Publication Criteria

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The criteria for publishing scientific articles in NAJFNR are summarized below.

Original Research

The NAJFNR is designed to publish original research, research methods, review, case reports, hypothesis formation, expert opinion, and commentaries. Submissions in the field of nutrition and food sciences (see Aims and Scope), are considered, as well as the related sciences that will contribute to the base of academic knowledge.

Repeated Publication

Previously Published Studies

The NAJFNR does not accept for publication studies that have already been published, in whole or in part, elsewhere in the peer-reviewed literature. All figures included in manuscripts should be original, and should not have been published in any previous publications.

In addition, we will not consider submissions that are currently under consideration for publication elsewhere (see Publication ethics).

The NAJFNR supports authors who wish to share their work early through deposition of manuscripts in preprint servers. This does not impact consideration of the manuscript. We will consider manuscripts that have been deposited in preprint servers such as bioRxiv or arXiv, published as a thesis, or presented at conferences.

Replication Studies

If a submitted study replicates or is very identical to previous published work, authors must provide a sound scientific rationale for the submitted work and clearly reference and discuss the existing literature. Submissions that replicate or are derivative of existing work will likely be rejected if authors do not provide appropriate justification.

Experiments, Statistics, and Analyses

Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls and replication. Sample sizes must be large enough to produce robust results, where applicable. Methods and reagents must be described in sufficient detail for other researchers to reproduce the experiments described.

Conclusions

The data presented in the manuscript must support the conclusions drawn in an appropriate way. Submissions will be rejected if the interpretation of results is unjustified or inappropriate. Therefore, authors should avoid overstating their conclusions. Authors may discuss possible implications for their results as long as these are clearly identified as hypotheses instead of conclusions.

Use of Standard English

Even though the NAJFNR copyedits accepted manuscripts during the proofreading stage, the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. We may reject papers that do not meet these standards.

If the language of a paper is difficult to understand or includes many errors, we may recommend that authors seek independent editorial help before submitting a revision. These services can be found on the web using search terms like scientific editing service or manuscript editing service.

Ethical Consideration of Experimentation & Research Integrity

Research published in the NAJFNR must have been conducted to the highest ethical standards (see Publication ethics). We reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these standards, which in some cases are more stringent than local ethical standards.

The NAJFNR adheres to the COPE Best Practice Guidelines. Authors are expected to comply with these best practices in publication ethics, specifically regarding authorship, dual publication, plagiarism, figure manipulation, and competing interests.