issues of Ethiopian Journal of Applied Sciences and Technology (EJAST)

Preamble
Agriculture is the foundation to modern civilization and the key sector to livelihood of human being. With an increase in world population, by 2050 G.C the world population will jump 9 billion. The living standard of human being also improving and consumers are more aware of nutritious and healthy foods. To improve both quantitative and qualitative supply of foods to feed the ever increasing world population agriculture should be modernized, efficient and sustainable. These can be achieved through dynamic research and innovations to solve agricultural problems in more scientific manner. The forthcoming agriculture should be environmental friendly, climate smart, technology supported, highly productive with less after harvest losses and efficient distribution system. Scientific works in these areas should be communicated to stakeholders to share agriculture knowledge and experiences throughout the world. Therefore, like other agriculture journals, this journal also strive to spread scientific findings and innovations to unlock the full potential of agriculture to enhance the economic, social and ecological wealth of people in our planet.

Vision
EJAST strives to spread ideas, knowledge, reliable information, and groundbreaking research to the scientific community in all and related fields of agriculture. We work together with academia and researchers to spread knowledge free of charges or with minimum cost. Our journal strives to work hard to be one of the notable agriculture journals to spread scientific information in modern agriculture system of our planet.

Mission
EJAST with its rigorous peer review process, publish up-to-date scientific manuscripts through online and in print copies to reach wide range of audiences throughout the world. In the future the frequency of online and in print publications will be increased to spread scientific information in more frequent manner. The editorial team, peer review process and publication procedures will be updated frequently to meet the versatility and dynamics of digital and in print technologies to spread published manuscripts to readers on time.

Aim and Scope
The aim of EJAST is to publish scientific works to promote knowledge among scientific communities in agriculture and related disciplines to maintain demand and supply balance of quality foods for ever increasing world population. Our journal scope is to publish scientific works in all fields of agriculture and related life sciences. We accept manuscripts in areas of plant sciences, horticulture, soil sciences, animal sciences, veterinary medicine natural resource management, forestry, agricultural engineering and mechanization, postharvest management, food science and technology, agricultural marketing, agricultural economics, farm management, rural sociology and agricultural extension, agribusiness and value chain, and in related fields of biology, geography, environmental science, water resource and so on.

Publication Schedule
For the time being EJAST is publishing two issues per year in every six-month interval. The first issue is released in the month of June and the second one in December. However, as of 2020, the number of issues per year will be increased to three or four issues per volume..

EJAST is Open Access
All manuscripts published online in EJAST web site are freely accessible to the global scientific community without any restriction. Manuscripts published online are accessible by any one immediately after publication.

Creative Commons
Manuscripts published in EJAST website and in hard copies are licensed under the creative common attribute 4.0 international license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (CC BY 4.0, accessed May 2019). The license permits any interested person to copy, redistribute, remix, transmit and adapt the work provided that the original work and source is appropriately cited.

Objectivity and Fair Play
Editors and reviewers who work for EJAST shall evaluate manuscripts only and only for their intellectual content without considering any partiality against race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate and will not be accepted by the editorial team of the journal.

Editors and Editorial Staff
Editors who make final editorial decisions on articles must have no financial, personal or professional involvement in any form with the manuscript under consideration. If a potential bias exists, they should withdraw from handling the paper and forward to other neutral editor in the team. The decision of editor should be on the bases of technical quality and scientific merits of the work.

Redundant or concurrent publication
EJAST will not accept an already published manuscript in any journal or conference proceeding (if major part (> 50%) included in the paper). Manuscript part so far published in the form of abstracts or posters presented at scientific meetings are accepted. Concurrent submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is also considered unethical and results in complete rejection of the submission. Authors are responsible to declare for any submission or publication that might be regarded as overlapping with the submitted manuscript. In order to make a fair decision by the editors, copies of any related documents (figures, tables, pictures, maps, plans and so on) with the submitted manuscripts should be included during submission process or upon request of the editorial team. A written permission from copyright holder of the document should be submitted upon request.

Ethical Clearance for Researches Involves Human Subject
Any manuscript that considers an human being an experimental subject should declare and submit the ethical clearance certificate from concerned body. It should be clearly indicated that the experiment was conducted after the certificate is issued.

Use of Animals as Experimental Subject
Manuscript data generated using animals as an experimental subject should be according to the guidelines of Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIV) (https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines accessed May 2019). Care and use of experimental animals must comply with all relevant local animal welfare laws, guidelines and policies. The corresponding author will be asked to confirm this at submission, and a statement confirming that experiments conform to the relevant regulatory standards is required in the Materials and Methods section of the paper.

Editorial Policies of Ethiopian Journal of Applied Sciences and Technology

Overview
The editorial policies of EJAST are a general guideline in addition to author’s guideline of the journal in publication process. EJAST accepts and endeavors to obey standards and requirements according to Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) to promote integrity in research and publication (https://publicationethics.org/ accessed May 2019).

Authorship
An author in EJAST published manuscript is accepted according to recommendation of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJS). Accordingly, an author is an individual who has significantly contributed to the development of a manuscript and fulfills the following four criteria according to ICMJS (http://www.icmje.org/ accessed May 2019):
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.


Acknowledgements
Individuals who participated in the development of a manuscript but do not qualify as an author criteria as indicated above, should be acknowledged in the submitted manuscript. Organizations that provided support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged.


Submission of Manuscript
Authors should read the “Instruction for Authors” on the journal’s web page before making a submission. A manuscript should be prepared according to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy and author’s guideline. All authors should be communicated and notified about the submission of the manuscript by the editors in order to confirm that they are awared of and approved the submission by the corresponding author. Once a manuscript is submitted, it is, therefore, assumed that all authors have read and given their consent for the submission of the manuscript. Contact information of all authors should be stated on the manuscript. Full name including surname, affiliation institution, emails, and phone numbers. Declaration of Conflicts of Interest should be stated in the manuscript. Submission should be made online using website of the journal.

Peer Review Process
EJAST abides to a double-blind peer review process in which both the authors and reviewers are kept anonymous. The goal of the peer review process is to publish scientific manuscripts to the standard of the journal and ideas worth wide distribution among the scientific communities. Editors, board members and reviewers, therefore, play a critical role in maintaining to publish high quality works. All manuscripts submitted to the journal will pass through the following peer review process

Manuscript Evaluation Process
Once manuscripts are submitted the editor –in- chief or associate editor will check the manuscript for possible plagiarism result, originality of the work, contents as per the aim and scope of the journal, authors guideline and policies of the journal. Manuscripts which do not meet the minimum criteria will be returned back to the author within one week time (maximum). Those that meet the minimum criteria will be passed to associate editors for quick check up and suggestion of potential reviewers. Associate editor is expert selected in certain disciplinary areas and who have a wide network among professionals in their field of specialization.

Type of Peer Review Process
Editors will communicate potential reviewers and send the manuscripts to them for their professional comments and suggestion either to accept or reject. A minimum of two reviewers will be selected and if a very different comments and decisions are observed between or among reviewers, a third or fourth reviewer will be invited to resolve the issue. A peer review process will take 4- 6 weeks according to availability and response of selected reviewers.


Reviewers’ Report
Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript and make a decision considering originality of the work, relevance of introduction part and stated objectives, soundness and relevance of methodology (materials and methods part), soundness , quality and relevance, how results are presented and discussed, conclusion made and the way references are presented both in the text and reference list parts. Reviewers are expected to give their comments and suggestions clearly (referring the line numbers in the paper) to the authors to assist author (s) to address all comments and suggestions given. Language correction is not part of the review process but suggestion can be made by reviewers. Grammar and language quality are the responsibilities of the authors, to submit the manuscripts in clear and communicable language quality to authors. Authors whose manuscripts accepted (at it is, with minor or major correction) will be granted a letter of acceptance and they are also asked to submit signed copies of creative commons license and copy right forms.

Final Report and Editor’s Decision
Based on the reviewers’ comments and suggestions, the final decision will be sent to the corresponding author alone and recommendation made by the reviewers. However, the final decision will be made by the editors to accept or reject the manuscript.

Changes in Authorship and Related Issues
Whenever there is a need to make changes in the authorship of a manuscript or any authorship problem deemed in the course of publication process, issues are managed or changes will be implemented according to COPE specification (https://publicationethics.org/resources/ accessed May 2019). Only corresponding authors can make request for a change in authorship. Request should be made to the editor using the Changes in Authorship procedure indicated in COPE and the Form which will be provided by Editors.


Conflict of Interest
Any conflict of interest raised during review process in any form should be managed as per the recommendation of COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/ accessed May 2019). Authors are responsible to declare any conflict of interest associated with any financial or relevant interest that may influenced the development of the manuscript. If any, reviewers also indicate the possible conflict of interest and decline the review process and the same is true for editors (if any). Such a manuscript should be assigned to different editor and reviewer(s).

Confidentiality
A submitted manuscript to EJAST is a confidential material and the journal will not disclose the material to third part except to individuals who involve in review, handling and publication process (if accepted). This may include editor-in -chief, associate editors, managing editor, layout editor, grammar and language editor, reviewer, editorial board members and in suspect of misconduct to the journal editorial board and relevant institutions where the authors are affiliated (for resolution of conflict of misconduct or interest). In addition to these points all issues associated with confidentiality shall be managed according to COPE recommendations.

Correction and Retraction of Manuscripts
The editor- in- chief or associate editor can allow minor corrections in the original published manuscript to be included. However, in case of major corrections, the original manuscript will remain unchanged (same volume and issue number) while the corrected version will also be published after it passes the review process. Both original and corrected versions will be linked to each other and the reason for the amendment will also be published online. The corrections and amendments published online will apply for the print publication and the one indicated online shall be the final accepted and approved corrected manuscript. Any issue related to retraction of a manuscript will be managed as per COPE retraction guideline (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines accessed May 2019).


Misconducts Including Plagiarism
Any violation of journal policies, editorial policies, publication ethics or any relevant and applicable guidelines indicated in the journal and any visible or potential activity that compromise the integrity of the research and publication of data are considered as misconducts. Potential cases of misconducts will be managed according to COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines accessed May 2019). Suspected plagiarism works either in submitted or published manuscript will also be managed as per COPE guideline (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts accessed May 2019).