Description
Plant Science will publish in the minimum of time, research manuscripts as well as commissioned reviews, method papers (technical papers) and commentaries recommended by its referees in all areas of experimental plant biology with emphasis in the broad areas of genomics, proteomics, biochemistry (including enzymology), physiology, cell biology, development, genetics, functional plant breeding, systems biology and the interaction of plants with the environment. Although manuscripts containing large data are welcomed, they must contain functional validation. Manuscripts for full consideration should be written concisely and essentially as a final report. The main criterion for publication is that the manuscript must contain original and significant insights that lead to a better understanding of fundamental plant biology. Papers centering on plant cell culture should be of interest to a wide audience and methods employed result in a substantial improvement over existing established techniques and approaches. Methods papers are welcome only when the technique(s) described is novel or provides a major advancement of established protocols. Plant Science is not a publication vehicle for preliminary observations, for studies that are merely confirmatory of results accomplished in other plant systems, or that are addressed only to a specialized readership. Submitted manuscripts describing studies of preliminary nature, that are merely confirmatory in scope or of limited scope and interest to the general readership of the journal will be returned without formal review. As a general policy, the journal will no longer consider manuscripts just describing the cloning, sequencing and expression patterns of gene sequences that have been identified and characterized in other plant species, expression of a protein without proper characterization of the recombinant product and native form, the isolation, purification and characterization of enzymes extensively analyzed in other plants, description of molecular markers and plant genetic diversity without any relevant biological information, cell culture and/or transformation of plant species (or closely related species) already established in the literature and basic transcriptomic approaches with no further relevant functional characterization of genes of interest.
