1. Only the original research works should be presented for possible consideration of publication. A clear-cut description of the work performed, and the results obtained thereof commensuration with objective discussion of the significance of the work with reference to the previous work and the present work must be presented in holistic way. The article should be enriched with sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. The manuscript should conform to the SI system for numerical data and data should be subjected to appropriate statistical analysis. The article should preferably be relating to the research work carried out during the last five years. Review articles should be objective and comprehensive, as far as possible exhaustive in the specific area with up-to-date information. Authors are solely responsible for the scientific contents of the article.
2. Concurrent submission and or publication of research articles based essentially the same research work in more than one journal is highly unethical and are to be discouraged at all levels. Authors should refrain themselves from submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been submitted / published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable.
3. If situation warrants, the authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study for editorial review and should be ready to make the data publicly available if practicable and deemed necessary by the editorial board. Such data should be maintained for at least 10 years after publication.
4. The manuscript will be subjected to scan by a reputed plagiarism detecting software. Hence, authors should ensure that they have worked, written and submit original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, including those have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should have been appropriately cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, and any form is unethical and unacceptable.
5. Authorship of the manuscript is ascertained by the significant contributions to (i) the concept, ii) designing the experiment, iii) execution, iv) data acquisition, v) analysis/interpretation of the study; (vi) preparation of the manuscript viii) revision of the manuscript for its intellectual quality etc. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript must be listed. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors as per their contribution listed above and no inappropriate co-authors are included and also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.
6. During the submission of the manuscript the authors / corresponding author (on behalf of all the authors) should disclose any conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. Potential conflicts of interest like financial educational grants or other funding, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, other financial, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements along with personal or professional relationships, affiliations etc should clearly be disclosed.
7. Acknowledgement of others works those have influential impact on determining the nature of the work in proper way forms the basis of any scientific communication and is included in the ethical consideration of publication. Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and also cited such publications properly. Information obtained through private conversation, correspondence or discussion should be reported with the permission from the source.
8. The authors must clearly identify in the manuscript the involvement of hazards related to chemicals, procedures or equipment. In the event of involvement of animals or human, the authors should ensure the compliances with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has approved them; the manuscript should contain a statement to this effect. Authors should also include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants.
9. If the authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their published work, it is their obligation to promptly intimate the same to the journal’s editor and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum. If the editors or publisher notice otherwise that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.
10. The journal follows a double-blind peer review process and all articles will be subjected to peer reviewing. Research articles submitted for consideration are first reviewed by editors/ editorial board member in respective fields. The editors may reject it out either because it is not dealing with the subject matter for the journal or because of its low quality. Articles that are found suitable for review are then sent to two experts in the field of the paper Each and every article submitted for possible publication in the journal undergoes double blind peer review system; wherein identity of neither the authors nor the reviewers are disclosed. Articles are generally sent to at least two reviewers, one from outside the country and another from outside the province/state where the actual has been carried out. Reviewers are allowed a blanket to go through the content of the article without any prejudice or bindings; scientific content of the article remains the only criteria. Ethically, authors are obliged to participate in the double-blind peer review process and cooperate fully and promptly to editors’ requests for review compliances including proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. The authors should comply to the reviewers’ comments/requirements systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal within the stipulated deadline given.
11. Decision of the Editorial Board is final.
12. All the authors must be the member of the Crop and Weed Science Society.
13. Authors should provide the names and full address along with telephone and E-mail ID of minimum four experts from outside the state/province and two from outside the country in the relevant field of research.
14. No reprints of the published article will be supplied by post to the authors. However, the corresponding author can download the soft copies of the article from journal’s website ( https://www.cropandweed.com/).
15. If the manuscript is accepted for the publication, the author(s) have to pay a nominal article processing charge of Rs. 1000.00 (Rupees one thousand only) in form of Money Order/Bank Draft/Online Transfer on SBI Kalyani, Code No. 1082, A/C 11151098081 in favor of the Secretary/Treasurer, Crop and Weed Science Society. However, if author(s) are already members of the society, the article processing charge is waived.
16. All communications relating to the publications in journal should be addressed to the Chief Editor, Journal of Crop and Weed, Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, P.O. Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Dist. Nadia, Pin 741252, West Bengal India or Email at editor@cwssbckv.org
17. For any queries or clarifications, the author(s) can contact the editorial office by telephone (+91 9749158485) from Monday to Friday (11:00 AM to 4:30 PM IST) or by email (editor@cwssbckv.org).
18. The Publication Ethics of the journal are available at https://www.cropandweed.com/ethics
19. Author(s) should strictly follow the Article Structure while preparing the manuscript.

Reference to a journal article
Pihur, V., Datta, S. and Datta, S. 2008. Reconstruction of genetic association networks from microarray data: a partial least squares approach. Bioinformatics, 24(4): 561–568.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J. and Lupton, R.A. 2018. The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon. 19, e00205.

Reference to an authored book
Sadasivam, S. and Manickam, A. 2008. Biochemical Methods. 3 ^rd Edn., New Age International Publishers, Dariya Ganj, New Delhi, India. pp 20-21.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book
Sharma, S.K., Baranwal, V.K., Roy, S.S., Kumar, P.Vignesh and Prakash, N. 2016. Interactions Among Host and Plant Pararetroviruses: An Ever Evolving Evolutionary Dogma. In: Plant Viruses : Evolution and Management (Gaur, R.K., Petrov, N.V., Patil B.L. and Stoyanova, M.I. Eds.), Springer. pp 73-87.

Reference to a chapter in a souvenir or conference proceedings
Hazra, P. 2019. Smart horticulture for livelihood and nutritional security. In: Abstracts of International Seminar on Agriskills for Convergence in Research, Industry and Livelihood. Crop and Weed Science Society, 28 November to 1 December, 2019. Kalyani, West Bengal, India. pp. 42-45.

Reference to a website
Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Government of India. 2021. First Advance Estimates of Production of Foodgrains for 2020-21. https://agricoop.nic.in/sites/default/files/FirstEstimate2020-21.pdf (Last accessed on 30 August, 2021).

N.B. For any other category of publications, closest reference style may be followed.

9. TABLES AND FIGURES

(a) Table: Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. It should be combined to avoid repetitions. Each table should be concise and given at the end of the text (after references). Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and place table notes, if any (for describing the abbreviation, alphabetical notations, etc. used in the table) below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article or in the figures. Construct the table in such a way so that it should not occupy much space and can be easily understandable for the readers. Horizontal and vertical lines should not be marked within the table. Please avoid shading in table cells. Each table should contain a self-explanatory heading (e.g. Table 1: Effect of different treatments on growth and yield of paddy). The heading should be written in Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Bold, Sentence case, Double spaced, Left alignment. Download an article from journal’s website ( https://www.cropandweed.com/) and construct the tables accordingly.

(b) Figure: Provide figure in either TIFF or JPEG format. Please do not embed the figures in the text instead place the figures in separate pages after the tables. Number the figures consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Standard format of graphs should preferably be used and legends (if any) should be given. As far as possible, figure should be constructed in black & white/grayscale mode. Coloured figure should be given if it is absolute necessary. Using 3D bar charts should be avoided if 3D does not add any additional information or clarity. Ensure that each figure has a suitable caption. The caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Explain all symbols and abbreviations used (if any) after the title. If more than one figures are grouped into a single a figure, each sub-figure should be sequentially marked with alphabets as (a), (b), (c)… and described in the figure caption (e.g. Fig. 1: Visualization of the GRN using Cytoscape Software based on different scoring methods (a) Correlation, (b) Partial Least Square, (c) Principal Component Regression, (d) Ridge Regression and (e) Fisher’s weighted method). The figure caption should be written in Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Bold, Sentence case, Double spaced, Left alignment. The artwork (e.g. image, graphics) should be of minimum 300 dpi resolution. Please do not use any artwork which are optimized for screen use (e.g. GIF, BMP, WPG, etc.) and of low resolution. Please also do not submit any image that are disproportionately large for the content. All maps/satellite images should have a measure of scale (e.g. scale bar), north arrow (or directional grid), and a legend and all print should be legible after 1/4th size reduction. Download an article from journal’s website ( https://www.cropandweed.com/) and construct the figures accordingly. If required, journal may ask you to submit editable file of the figures.

10. ETHICAL STATEMENT

This section will start from a new page.

(a) Animal and clinical studies: Investigations using experimental animals must state in the Materials and Methods section that the research was conducted in accordance with the internationally accepted principles for laboratory animal use and care as recommended by the competent authority (e.g. Office of Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animal (CPCSEA), Govt. of India) along with Approval No. and Registration No. of approving authority. The Editors will reject papers if there is any doubt about the suitability of the animal procedures used.

(b) Biodiversity rights: Each country has its own rights on its biodiversity. Consequently, for studying plants one needs to follow the international, national and institutional rules concerning the biodiversity rights. The author(s) must state that they have not breached any Acts or Rules pertains to Biodiversity rights of any country or state.

The author(s) must declare that, “ The study was performed according to the international, national and institutional rules considering animal experiments, clinical studies and biodiversity rights. Necessary approval has been obtained from ___________________ Vide Approval No. ________________ dated ________.”

If the work does not involve any animal experiments or is not related to biodiversity rights, the author(s) should write “ Not applicable”.

Write the heading as ETHICAL STATEMENT ( Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Bold, Upper case/All Caps, Double spaced, Left alignment). The statement should be written in Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Sentence case, Double spaced, Justify alignment.

11. COPYRIGHT STATEMENT FOR USING THIRD-PARTY MATERIAL

The author(s) must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in the article. The use of short extracts of text citing the original authors is usually permitted for writing prior art or discussion. However, if author(s) wants to include any other material (e.g. tables, figures, dataset, artwork/photographs, diagram, design, etc.) in the paper which is protected by copyrights, they have to mandatorily obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission and the source of the materials used should be indicated in the article.

The author(s) must declare that “The article contains copyrights protected material and necessary permission has been obtained from the copyright holder”.

In such cases, the journal may request you to submit a copy of the permission letter.

If the work does not use any copyrighted material, the author(s) should mention “The article does not contain any copyrights protected material”.

Write the heading as COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ( Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Bold, Upper case/All Caps, Double spaced, Left alignment). The statement should be written in Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Sentence case, Double spaced, Justify alignment.

12. AUTHORSHIP STATEMENT

For transparency, we encourage authors to submit an authorship statement file outlining their individual contributions to the paper using the relevant roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Data analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Literature survey; Manuscript writing, Manuscript editing; etc. Write the heading as AUTHORSHIP STATEMENT ( Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Bold, Upper case/All Caps, Double spaced, Left alignment). The statement should be written in Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Sentence case, Double spaced, Justify alignment. The statement may be written as follows.

Name of Author A: Idea conceptualization, experimentation and manuscript writing

Name of Author B: Data analysis

Name of Author C: Literature survey and manuscript editing

Name of Author D: …….

13. LIST OF ABBREVIATION

If any abbreviations (other than standard abbreviations) or short name of chemicals/ formulations, etc. are used in the article, the author(s) should provide a list of all such abbreviation along with their expanded form to facilitate the reviewers. All such non-standard abbreviation must be defined at their first mention in the article itself. If the article does not contain any such abbreviation, the author(s) should mention “ Not applicable”. Write the heading as LIST OF ABBREVIATION ( Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Bold, Upper case/All Caps, Double spaced, Left alignment). The list of abbreviation should be written in Times New Roman Font, 10 pt size, Sentence case, Double spaced, Left alignment.

14. SUBMISSION DECLARATION

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the Journal of Crop and Weed. A sample Submission Declaration is as given below.

“I/We hereby declare that

1. That the article is an original work carried out by the authors.
2. That the work is done within the previous five years of the submission.
3. That the work is in no way contravenes the publication ethics of the Journal.
4. That while preparing the manuscript copying and or plagiarizing has been avoided.
5. That the article, in part of full, has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
6. That the article has been approved by all authors for submission to the Journal.
7. That there is no conflict of interest among the authors or any other individual or organisation etc.
8. That if accepted, the article will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the Journal of Crop and Weed.
9. That all persons/establishments who have contributed to the said work in terms of financial/intellectual and other helps have been duly acknowledged.
10. That all author(s) has/have given consent for publishing the article in Journal’s website as open access.”

15. LIST OF POTENTIAL REVIEWERS

The author(s) are requested to provide a list of minimum four potential reviewers. However, it is not an indication that your paper will be sent to the same reviewers. The list of reviewers should be furnished in the following format.

1. TITLE PAGE
The title page should be prepared as described in the ‘Structure of a Research Article’.

2. KEYWORDS
Author(s) should mention 5-6 keywords suitable for indexing in alphabetical order. Abstract is not required for short communication.

3. MAIN TEXT
Main text should be written within 2000 words including Tables, Figures and References. Author(s) may divide the Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, etc. into different paragraphs but without any Heading. A maximum of 2 tables and/or figures and/or artwork is allowed. The author(s) should avoid large tables or illustration and present only important results/data in tables/figures.

4. REFERENCES
A maximum of 15 references is allowed. Editor may request further reduction, if required.

N.B. Please follow the same guidelines in respect of type, size and case of font, line spacing, paragraph indentation, reference style, construction of tables/figures/artwork, etc. as given in the ‘Structure of a Research Article’.

The author(s) should use the following list to carry out a final check of the article before submitting it to the journal. Please ensure that the following points have been addressed:

1. The manuscript has been prepared in Microsoft Word and saved as ‘Word 97-2003 document (*.doc)’ format.
2. Each page of the manuscript has been numbered at bottom centre.
3. The name of each author has been correctly spelled.
4. One author has been designated as the corresponding author and marked with asterisk (*).
5. Affiliations of all authors have been clearly mentioned.
6. Correct e-mail address of corresponding author has been mentioned on the title page.
7. The manuscript file has been arranged in the following sequence.
   Title Page → Abstract and Keywords → Introduction (Without heading) → Materials and Methods → Results and Discussion → Acknowledgement (Optional) → Disclosure Statement → References → Tables and Figures → Ethical Statement → Copyright Statement → Authorship Statement → List of Abbreviation (If any) → Submission Declaration → List of Reviewers.
8. All tables and figures (including titles, description, footnotes, etc.) have been constructed as per recommended style of the journal and given on separate pages.
9. All tables and/or figure have been cited in the relevant section of the text.
10. All measurements have been given in SI or SI-derived units and as per recommended style.
11. All abbreviation/acronyms have been defined on their first mention in the manuscript.
12. The scientific name of plants, insects, microbes, etc. has been given on their first mention in the manuscript and wherever necessary.
13. The active formulation of commercial products has been mentioned in Materials and Methods.
14. All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa.
15. All references have been written as per recommended style of the journal.
16. Full URL of web-references have been given.
17. Ethical statement, if applicable, contains the name of approving authority, registration no., approval no. and date.
18. Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (if any).
19. The Email IDs of suggested reviewers are correctly spelled and presently active.
20. The whole manuscript has been 'spell checked' and 'grammar checked'.