Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

The scientific journal Food and Environment Safety is a quarterly publication (4 issues per year) of the Food Engineering Faculty, Ştefan cel Mare University - Suceava, Romania. The journal publishes original articles presenting latest research in food science and environmental protection, with an international audience and scope. Main topics of interest include raw materials in food industry, food processes and technologies, food microbiology, biotechnologies, chemical engineering, biosensors, control and quality assurance, biochemistry (food related), sustainability of the food sector, environment and consumer protection, marketing, agriculture and applied sciences etc. Articles published in Food and Environment Safety Journal should have an emphasis on one of food production, consumer and environment safety, diet and health improvement themes.

Full length articles as well as reviews are accepted and published in an Open Access style, in both print and electronic version. Generally, the time from submission to publication in case of article acceptance is 5-6 months.

Subscription information can be obtained from:

-e-mail: fiajournal@fia.usv.ro

- postal address: Faculty of Food Engineering, Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Universitatii str., No. 13, 720229, Suceava,Romania

 

Section Policies

Articles

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

FOOD SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT journal (ISSN 2068 - 6609) publishes the latest scientific researchers in the country and abroad.

The works presented are subject to an evaluation process. Editors and members of the scientific board are selected depending on their skills and their experience based on scientific work quality. English is preferred in writing articles as it is the universal language of science.

To ensure that the manuscript presents a high quality research, every manuscript submitted will be reviewed by reviewers.  Reviewing of the work of the works received is provided by the Scientific Committee. Each paper will be sent to two editors, experts in the field. Peer review process ensures that journal Food and Environment Safety publishes good science that confirms the validity of the science reported; revisions and improvement are important part of the publication process for improvement the quality of every manuscript.

Steps followed by the Editorial Board of the Food and Environment Safety journal, during the review process are as follows:

  • After receiving a manuscript, a confirmation email is sent to the corresponding author of the paper
  • If the manuscript complies with the scope of the Food and Environment Safety journal, the editorial board sends it to the minimum 2 reviewers / referees for blind peer review (the referees are selected according to their expertise in the field).
  • All manuscripts are evaluated according to the reviewers’ guidelines.
  • On the basis of their evaluation, the referees recommend the paper either for publication or they can suggest some necessary changes if it is needed or for rejection.
  • The reviewer’s comments will send to corresponding author. When authors revise their manuscript and responding to peer review comments, they need to: prepare a response letter indicating any additional experiments / analyses recommend by reviewers; indicate revisions in the text, either by activating track changes feature of the text processor or by highlighting with a different color text; return the revised manuscript within the time period the editor specified in e-mail.

The editorial board takes the final decision for publication or not of a manuscript. Usually, the review process is completed within 14 or 15 weeks.

Following the review process, each author receives from the editorial team, a response to the publication of scientific work, as follows:

1. Work is accepted

2. Work will be accepted with slight changes

3. Work is returned and resubmitted for review journal

4. Work rejected

A manuscript can be rejected if: 

  • The paper does not fit with the scope of this journal
  • The paper has no new information and it has no scientific impact in benefitting the readers and sufficient information to be sent out for review
  • The paper does not clearly explain which parts of the findings are new science
  • The paper does not provide enough details about materials and methods
  • The paper describes poor experimental design
  • The paper contains conclusions that are not fully supported by its data
  • The paper has a poor English language quality
  • Reviewers are advising against publication of your work

 

Open Access Policy

Food and Environment Safety Journal adheres to the BOAI definition of Open Access publishing, meaning that users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. All articles accepted are made freely available for readers, and the work of the authors is licensed under a Common Creative license.

 

General Policies

Ethics

Papers describing research involving human subjects, human material or human data, must state compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The statement must include the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out according to appropriate ethic guidelines.

Research involving animal and plant organisms

Research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must be in agreement with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and, where available, should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A set of internationally stated guidelines on animal research, while not exclusive, may be found in the Basel Declaration, but other conventions may be followed.

Reports on research using plants (either cultivated or wild), including collection of plant material, must adhere to institutional, national, or international guidelines. The manuscript should include a statement specifying appropriate permissions and/or licences. Information is required within the manuscript on voucher specimens deposited in a public herbarium or other public collection, providing access to deposited material.

Availability of data and materials

For ensuring a transparent research, Journal of Food and Environment Safety considers that the materials, results and raw data the manuscript is based on should be available to those interested. Therefore, we advise authors to deposit datasets in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or to present them in the main manuscript or as additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible.

Competing interests

The journal policy is to require authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work. Submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests’ section at the end of the manuscript describing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests” statement should be included. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.

A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by, or may be perceived to be influenced by, their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests.

Authorship

Food and Environment Safety Journal requires that the individual contributions of authors to be specified in the manuscript. An 'author' is considered to be a person who substantially contributed intelectually, such as conception, design, data acquisition, analysis, revising, approval, to a published study. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not usually justify authorship.

Authors wishing to make changes to authorship will be asked to complete our change of authorship form. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

Acknowledgments

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section. 

Originality and citations

Manuscripts submitted to Food and Environment Safety journal must be original and the manuscript must not be under consideration by any other journal. In case where there is the potential for overlap or duplication, authors should declare any potentially overlapping publications on submission. In general, the manuscript should not already have been formally published in any journal or in any other citable form.

Confidentiality

Editors will treat all manuscripts submitted with confidence. Reviewers are required to respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond the information released by the journal.

Misconduct

In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, the Editor may contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s).

All research involving humans (including human data and human material) and animals must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. If there is suspicion that research has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, the Editor may reject a manuscript and may inform third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s).

In cases of proven research misconduct involving published articles, or where the scientific integrity of the article is significantly undermined, articles may be retracted.

Image manipulations

Digital images in manuscripts considered for publication will be scrutinized for any indication of manipulation that is inconsistent with correct and transparent research. Manipulation that violates these guidelines may result in delays in manuscript processing or rejection, or retraction of a published article. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. The grouping of images from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, fields, or exposures, must be made explicit by the arrangement of the figure (i.e. using dividing lines) and in the text of the figure legend. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if they are applied to every pixel in the image and as long as they do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. Non-linear adjustments (e.g. changes to gamma settings) must be disclosed in the figure legend.

Any questions raised during or after the peer review process will be referred to the Editor, who will request the original data from the author(s) for comparison with the prepared figures. If the original data cannot be produced, the manuscript may be rejected or, in the case of a published article, retracted. Any case in which the manipulation affects the interpretation of the data will result in rejection or retraction. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the author(s)’ institution(s).

Plagiarism

All submitted papers are screened for plagiarism using specialized software. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.

Corrections and retractions

Corrections to, or retractions of, published articles will be made by publishing an Erratum or a Retraction article, without altering the original article in any way other than to add a link to the Erratum/Retraction article. The original article remains in the public domain. In the exceptional event that material is considered to infringe certain rights or is defamatory, we may have to remove that material from our site and archive sites.

Changes to published articles that affect the interpretation and conclusion of the article, but do not fully invalidate the article, will, at the Editor(s)’ discretion, be corrected via publication of an Erratum that is indexed and linked to the original article.

Archiving

The journal will soon support a LOCKSS system archiving policy to ensure secure and permanent preservation of published articles.