Skip to main content

About

Aims and scope

Aims

Molecular Horticulture aims to publish research and review articles that significantly advance our knowledge in understanding how the horticultural crops or their parts operate mechanistically. Articles should have profound impacts not only in terms of high citation number or the like, but more importantly on the direction of the horticultural research field.

Scope

Molecular Horticulture publishes original Research Articles, Letters, and Reviews on novel discoveries on the following, but not limited to, aspects of horticultural plants (including medicinal plants):

Developmental and evolutionary biology
Physiology, biochemistry and cell biology
Plant-microbe and plant-environment interactions
Genetics and epigenetics
Molecular breeding and biotechnology
Secondary metabolism and synthetic biology
Multi-omics dealing with data sets of genome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, epigenome and/or microbiome.

The journal also welcomes research articles using model plants that reveal mechanisms and/or principles readily applicable to horticultural plants, translational research articles involving application of basic knowledge (including those of model plants) to the horticultural crops, novel Methods and Resources of broad interest.

In addition, the journal publishes Editorial, News and View, and Commentary and Perspective on current, significant events and topics in global horticultural fields with international interests.

Open access

All articles published by Molecular Horticulture are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Molecular Horticulture you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

The publication costs for Molecular Horticulture are covered by School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Indexing Services

Molecular Horticulture is indexed in:

Baidu; CLOCKSS; CNKI; CNPIEC; Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS); Dimensions; DOAJ; EBSCO Discovery Service; Emerging Sources Citation Index; Google Scholar; IFIS Publishing; Naver; OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service; Portico; ProQuest-ExLibris Primo; ProQuest-ExLibris Summon; TD Net Discovery Service; Wanfang.

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BMC on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including PubMed Central and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Molecular Horticulture will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Molecular Horticulture operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Single-blind peer review is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Citing articles in Molecular Horticulture

Articles in Molecular Horticulture should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors. Title. Mol Horticulture [year];[volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL. Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Mol Horticulture 2009;1:115.

1:115 refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Molecular Horticulture should adhere to BMC's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Molecular Horticulture's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Molecular Horticulture offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Molecular Horticulture gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Molecular Horticulture are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Molecular Horticulture’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Molecular Horticulture may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Molecular Horticulture. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Molecular Horticulture you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.

Annual Journal Metrics

2023 Speed
4 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
74 days submission to accept (Median)

2023 Usage 
133,499 downloads
106 Altmetric mentions