Editorial Work

Pat Heslop-Harrison is an Chief Editor of Annals of Botany. Annals of Botany is an international Journal of Plant Sciences, covering all areas of botany from taxonomy, though crop production and biodiversity to molecular biology It has a wide readership throughout the world so manuscripts should make a significant advance and be both of broad interest and accessible to the readers. Manuscripts should be submitted on-line. The citation index/impact factor of Annals of Botany is 2.77..

He is also accepting Editor for the three important journals Chromosome Research, 

Sexual Plant Reproduction, and

Theoretical and Applied Genetics.

Pat Heslop-Harrison is also an member of the Faculty of 1000, and identifies papers which fit his interests in plant genome evolution and related topics for review.

In the role of accepting Editor, I receive newly submitted manuscripts and send them out to appropriate experts for review. Based on the reviews and my reading of the manuscript, I then decide whether I am able to recommend the manuscript for publication in the Journal, or usually the modifications that are required before I would recommend publication. While trying to keep the editorial time to a minimum, this process takes a minimum of about three weeks and longer if reviewer with time are hard to find, if there are disagreements between reviewers, or if a review is not returned in time. Almost all Journals rely on the generosity of reviewers who are mostly senior academics, and many will not be able to dedicate the time to provide a useful review in less time than this.

I am very happy to talk to authors about work they might like to submit to the Journal, and advise on its suitability, editorial policies and other matters. I am happy to look at titles and abstracts, but will not 'pre-review' manuscripts before submission: this can put me in the invidious position of not being able to follow the usual procedure including consultation with referees. Virtually all reviewing and manuscript processing is by specialist web-sites for manuscript submission (EJPress is in my view the best, used by Annals of Botany, Nature, PNAS etc; others are Scholar One/Manuscript Central, . Editorial Manager). Please follow the submission instructions for the relevant Journals (via websites, electronically with the office, or electronically to me). Do not send me unsolicited e-mails of more than 1MB as these will be deleted automatically without notification if I am out of the lab.

General Points for Submission of Manuscripts
The manuscript should be in the final form and will be reviewed as such: this means that you would be proud, and indeed expect, to see it typeset and published exactly as you submit it. The reviewing process is not part of the writing process, and papers which are not in a final form will be returned without review. (Deficiencies specifically related to English language will never prejudice acceptance although there are now many excellent manuscript editing services which should be used; these cannot correct lack of logical thought, excessive verbosity and repetition which will always be grounds for rejection.) Pictures should be high quality: referees have instructions to review on the basis of the quality sent to them less the anticipated loss in reproduction. In most cases, JPG images of 100-200kb should be adequate for review. Larger images will be needed for reproduction. Conciseness is always an advantage, but all papers should make significant advances in the science - they should not be 'salami-sliced' to multiple submissions!

Annals of Botany		Annals of Botany is an international Journal of Plant Sciences, covering all areas of botany from taxonomy, though crop production and biodiversity to molecular biology It has a wide readership throughout the world so manuscripts should make a significant advance and be both of broad interest and accessible to the readers. Manuscripts should be submitted on-line, with a suggestion of a suitable editor to arrange refereeing. The citation index/impact factor of Annals of Botany is 2.939.
Link to current Annals of Botany issue	The Journal is owned by the Charity Annals of Botany Company; the publishers are Oxford University Press.	Link to my recent publications in the Journal Instructions to Authors Online submission webpage here Journal Web page and full text search

Chromosome Research

Chromosome Research is the international Journal for all aspects of chromosome and nuclear biology. It provides for publication of significant papers including experimental studies of chromosome organization, function and behaviour, as well as studies in genomics (functional and structural, comparative and within species) and evolutionary biology. Free colour is offered to authors, and we aim for rapid decisions on publication.
Link to Journal homepage
Link to my recent publications in the Journal

Sexual Plant Reproduction

Link to Journal homepage and online submission.

Theoretical and Applied Genetics

Link to Journal homepage

TAG publishes original articles in the following areas:

• Genetic and physiological fundamentals of plant breeding
• Applications of plant biotechnology
• Theoretical considerations in combination with experimental data

Pat Heslop-Harrison Homepage at University of Leicester

PHH4(a)le.ac.uk