Focus and Scope

Trends in Horticulture (TH) is an international peer-reviewed, open access journal that focuses on publishing comprehensive and up-to-date information in the field of horticulture.

The journal publishes papers on different topics related to horticultural sciences and technologies including vegetable crops, fruit crops, ornamentals, medicinal crops, edible fungus, urban horticulture, industries of horticultural crops, crop research in protected facilities or controlled environments, and plant research cultivated finely related to horticultural technology. The subject covers interdisciplinary research ranging from microbiology to horticultural crops, from gene screening to plant hybridization, from molecular biology to plant physiology and ecology, and from traditional planting to intelligent control.

The Journal welcomes the original empirical and theoretical research articles, from the basic to the applied, and accepts high quality submissions presented as Original Research Articles, Review Articles, Brief Commentaries, Case Reports, and Letters to the Editor, in all areas of horticultural research. Through a meticulous process of peer review, TH strives to publish articles of the highest value for agricultural and horticultural professionals.

TH covers the general research and new technology of the vegetable, fruit, floricultural, nursery, insect, herbal, spice crops and landscape, including but are not limited to:

1. Horticulture production with traditional or modern technology
2. Intelligent horticulture engineering and system
3. Technology of the protected horticulture and urban horticulture
4. Greenhouse and plant factories with artificial light
5. Genetics and breeding
6. Acquisition and protection of germplasm resources
7. Tea science
8. Horticultural postharvest, storage & processing
9. Nutrition & health of horticultural plants
10. Soil research, chemical elements & microbe
11. Horticultural product transportation system and engineering
12. Integrated control of plant diseases and pests
13. Research on medical plants
14. Reuse of horticultural waste
15. Landscape planning & engineering

Article types

Article

Articles should contain completely new principal research testifying major contributions to the field. The study should represent new findings or discoveries in a subject area that were not published before. The report may contain significant findings, methodology importance and considerable evidence to the conclusions.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review

Review is summarized descriptions of recent findings and significant developments at a particular subject area of research considering the Journal’s scope. They should include critical assessments of novel technologies, evaluation of subject advancement, elucidate unresolved questions, comparative analysis with a substantial coverage of previous works and highlight future prospects. Although there are no restrictions with the length and content of a review, authors should consider drawing readers’ attention and interest with quality information.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Report

Case report summarizes the execution of a collaborative research program that is directly related to the advancement of horticulture research.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Editorial

Editorial reflects the opinion of an Editorial Board member or staff of Trends in Horiticulture highlighting recent changes, concerned issues or announcements in relevance to the Journal. This may include editorial management and policies.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Commentary

Commentary contains unsolicited commentaries or analysis from the reader(s) targeting specific published articles in the Journal.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Communication

Short articles describing significant findings, cutting-edge methods or experiments, and new technologies.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Perspective

Perspective contains the author's personal opinions on a subject/topic. Perspective articles may cover a more specific, narrow part of the field. However, these are still required to uphold the spirit of academia to be objective as well as aim to initiate or further discuss novel experimental procedures in the field.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Corrigendum

Corrigendum is a notice that will be issued when it is necessary to correct an error or omission which can impact the interpretation of the article, but where the scholarly integrity of the article remains intact. For example, mislabeling of a table, missing key information on funding or competing interests of the authors.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts are subjected to a stringent double-blind peer review process. This is to uphold the high quality of papers published in the journals and ensure that the reporting of research work is truthful and precise.

1. A submitted manuscript is firstly handled by the managing editor, who will check the manuscript for plagiarism, at which stage the manuscript may be rejected if plagiarism is detected in the manuscript.
2. After the plagiarism check is completed and the result is deemed satisfactory, the managing editor will pass the manuscript to an academic editor. An academic editor will pre-check the article for the sustainability of the follow-up process, e.g., scientific innovation, consistency with the journal’s field, and completeness of the article. Usually, an academic editor refers to the Editor-in-Chief in the case of a regular submission or a Guest Editor in the case of a special issue submission. An academic editor is not allowed to participate in any review process of submissions that may involve a conflict of interest, and the editorial office will appoint an Editorial Board member with no conflict of interest as a substitute. A submission that passes the pre-check stage will be forwarded to the associate editor for the assignment of peer reviewers.
3. A minimum of 2 reviewers without potential conflicts of interest will be selected according to their expertise and suitability on the subject matter of the manuscript. Reviewers should return their comments and recommendations (Accept, Revisions Required, Resubmit for Review, or Reject) to the associate editor.
4. Upon recommendations by the reviewers along with the associate editor, the Editor-in-Chief will make a final decision on the paper and the managing editor will inform the authors of the decision, adding comments for the authors for improvements of their research or paper.

• If the decision is to Accept Submission (no amendments required by authors), the manuscript will be sent to the production stage.
• If the Editor-in-Chief suggests Revisions Required (minor revisions), authors are given a maximum of 2 weeks to revise and resubmit the article.
• If the Editor-in-Chief suggests Resubmit for Review (major revisions), authors are given a maximum of 4 weeks to revise and resubmit the article for the second round of review.
• If the decision is to Reject Submission, the authors will be notified, and the rejected manuscript will be archived and the peer review process ends.

1. An accepted paper will be sent for copy editing, layout editing, and proofreading before publication. Correspondence between the authors and editors will be required at this stage in order to improve the language and/or look of the manuscript. After the production stage is completed, authors are required to check the PDF file of the final version before the article is published. EnPress Publisher will register a DOI for the article after publication, and the article is immediately accessible to the public.
2. Authors may appeal for a rejected submission. Appeal requests must be made by writing an email to the editorial office of the journal with detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ remarks. Decisions on appeals are final and no further consideration will be made.

Note: Authors can recommend reviewers (relevant information should be given, e.g., name, personal link, email address, etc.). The editorial office decides whether to invite the recommended reviewers. Authors also have the right to provide an avoidance list.

Open Access Policy

Committed to open research, EnPress Publisher offer scholars open access (OA) to journals. It makes research freely available to the public and supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

• Higher visibility, availability, and citations – Free and unlimited accessibility of publications over the internet without any restrictions, which increases the citation of articles
• Ease of search – Publications are easily searchable in search engines and indexing databases
• Rapid publication – Accepted papers are immediately published online

Editorial Policies

Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the Journal’s policy.

All manuscripts submitted to Trends in Horticulture are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to the peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the Journal.

Any manuscripts submitted to Trends in Horticulture will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

A manuscript would not be considered if it has been published or is currently under consideration for publication in any other journals. In the cover letter, authors must state that neither the manuscript nor any significant part of it is under consideration for publication elsewhere or has appeared elsewhere in a manner that could be construed as a prior or duplication of the same work. The authors are required to notify the editorial team if the findings and data in their submissions have been presented in conferences.

Authorship

The authorship of a scholarly paper should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to its intellectual content. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors should hold the responsibility of fairly evaluating their respective roles and their co-authors’ roles in the project. This is to ensure that authorship is attributed according to a fixed standard in all publications for which they will be listed as authors. First authors are required to indicate to the Editorial Board the specific contributions of co-authors at the manuscript submission stage.

In order to be listed as an author for a paper, one should have contributed sufficiently to the project. A co-author is expected to have contributed to some component of the work that led to the paper or be involved in the interpretation of its results. All authors should have a say in the final approval of the version to be published, in addition to reviewing the final manuscript prior to submission.

Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, but have provided a valuable contribution to the work, may be acknowledged for their contribution as appropriate to the publication.

Changes to Authorship

Authors should carefully check the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. The editorial office considers the authorship list to be definitive by the time the original submission is received.

Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in the authorship list and proof of written confirmation to the editorial office from all authors (including existing authors and author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change.

A request for authorship changes needs to be approved by the editorial office before any changes can be made.

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Trends in Horticulture is semi-annual.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest may exist when professional judgments concerning a primary interest have the possibility of being influenced by a secondary interest (e.g., financial gains). It is to be noted that even perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.

Any agreements with study sponsors (for-profit or non-profit), such as those that interfere with the authors’ access to the study data or with the authors’ ability to analyze or interpret the data and publish the manuscript independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

A declaration of interest for all authors should be received before an article can be reviewed and accepted for publication.

For authors:

While submitting an article, authors must list all competing interests relevant to this work, including but not limited to:

• Funding sources
• The role of sponsors in the work design, data collection, and results of the analysis.
• Whether any of the authors serves on the Editorial Board of the journal that they are submitting their article to.

For editors and reviewers:

Editors and reviewers must declare any possible conflict of interests in connection with the manuscript and, if necessary, they must withdraw from the peer review process. If authors submit an article to a journal of which they serve as Editorial Board members, the editorial office will insist that the authors are recused from the peer review process.

Common reasons for editors and reviewers to be replaced include but are not limited to:

• The editor or reviewer works at the same organization as the authors.
• The editor or reviewer is one of the authors of the work.
• The editor or reviewer is on the avoidance list from the authors.
• The editor or reviewer has a financial or personal relationship with the authors.

Misconduct Policy

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts submitted to EnPress Publisher should:

1) not have been published before

2) not concurrently be submitted elsewhere

If a part of a manuscript has been published or will be published elsewhere, authors must inform the editors in a cover letter. If a duplicate submission is detected during peer review, the manuscript may be rejected. If it is detected after publication, the manuscript may be retracted.

Plagiarism

Authors are advised to observe high standards in the aspect of publication ethics. Plagiarism is a strictly unacceptable practice in journals published by EnPress Publisher, including duplicate publication of the author’s work without proper citation.

Every manuscript submitted for publication is checked for plagiarism via Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) after submission and before being sent to the editor for editorial review. Any detection of overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may lead to the manuscript being rejected.

Fabrication and Falsification

Fabrication involves making up data and results without any research work in fact. Falsification involves manipulating the data or analysis to match the desired results. Fabrication and falsification are both misconducts, and they can result in an unscientific record that does not reflect scientific truth. Fabrication and falsification are serious academic fraudulent behaviors, and they may have a negative impact on the authors’ affiliate, funding sponsor, and employers. EnPress Publisher will not hesitate to reject manuscripts with suspicion of academic fraud.

Language

The language used in manuscripts submitted to Trends in Horticulture is English. Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.

Publishing Ethics

EnPress Publisher requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

EnPress Publisher strictly adheres to the COPE’s Ethical guidelines and monitors the entire publication process in accordance with the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). The publisher treats all personal information of authors as private and promises to not disclose the information to third parties except as required by law or for necessary purposes of the publishing process. EnPress Publisher promises to oversee the procedures and behavior of authors, editors, and reviewers and to ensure that all participants are without any conflicts of interest for a publication process that is fair and objective. Authors of research works involving humans must provide the ethical approval code or identifiers from the academic ethics committee, and authors should obtain the written Informed Consent Statement from the subjects about the publication’s purpose and the consequential impact. If the subjects are vulnerable, informed consent should be obtained from their guardian. For more details on EnPress Publisher’s policies regarding research works involving humans and animals, please refer to “Research involving humans” and “Research involving animals”.

The publisher’s journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The editors, authors, or readers can forward their concerns to the publisher if a research work may involve academic fraud, research misconduct, or publication malpractice. Concerns or complaints submitted to the publisher on possible allegations will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the publisher at editorial@enpress-publisher.com.

EnPress Publisher adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. Violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time, and breached intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed of the decision. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the panel’s decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the publisher via email to editorial@enpress-publisher.com within 30 days of the decision date.

Ethical Oversight

EnPress Publisher strictly abides by the COPE's Ethical guidelines. All the editorial process is run with the monitor of Editor-in-Chief. Any manuscript that may involve unethical possibility including but not limited to fraud, plagiarism, and multi-contribution, will not be push forward to the next stage of editorial process. The strict editorial process ensures the fairest and most objective review decision. 

For any subject involved populations or animals, the authors must compliance with international research guidelines in the field of their discipline, you will be asked to provide the granting committee or approval identifiers including but not limited to reference numbers. EiC and reviewers are experts in the disciplilne, and they will make an objective and fair decision on the moral norms and academic value of the submissions. If necessary, the Editorial Office will contact the granting committee for the authenticity. Please explain the reasons for missing identifiers if without any ethics approval information.

Submissions involved populations need to submit the Informed Content Statement during the submitting section, e.g. “Informed Consent has been obtained from all the subjects in this research”. For vulnerable populations, it is necessary to obtain the written Informed Content Statement from their parent, guardian, or kin relatives. The humankind subjects have the right of privacy, and the manuscript should hide the identifying information about personal identify. EnPress Publisher will supervise and ensure that the submitted information is not leaked to the third parties, and all the information is only for normal publishing needs other than business marketing practice.

Erratum & Withdrawal Policy

Erratum

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to authors at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by authors and corrected by the publisher before the final publication. For any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, et al., please contact the journal editor.

It should be noted that errors made by editors are called erratum, and errors made by authors are called corrigendum. However, erratum and corrigendum have no influence on the research logic and the correctness of the results.

EnPress Publisher will only issue an erratum or corrigendum for a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

Withdrawal

If authors change their mind and decide not to pursue publication of their paper with the journal, they must write a letter addressed to the journal editors, explaining the reason(s) of the submission withdrawal. Consent of all co-authors must be obtained for author-initiated submission withdrawal. The decision to withdraw a submission will eventually rest with the journal editors, including the Editor-in-Chief.

It is relatively more difficult to withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer review or is undergoing peer review compared with withdrawing a new submission because the editors and reviewers have expended much time and energy in the editorial process and manuscript evaluation, respectively. To withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer review, authors should clearly argue their case on scientific reasons; only valid and sound reasons will be accepted. Authors will also be required to pay a penalty fee (USD200). Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant errors or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. Once the approval for submission withdrawal is granted, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once authors receive the confirmation of withdrawal from the journal’s editorial office.

Submission withdrawal is also possible for accepted papers that have not been formally published, including newly accepted papers and articles in press.

The withdrawal of an accepted paper and article in press is usually editor-initiated. The reasons for withdrawing an accepted paper and article in press are similar to those of retracting a published article (see “Retraction”), and at this stage the article will not be arranged for article production or finalization. A panel will be organized to investigate misconduct allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the accepted paper or article in press will be marked for withdrawal, and any appeals regarding the panel’s decision will have to be made to the publisher within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors.

Retraction

Readers can contact the editorial office to report allegations of possible academic misconduct, i.e., ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. Misconducts and violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time, and breached intellectual property rights. Once the suspected misconduct and ethical violation is brought to the attention of the publisher, the journal editors will organize an investigation and authors are required to cooperate in the investigation. A panel will be organized to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the published article will be marked for retraction both in HTML and PDF, and a notification email regarding the panel’s decision will be sent to all authors of the work. Any appeals regarding the panel’s decision will have to be made to the publisher within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, a confirmation email of article retraction will be sent to the authors.

Authors should note that the paid Article Processing Charges will not be refunded if their article is retracted or withdrawn on the grounds of academic misconduct and ethical violation in research and publication.

Disclaimer

• For authors: Once authors submit a manuscript, this means that authors are aware of all publishing policies & ethics and will strictly abide by them.
• For reviewers: Once the request to become a reviewer is accepted, this means that the reviewer must be aware of EnPress Publisher’s peer review policies and that the reviewer will proactively disclose all potential conflicts of interest and guarantee that the article will be judged fairly and objectively. 
• For publisher: The journals of EnPress Publisher are not liable to statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journals shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. The journals of EnPress Publisher and the publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

Copyright and License

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

All articles published by Trends in Horticulture are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during the submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) by default. The authors who would like to publish their work under a non-commercial license, i.e.  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), they should express explicit request during the submission stage. Please include statement below in the Comments for the Editor column on the submission page:

The contributors or authors for this submission entitled “[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]”, i.e. [NAMES of ALL AUTHORS], have given their consents to alter the Creative Commons license to *CC BY-NC 4.0* under which this submission will be published in Trends in Horticulture.

Advertising Policy

All advertisements are subject to approval by EnPress Publisher. Advertisements must comply with relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. Advertisements must not influence the content of each journal and the making of editorial decisions. For more inquiries, please send an email to editorial@enpress-publisher.com.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

EnPress Publisher publishes all its journals in “gold” open access format. The scientific community and the general public are free of all restrictions on access (e.g., subscription) and free of many restrictions on using the content as soon as articles are published online. EnPress Publisher does not require readers to purchase any form of subscription to view the online version of the journals. In order for EnPress Publisher to defray editorial and production costs, authors of accepted articles are required to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs). The charges will come from authors' institutes or research funding bodies.

Waiver Policy

EnPress Publisher is committed to promoting academic development in the world without any financial barrier to knowledge sharing and learning. A waiver/discount policy has been developed especially for authors from low-income countries. Authors who are interested in applying for a waiver or discount may contact the editorial office of the journal. EnPress Publisher reserves the right to approve or reject any waiver application. APC waivers do not influence editorial decisions.

Research Involving Human

If human subjects were used in the experiment, authors should identify during the submitting process the committee or organization (e.g., author’s Institutional Ethics Review Board) that approved the experiment as well as detailed ethical approval information, such as approval identifiers, i.e., reference numbers. EnPress Publisher’s journals require that authors provide proof of research ethics or ethics statement along with the submission. In the case that ethical approval identifiers are not available, written approval from the granting committee or organization must be provided as a confidential supplemental file.

The manuscript should confirm that the experiment was carried out in adherence to the ethical principles set out in the WMA Declaration of Helsinki and that informed consent was obtained from all human subjects.

For an investigation undertaken on human subjects, the manner in which written informed consent was obtained from the study participants should be stated clearly as well.

Authors should inform study participants of the purpose(s) of the publication, the possible risks and benefits as a result of the experiment, and the patient's right to withhold or withdraw consent. Consent should be obtained from parent(s) or legal guardian(s) if the study participant is a minor.

Authors are obliged to declare and clearly specify any restrictions on the availability or the use of human data in the manuscript.

Research Involving Horticulture

EnPress Publisher recommends that authors comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The experimental research on horticulture including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and the origin of the research materials should be provided.

The relevance of ethics in the context of horticulture (the growth, management, and use of plants such as fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, culinary spices, and medicinal plants) is explored across a number of subjects including employment, supply chain management, plant breeding and the release of improved cultivars, genetically modified organisms, invasive species, pesticide use, product claims, and the responsibilities of scientists. Two ethical guidelines must be observed, the principles of "harmless" and "beneficial", except for the specific needs of research content.

Research Involving Animal

The procedures of research involving animals, including insects and husbandry, must be carried out in accordance with national and institutional regulations. For further guidance on experiments involving animals, authors can refer to the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures, Three Rs, Core Principles for the Care and Use of Animals in Research, and EU regulations on animal research. If ethical approval is not required by national laws, authors should provide an exemption from the ethics committee if one is available.

EnPress Publisher endorses ARRIVE guidelines for reporting experiments using live animals. Authors and reviewers can use the ARRIVE Essential 10: Compliance Questionnaire as a checklist. Editors reserve the right to reject submissions based on ethics guidelines or animal welfare concerns.

Patient Anonymity and Privacy

Patient Anonymity

Human subjects have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information or patient identifiers, including patient names, initials, date of birth, contacts, medical record numbers, hospital numbers, and geographical location, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Efforts must be made by authors to at least mask or conceal any identifying information of the patients that appear in writing or in photographs.

Authors are obliged to explain to the patient if revealing the patient’s identity cannot be fully avoided, e.g., an image of an identifiable body part, such as the face, has to be published in the report. The relevant identifying information to be published, e.g., the image, must be shown to the patient, and consent for publication must be obtained for the use of that information in the publication. If the patient has died, then consent should be obtained from the next of kin or a legal representative. Submissions that include identifying patient information without appropriate patient consent will not be considered for publication.

Please refer to ICMJE Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines for more information about patient anonymity and privacy.

Information Privacy

EnPress Publisher respects and strives to protect the privacy of its users and visitors. Hence, users and visitors are encouraged to read EnPress Publisher’s privacy policy regarding the usage and handling of user information.

(1) User information

Names and email addresses entered in all EnPress Publisher’s journal sites will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of the journals and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. For submission and peer review, users should register an account for further procedures, including but not limited to name, email, address, interests, affiliation, and postcode, as editors need the information to complete in-house processes (e.g., processing a manuscript).

When users visit the publisher's website, information about the visit is saved in web logs (e.g., device, IP address, time of visit, etc.), which are only used to help improve the structure and content of the website.

(2) User rights

Users have the right to register or update their personal information and contact the publisher to cancel/delete their account if required.

(3) Third-party link

EnPress Publisher is not responsible for private information obtained by third-party websites when users log in via a pop-up screen from third-party software installed on their computer.

When users visit third-party platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, COPE, etc.) through hyperlinks from EnPress Publisher’s journal websites, the privacy policy follows the policies of the third-party platforms.

(4) Queries or contact

For any queries about EnPress Publisher’s privacy policy, please contact the editorial office at editorial@enpress-publisher.com.

Preprint Policy

Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts on community preprint servers, such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PeerJ Preprint, before or in parallel with the formal submission to EnPress Publisher’s journals. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

Nonetheless, authors are not allowed to post on a preprint server any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication, or published in the journal. A manuscript of which its corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g., in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

This policy applies to original research papers only. EnPress Publisher reserves the right not to consider for publication or publish material that has been formally published in digital media that are not construed as preprint servers.

EnPress Publisher encourages a formal citation of preprints in the reference list, where appropriate.

Section Collection Policy

EnPress Publisher has driven a Section Collection program, which aims to collect multidisciplinary topics, and concentrate authors from diverse research fields for a special theme. It is a good way to collect new ideas and applications. Section editorial team comes from worldwide scientists covering various interests. They all oversight the implementation of the program, and the editorial process must comply with editorial policies of the journal.

A Section Collection is usually launched by an expert with great trust among peers, he/she is usually invited by the Editorial Office. Section Editors are representatives to focus on a theme from multidisciplinary topics. They gather to initiate new ideas and collaborations with different research background. The responsibilities of Section Editors include:

• Preparing the summary of the theme, such as: title, introduction, keywords, submission deadline, etc.
• Recommending a list of the potential contributors.
• Invitation to contribute to the theme section.

Workflow of Section Collection

The peer review process of submissions to a Special Collection strictly follows the journal's peer review process.

Indexing and Archiving

Trends in Horticulture is indexed, cataloged and/or included by several world-class abstracting/indexing databases:

ROAD

CNKI Scholar

ResearchGate

Crossref

Google Scholar

Scilit

• All the articles published online will be archived by Portico for long-term digital preservation.

• Authors are encouraged to self-archive the final version of their published articles into institutional repositories (such as those listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories).

• Authors are also encouraged to use the final PDF version of article based on the website of Trends in Horticulture in future.

Data and Reproducibility

EnPress Publisher complies with the Data and reproducibility of COPE, encourages the use of discipline’s standard practice and guidelines. For clinical trials, they should register in corresponding approval institute or repository. EnPress encourages authors to reposit the raw dataset in community repository if the dataset is not available as the supplementary material. Authors having reported a data repository, are encouraged to add a statement of data availability in their manuscript, which may involve the availability of the research data and potential limitations, such as human privacy or biosecurity. All the data is crucial for the replicability, transparency, and credibility of scientific findings.

Data sharing

Authors are encouraged to follow the FAIR Data Principles, which guides that all the (meta)data should be assigned a unique persistent identifier. Journal office has the right to ensure and review the credibility of the dataset, and the possibility of collaborative investigations with institutions exists to ensure the scientific credibility of this scientific research practice. EnPress Publisher strict adheres to the unpublished and published data guidelines of COPE, and the corresponding author must response each inquiry. If there is major issue on dataset, a manuscript may be rejected.

Data citation

Dataset should be cited in the manuscript/article to give creators’ credit. The original source should be listed in the reference section, such as the author(s), publishing year, repository/archive name, dataset’s DOI.

Data repository

Authors are encouraged to share your dataset in the discipline repository, and authors could find an appropriate subject dataset repository with a registered DOI from FAIRsharing.org and re3data.org.

Authors also could deposit the datasets in a general dataset repository, such as those provided by a university, sponsor of institution. Below are some examples of generalized dataset repositories:

• Open Science Framework
• Dryad Digital Repository
• Figshare
• Harvard Dataverse
• Zenodo
• Science Data Bank

AIGC Policy

This publisher imposes restrictions on the use of AI content-generation tools, and we follow COPE's case guidance for AI tools to comprehensively address article cases involving AIGC.

Authors are permitted to use AIGC for obtaining initial research background material, recommendations for chart types, inserting literature, generating automatic sorting and formatting, and creating other non-human creative content. However, it is not permitted to draw diagrams instead of the author. Authors must thoroughly review all textual content to ensure it is accurate, scientific, and reliable. Authors are solely responsible for the content of their articles.

Reviewers involved in the review process can use AIGC tools for checking and research comparison, but they must take responsibility for the review opinions provided. They are not allowed to directly use the content evaluation analysis generated by AIGC. This policy is in place to encourage reviewers to play an active role in the progress of scientific research.

Authors and editors may use AIGC for embellishment, but they must ensure the coherence of language and the accuracy of statement expression. However, the excessive use of AIGC tools for language embellishment in writing the entire text is discouraged.

According to the journal policy, authorship must be attributed to individuals who have made significant contributions to the design, implementation, analysis, and writing of the article, rather than to the AIGC tool or any ghost identity. Any content using an AIGC tool should be openly and transparently acknowledged in the Materials and Methods, Acknowledgements. This should include the reason for using the AIGC tool, the name and version number of the tool, and the generated textual content.

It is also mandatory that the AIGC tool used is stable and publicly accessible.

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