Presentation
Tropicultura is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes original articles and research and synthesis notes on all areas related to rural development and sustainable management of the overseas environment.
Since January 2020, Tropicultura is published by the Presses agronomiques de Gembloux (members of CARE Presses universitaires de Liège).
Tropicultura fulfils the role played before 1963 by the Bulletin agricole du Congo belge et du Ruanda-Urundi. The first volume of Tropicultura was published in 1983 in paper form (ISSN 0771-3312). An electronic version took over in 2013 (eISSN 2295-8010).
Scientific fields
Tropicultura publishes articles related to rural development and sustainable environmental management in developing countries: plant and animal production, veterinary sciences, forestry sciences, soil and earth sciences, rural engineering, environmental sciences, fisheries and fish farming, bio-industries, agri-food, sociology and economics.
Support
Tropicultura is published with the financial support of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Ghent since 2013 (https://www.ugent.be/di/en), of the University of Liège since 2017 (https://www.gembloux.uliege.be) and since its creation.
Tropicultura has also been supported by the Belgian Cooperation until 2012 (https://diplomatie.belgium.be/fr/politique/cooperation_au_developpement), by a donation from BEDIM (Bureau for Exchange and Distribution of Information on MiniLivestock) managed by the NGO ADG, by the Regional Post-Graduate School of Integrated Management of Tropical Forests and Territories (ERAIFT: www.eraift-rdc.org) and by the Brussels-Capital Region (be.brussels.be) until 2019.
Since 2020 the journal is supported by the FNRS.
Tropicultura and CAMES
Publications in Tropicultura are recognized by the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education for the Promotion and Advancement of Teachers - Researchers (CAMES: ).
Regularity
Tropicultura is published quarterly in March, June, September and December. Articles prior to 2017 are available at http://www.tropicultura.org/eng/content/.
Published in Open Access.
All the articles of Tropicultura since its creation in 1983 are published with free access. Full text and abstracts are free of charge. The articles are distributed under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC 4.0 - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en). The author retains his rights and can self-archive his article publicly (greenway) in the post-print version of the publisher.
Indexing in major databases
Tropicultura is indexed in the SCOPUS, AGRICOLA, AGRIS, CABI, SESAME and DOAJ databases.
Dissemination of Tropicultura
Tropicultura was published in print from 1983 to 2012. The paper version had a print run of 2,650 copies and was distributed in 110 different countries).
All the articles, from the first issue onwards, are available in full text on the website (http://www.tropicultura.org/content/) and on the DOAJ (https://doaj.org/toc/0771-3312).
In 2014, Google analytics counted 8,648 visits from 141 countries and regions. The number of downloads of the Tropicultura journal was 2,173 from 101 countries in 2014.
Tropicultura is also available on the EBSCO and Bielefeld websites (http://www.base-search.net/Search/Results?lookfor=dccoll%3Aftdoaj*+tropicultura.org&refid=dclink) and via google scholar (https://scholar.google.be/scholar?q=Tropicultura).
Statement on ethics and malpractice
The journal
The Tropicultura Editorial Board is committed to providing all necessary information to authors or scientific reviewers regarding the writing, evaluation and editing of articles.
It remains autonomous with respect to its editorial policy in order to avoid any type of conflict of interest, whether scientific or financial.
It undertakes and agrees to improve the scientific quality of the journal to ensure the publication of research results and information related to rural development and sustainable environmental management in hot countries.
Academic quality of publications
The journal Tropicultura ensures the academic quality of its publications. The editorial board is composed of 15 members from Belgian universities or scientific institutes. The reading committee is composed of members from different Belgian and international institutions.
For authors
Submission and publication are free of charge for authors.
The main author is the corresponding author. In order to avoid receiving claims from some co-authors whose opinion was not sought at the time of submission of a manuscript to the Editorial Board, each co-author is required to submit a copy of the manuscript to the Editorial Board.
At the time of submission of the article, the author and co-authors attest to their involvement in the conduct of the essays, interpretation of the results or writing of the manuscript.
Manuscripts must be unpublished and must not have been submitted for publication simultaneously to another scientific journal.
Instructions to authors are available on the journal's website and are updated as necessary.
The editorial board evaluates the quality, relevance of the manuscript and plagiarism before appointing scientific reviewers.
The editorial board reserves the right to refuse any article that does not comply with the journal's requirements.
The editorial secretariat can advise authors on how to improve their manuscript. It can also put the scientific reviewers in contact with the authors whose manuscript they are evaluating, if they so wish.
The reasons for refusing or requesting modifications to an article are addressed to the corresponding author.
Authors must propose three scientific reviewers of international renown at the time of submission.
The choice of one or more scientific reviewers remains the responsibility of the editorial board.
Data falsification and fraud
The Tropicultura journal reserves the right to inquire about any possible malpractice of the authors. It may inquire with the project managers or PhD thesis directors whether the methodology used in the essays is correct and whether the results submitted in the manuscript are relevant.
If it is found that the author has falsified or provided biased data, Tropicultura will no longer publish his or her articles even if he or she is a co-author. The journal will ask the author the reason for the attempted fraud and reserves the right to take action.
If an article, containing biased data or errors, has been published an erratum will be published in one of the following issues to inform the scientific reviewers.
For scientific reviewers
Tropicultura's reading committee is composed of volunteer scientific reviewers from the international scientific community, specialized in all fields concerning rural development and sustainable environmental management in overseas countries.
Scientific reviewers who agree to review a manuscript are invited to contribute useful advice and to proofread the modified version if necessary.
Conflict of Interest
The Tropicultura journal reserves the right to require authors to indicate the sponsors of their research in order to avoid a conflict of interest on the source of funding or on the affiliation of the author.
The editorial board makes sure that articles are not sent for evaluation to the scientific reviewers who participated in the writing of the article or funded the research work.
Authors may mention these organizations in the acknowledgements.
Criticisms, Complaints and Compliments
The editorial board takes into consideration the criticisms and complaints it receives.
If authors feel that the decisions taken by the scientific reviewers are unjustified, they have the right to appeal to the arbitration body set up by the journal, which makes the final decision on their complaint (see arbitration).
The editorial board accepts suggestions from scientific reviewers or third parties to improve the quality of Tropicultura.
Confidentiality
To ensure confidentiality, authors remain anonymous to the scientific reviewers. The scientific reviewers also remain anonymous to the authors.
The Tropicultura journal cannot provide information from its database unless the concerned parties agree.
Arbitration