About the Journal

Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources (JANR)

(J. Agric. Nat. Res.)

ISSN: 2661-6270 (Print) / eISSN: 2661-6289 (Online)

Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources (JANR) is dedicated to publishing high-quality original research and review articles on various disciplines of agriculture. The main objective of JANR is to provide a platform for national and international scholars,  academicians, and researchers to share their innovative research findings in agricultural fields. The JANR is an online open access international, peer reviewed and official journal published annually by Prithu Technical College, Lamahi  Municipality Ward -3, Bangaun, Deukhuri Dang, Nepal. 

Focus and Scope
The scopes of Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources include, but are not limited to, the following fields of Agricultural Ecology, Agricultural economics, Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural extension, Agronomy, Animal Science and Veterinary, Aquaculture and fisheries, Conservation agriculture, Entomology, Environment Science, Food Science, Forestry Science, Genetic engineering, Horticulture, Irrigation Science, Land use and waste management in agriculture, Microbiology, Plant Biotechnology, Plant Breeding and genetics, Plant Pathology, Production Ecology, Sociology of agriculture, Agricultural chemistry, Soil Science, Scientific publication, Scientific writing and communication in agriculture and natural resources. 

Note: Authors are solely responsible for any scientific misconduct including plagiarism and authorship errors in their articles; the publisher and editorial board are not responsible for any scientific misconduct that happened in any published article.

Why submit:

• promotion of each published article,
• constructive peer review by specialists,
• worldwide dissemination of research results.

Rejection Rate:

• 50%

Publication Frequency

The publication of this journal is annual.

Publication lag-time

Average number of weeks between article submission & publication is 8 weeks.

Publication Charge

Article Processing Cost (APC): From 2024, the author/s need to pay publication fee  (NPR 4000 or USD 30 or  INR 2500) to cover the costs of peer review, copyediting, typesetting, archiving and journal management.

Payments should be made to:

Publisher
Tribhuvan University, Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Prithu Technical College, Dang, Nepal

Owner
Tribhuvan University, Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Prithu Technical College, Dang, Nepal

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources follows the Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement based on Elsevier  recommendations and COPE 's guidelines.

Complaints Policy

Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources takes each complaint seriously and handles it. The complainant issue is checked and acted upon. All complaints will be acknowledged immediately if made by email or telephone. Final decisions are conveyed to the complainant. The Journal holds awareness of the complaints in terms of Authorship complaints, Plagiarism, Duplicate, multiple, concurrent publication, Misappropriation of Research results, Allegations of research errors and fraud, Violations of Research standards, Undisclosed conflicts of interest, Reviewer bias, or acts of harm out of the competition by reviewers.  For making complaints, kindly provide your query to jibshrestha@gmail.com

Retraction Policy

Article Withdrawal: The authors  need to submit a written request and can withdraw their article in any stage of publication before fully published with DOI registration. In case of post publication stage if any readers or any third person complaint about the content, copyright issue, fraudulent data, multiple submission, plagiarism, the article will be withdrawn from the online system by the publisher with a note on retraction.  

Article Corrections: An erratum/corrigendum/addendum will be published and linked with original published article in case of significant correction

 Article Retractions: If any person make a complaints along with proof of plagiarism or copyright issues, the publisher will retract/remove the published article with a note on retraction mentioning the reasons and the case may be informed to the concerned author’s institution and/or funding organizations of the article. The retraction of a published article will be decided by the publisher after discussion with the concerned editor.

Plagiarism Policy
This journal upholds a strict policy against plagiarism to maintain the integrity of published research and support ethical standards in scholarly publishing. Manuscripts submitted to this Journal should be original and must not be plagiarized. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. In case of detecting plagiarism after the publication, the journal will be in charge of marking all the pages of the article with the word "Retracted". This journal uses Plagiarism Checker X for detection of plagarism. The limit of plagarism for this journal is less than 15% .

 Digital Preservation Policy 

All published articles are preserved in TU Central Library, Nepal.

Abstracting/Indexing Services: The journal has been indexed in many Abstracting/Indexing services that store much essential information about the articles. These services archive not only the metadata about the article, but the electronic versions of the articles, as well. Therefore, copies of the articles are available to the scientific community through their systems.

Self-archiving: Authors may archive the final published version of their articles in personal or institutional repositories immediately after publication.

If the journal stops publishing: The publisher intends and expects to continue to publish the journal for a very long time. If due to some rare, unfortunate circumstances, the publisher is forced to stop publishing the journal, the manuscripts published in the journal will be kept online and accessible to the readers for at least 10 more years. 

Self-archiving Policy

This policy sets out the ways in which this journal authors can self-archieve versions of their work on their own webpages, on institutional webpages and in other repositories. For non-commercial and non-promotional research and private study purposes individual users may view, print, download and copy self-archived articles, as well as text and data mine the content under the following condition. Where content in the article is identified as belonging to a third party, it is the obligation of the user to ensure that any reuse complies with the copyright policies of the owner of that content. The proof correction may not be deposited by authors in institutional repositories. Self-archived content may not be re-published verbatim in whole or in part, whether or not for commercial purposes, in print or online. Self-archived articles posted to repositories or websites are without warranty from JANR of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law JANR disclaims all liability for any loss or damage arising out of, or in connection, with the use of or inability to use the content.

Animal Rights Statement

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. The materials and methods (experimental procedures) section must clearly indicate that appropriate measures were taken to minimize pain or discomfort, and details of animal care should be provided. We recommend authors to obey all national and international guidelines set out for the care and use of animal in research. ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) . We also recommend our authors to follow Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Human Rights Statement

Before reporting research work involving human subjects, authors should ensure that the work has been conducted in full accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible institutional or national committees on human subjects as well as with the Helsinki Declaration. In cases, where such committees do not exist, stick compliance with the Helsinki Declaration is suggested. In any other cases, authors are required to explain the full rationale for their approach approaches, and should demonstrate all doubtful matters of the study in the submitted manuscripts.

Disclosure of conflicts of interest

All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing / personal status/affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization/employer) may affect the authors' decision, work, or manuscript.  Authors should  fill out form regarding the Statement of Competing Interests. If there are none, please declare no conflicts of interest.

Authors retain the copyright of the published articles. 
Authors grant publisher a license to publish the articles
The Author warrants that the Work:
• Has not been published before (except if included in an institutional pre-print server). • Is not presently being considered for publication elsewhere.
• Does not violate any intellectual property right of any person or entity.
• Does not contain any subject matter that contravenes any laws (including defamatory material and misleading and deceptive material) and
• Meets ethical standards applicable to the research discipline.

Indexing

AGRICOLA
Open access journals
Researcher.life
ResearchBib
Journalsearches
Exaly

CROSSREF
FATCAT
WIKIDATA
SUDOC
OPENALEX
CAB Abstracts (CABI)
AGORA
Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)
NepJOL
Neliti
MIAR
BASE
HEIDI
NSD
WRLC Catag
Academic Resource Index
Electronic Journals Library (EZB)
WorldWideScience.org
Google Scholar
Livivo
JoutnalTOCS
Sciencegate

Scilit

Universities E-Library Databases

Columbia University Libraries
Iowa State University Libraries
UC Berkeley Library
Universities E-Library Databases
University of Edinburgh Library
Western Sydney University Library
University of New Mexico Library
York University Library
Gent University Library
University of Toronto Libraries
Purdue University Library
Harvard Library
University of Minnesota Catalog
Nelson Mandela University Library
RMIT University Library
British Library
Rhodes University Library  
Pennstate University Libraries
Portland State University Library
Latrobe University Library
Georgia UGA Libraries
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries
Asian Digital Library

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Publishing your research articles as an open access article with Publisher will mean that it:

• is immediately free to access online upon publication (no embargo period).
• can be shared and used by readers as defined by your user license. The published material can be re-used without obtaining permission as long as a correct citation to the original publication is given.
• free access for all users worldwide.
•  increased visibility and readership.

Editors as authors in own journal

Editor-in-Chief, editors and reviewer board members of JANR  can publish their own articles but their papers must be evaluated by at least two external reviewers and editors who are not member of editorial and reviewer board of this Journal.  Editors or editor board members of JANR should not be involved in editorial decisions about their own scholarly works. The peer reviewing works for JANR editors and JANR reviewers’ articles does not include any of the inhouse team.

Changes to authorship

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted. 
Only in exceptional circumstances the Editor will consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted.  If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.

Peer review process

The general purpose of peer-review is to assist the editors in evaluating the quality of a manuscript considered for publication in Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources and to help the author(s) make improvements to the manuscript.

Reviewers should express their views clearly and support them with arguments and references as necessary. If there are any competing interests’ reviewers should declare them to the editor when invited to review. Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest regarding competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript.

Normally review process takes more than one month. Authors are welcome to suggest potential reviewers; however, it is the editor’s decision whether or not to honor such requests.  This journal reserves the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies and the authors’ institutions in cases of suspected research or publishing misconduct. 

The review process is summarized here:

• The corresponding author submits the manuscript to the journal.
• The editor in chief checks that the paper corresponds to the journal's scope. If not, the manuscript may be rejected without being reviewed. The editor in chief checks the manuscript's layout against the journal’s Author Guidelines to make sure it includes the required sections.
• The editor in chief sends invitations to two or more experts who would be reviewers. Reviewers come from national or international territory. 
• Potential reviewers accept or decline the invitation. When declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers. 
• The reviewer reads the paper to provide a detailed review. The Reviewers treat the review process as being strictly confidential.The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject. Accepted manuscript problems are flagged as major or minor issues.
• The editor in chief evaluates all the reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor-in-chief may invite an additional reviewer for an extra opinion.
• The editor in chief sends reviews (anonymized) to the corresponding author.
• Author(s) revise the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments.
• The editor-in-chief assesses the changes made and, if necessary, sends the manuscript back to the reviewers.
• An Editorial Board gives final judgement to the manuscript. If accepted, the manuscript is sent for publishing. If the article is rejected, the editor-in-chief should respond with constructive comments to help the author improve the manuscript.

Reviewer Guidelines
Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources is a peer-review journal, we perform the quality control for submitted manuscripts by the refereeing process. We are very grateful to our Reviewers for the time and effort they spend evaluating manuscripts for this journal. While preparing the reports, Referees are asked to describe the quality of the manuscript according to the following criteria. 

Originality of work; has not been published elsewhere in any medium by the authors or anyone else and is not under consideration for publication in any other medium.

• Scope of the journal
• Methods of investigation
• English language
• Backup reading: references

Short Notes should meet the key standards listed above and additionally should report high quality new work of such importance that merits urgent publication and should be likely to make significant impact on the current research in the relevant area. If ,however a contribution is not justified to be handled via rapid channel it may be considered as a research paper, probably after expansion or revision.

Review Articles should contain the most significant results of the subject under review. All reviews for this journal should be accurate scientifically, should describe the most relevant and recent contributions, the subject matter should be discussed competently and the choice of citations should be adequate and should not overlook important contributions of other workers.

General Expectations
While preparing the reports, we ask our Referees to:

• comment on the originality of the presented work,
• comment on whether the manuscript presents the most recent literature on the topic discussed,
• evaluate the authors’ experimental or theoretical approach to the discussed problem(s),
• evaluate the reliability of the results and validity of the conclusions,
• comment on technical aspects of the paper, such as the statistical analyses,
• inform us whether we should consider the manuscript further and what should be done in order to make it publishable (if that is possible),
• describe the significance that the work has for the scientific community,
• please, DO NOT put your name, affiliation or address in the review

Please note that accepted papers will undergo language editing by native English speakers. Incorrect grammar, style or punctuation should not constitute sufficient reason to reject a paper if it is still intelligible for the reviewer and its content warrants publication from a scientific point of view.

Peer review guidelines
For this journal that uses  peer review, the identities of both reviewers and authors are concealed from each other throughout the review. To facilitate this, authors must ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in such a way that they do not reveal their identities to reviewers, either directly or indirectly.

Please therefore ensure that the following items are present in your submission and are provided as separate files:

Title Page
The title page will remain separate from the manuscript throughout the peer review process and will not be sent to the reviewers. It should include:

• The manuscript title
• All authors’ names and affiliations
• A complete address for the corresponding author, including an e-mail address
• Acknowledgements
• Conflict of interest statement

Anonymised manuscript
Please remove any identifying information, such as authors’ names or affiliations, from your manuscript before submission.

As well as removing names and affiliations under the title within the manuscript, other steps need to be taken to ensure the manuscript is correctly prepared for double-blind peer review. The key points to consider are:

• Use the third person to refer to work the authors have previously published. For example, write ‘Jha and Subedi (2015) have demonstrated’ rather than ‘we/the authors have previously demonstrated.
• Make sure that figures and tables do not contain any reference to author affiliations
• Exclude acknowledgements and any references to funding sources.
• Use the title page, which is not sent to reviewers, to detail these and to declare any potential conflicts of interest to the Editor.

Conducting the Review
The JANR is peer review journal. Peer review is the collaborative process that allows manuscripts submitted to a journal to be evaluated and commented upon by independent experts within the same field of research. Upon receipt, manuscripts are assessed for their suitability for publication by the editorial staff. Only the manuscripts meeting the journal’s general criteria for consideration are sent out for review. Reviewing needs to be conducted confidentially, the articles should not be disclosed to a third party.

Peer-review publication policies
All contributions submitted to this journal that are selected for peer review are sent to at least one, but usually two or more, independent reviewers, selected by the editors. Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent reviewers and may also request that the journal excludes one or two individuals or laboratories. The journal sympathetically considers such requests and usually honours them, but the editor’s decision on the choice of referees is final.

Editors, authors and reviewers are required to keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. Unless otherwise declared as a part of open peer review, the peer review process is confidential and conducted anonymously; identities of reviewers are not released. Reviewers must maintain confidentiality of manuscripts. If a reviewer wishes to seek advice from colleagues while assessing a manuscript, the reviewer must consult with the editor and should ensure that confidentiality is maintained and that the names of any such colleagues are provided to the journal with the final report. Regardless of whether a submitted manuscript is eventually published, correspondence with the journal, referees’ reports and other confidential material must not be published, disclosed or otherwise publicized without prior written consent. Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity.

The publisher reserves the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies, journals and the authors’ institutions in cases of suspected research or publishing misconduct.

Reviewers should check the following parameters;

• Articles are of outstanding scientific importance
• Adherence to the instruction to authors
• Complete organization of articles
• Appropriateness of title and abstract
• Appropriateness and adequacy of methodology
• Appropriateness of figures and tables
• Relevance of discussion
• Soundness of conclusions and interpretation
• Appropriateness of referencing. References list should be in APA style. In text citation, for any source with more than two authors, type out the first author's last name followed by "et al." Follow this format for the first and subsequent citations of the source. Example for a source (Research plays a vital role in development planning) with three authors, Rasmussen, Hopkins, and Fitzpatrick (2004). Cite this text as Research plays a vital role in development planning (Rasmussen et al., 2004).

Structure
Is the article clearly laid out? Are all the key elements (where relevant) present: abstract, introduction, methodology, results, conclusions? Consider each element in turn:

• Title: Does it clearly describe the article?
• Abstract: Does it reflect the content of the article?
• Introduction: Does it describe what the author hoped to achieve accurately, and clearly state the problem being investigated? Normally, the introduction should summarize relevant research to provide context, and explain what other authors’ findings, if any, are being challenged or extended. It should describe the experiment, the hypothesis(es) and the general experimental design or method.
• Method: Does the author accurately explain how the data was collected? Is the design suitable for answering the question posed? Is there sufficient information present for you to replicate the research? Does the article identify the procedures followed? Are these ordered in a meaningful way? If the methods are new, are they explained in detail? Was the sampling appropriate? Have the equipment and materials been adequately described? Does the article make it clear what type of data was recorded; has the author been precise in describing measurements?
• Results: This is where the author/s should explain in words what he/she discovered in the research. It should be clearly laid out and in a logical sequence. You will need to consider if the appropriate analysis has been conducted. Are the statistics correct? If you are not comfortable with statistics, please advise the editor when you submit your report. Interpretation of results should not be included in this section.
• Conclusion/Discussion: Are the claims in this section supported by the results, do they seem reasonable? Have the authors indicated how the results relate to expectations and to earlier research? Does the article support or contradict previous theories? Does the conclusion explain how the research has moved the body of scientific knowledge forward?
• Language: If an article is poorly written due to grammatical errors, while it may make it more difficult to understand the science, you do not need to correct the English. You should bring this to the attention of the editor, however.

Finally, on balance, when considering the whole article, do the figures and tables inform the reader, are they an important part of the story? Do the figures describe the data accurately? Are they consistent, e.g. bars in charts are the same width, the scales on the axis are logical.

Previous Research
If the article builds upon previous research does it reference that work appropriately? Are there any important works that have been omitted? Are the references accurate?

Ethical Issues

• Plagiarism: If you suspect that an article is a substantial copy of another work, please let the editor know, citing the previous work in as much detail as possible
• Fraud: It is very difficult to detect the determined fraudster, but if you suspect the results in an article to be untrue, discuss it with the editor. Whether it contains ideas and language without properly crediting the sources?
• Other ethical concerns:Do you have any financial conflict with the authors of the manuscript? Are the author accept the conditions to keep the used data at least for 3 years safe after the publication of the data?

The reviewers should reject the manuscripts if they observed below faults;

Mismatch with the journal

• The manuscript does not make a contribution to new knowledge in the discipline or the application of knowledge
• Manuscripts that lie outside the stated aims and scope of the journal
• Topics that are not of interest to the journal’s readership
• Manuscripts that do not follow the format specified by the journal

Flaws in study design

• Poorly formulated research question
• Choice of a weak or unreliable method
• Choice of an incorrect method or model
• Inappropriate statistical analysis
• Unreliable or incomplete data
• Inappropriate or sub optimal instrumentation
• Small or inappropriately chosen sample

Poor writing and organization

• Introduction that does not establish the background of the problem studied
• Inadequate description of methods
• Discussion that only repeats the results but does not interpret them
•  Insufficient explanation of the rationale for the study
•  Insufficient literature review
• Conclusions that do not appear to be supported by the study data

Inadequate preparation of the manuscript

•  Failure to follow the journal’s Instructions for Authors
• Sentences that are not clear and concise
• Title, abstract are not persuasive
• Wordiness and excessive use of jargon
• Poor grammar or spelling mistakes
• Poorly designed tables or figures

After reviewing the manuscripts carefully the reviewers should make their recommendations as below;

1. Rejected due to poor quality, or out of scope
2. Accept without revision
3. Accept but needs revision (either major, moderate or minor)

In the latter case, clearly identify what revision is required, and indicate to the editor whether or not you would be happy to review the revised articles.

During the manuscripts evaluation process, the reviewers should follow and fulfill the “Review Form” and it should be sent to editorial office along with  revised manuscripts.

IF YOU CANNOT JUDGE ALL PARTS, PLEASE, INDICATE WHICH CHAPTERS SHOULD BE REFEREED BY ANOTHER REVIEWER

Recognition for Reviewers
Reviewers are key to the success of journal and its wider community. This is why the publisher seeks to recognize the efforts of reviewers. The ways reviewers currently receive recognition can include:

• Being included in a journal’s reviewers list in each issue of the journal. This is the most common form of recognition.
• Getting a letter or certificate of contribution from the journal editors and publisher

The publisher has created a certificate of recognition to serve as a formal acknowledgment of a reviewer’s role in the peer-review process of a journal. Reviewers can request the certificate from publisher contact. A reviewer confirmation letter is also available upon request.

Reviewer Acknowledgements

The editorial board of Journal would like to acknowledge those reviewers who have dedicated their time and expertise for reviewing the manuscripts. Editor-in-Chief, editors and reviewer board members of this journal  can publish their own articles but their papers must be evaluated by at least two external reviewers and editors who are not the member of editorial or reviewer board of this Journal. The editorial board of JANR highly acknowledge to these external reviewers and editors (outside board members) for their contributions and reviewing/editing certificates and Publons acknowledgements are provided to them.

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 1(1), 2018

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 2 (1), 2019 and Volume 3(1), 2020

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 3 (2), 2020

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 4 (1), 2021

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 4(2), 2021

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 5(1), 2022

⇓ Reviewers for Volume 6(1), 20223

Journal History

Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources has been started its publication since 2018. This journal has published two issues in  2020 and 2021. The journal frequency has been changed from bi-annual to annual since 2022.