About the Journal

ShodhVarta [ISSN: 2583-8938] (started in Dec 2022) is a multidisciplinary, multilingual, peer-reviewed, open access, bi-monthly journal that publishes original research and review papers. Typescript required for consideration in ShodhVarta Journal are:

  • Research papers (max length: 3000 words or 10 typed pages of A4 size including figures but excluding references) containing original research findings in a clear and concise manner. Papers reporting theoretical, laboratory and field test results are also accepted.
  • Review articles (max length: 5000 words or 20 typed pages of A4 size including figures, but excluding references) are expected to cover, survey, integrate, and critically examine new information accumulated in recent years in a particular subject field. Review articles from subject experts are also commissioned by the Editor.
  • Short communications/research notes/scientific correspondence (Max length: 2000 words or 8 typed pages including figures, but excluding references) are normally brief reports or technical notes on the progress of ongoing research and/or an application.
  1. Submission Policies

When you submit a manuscript to ShodhVarta, we will take it to imply that the manuscript has not already been published or submitted elsewhere. You may not submit your manuscript elsewhere while it is under consideration at ShodhVarta.

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may also be stated.

We reserve the right to reject a paper even after it has been accepted, if it becomes apparent that there are serious problems with its scientific content, or our publishing policies have been violated.

  • Article Processing or Publication Fee: NIL

(No fee is charged for publication in ShodhVarta at present)

  • Transfers

ShodhVarta is editorially independent, and Editorial Board Members make decisions independently. It is for authors alone to decide where to submit their manuscripts. Papers that undergo for peer-review process, technical comments of the Reviewers were forwarded to the author after peer-review without disclosing the details of Reviewers.

  • Peer Review and Editorial Process

ShodhVarta follows Single-blind and two-round independent peer-review process. ShodhVarta makes full confidentiality among authors and reviewers and does not take biased decisions.
ShodhVarta editorial team takes comments/opinions of at least two unique reviewers (other than Editor in chief and Issue Editor) on a manuscript before making any decision. A manuscript goes through the following Nine Stages after the submission.

  1. Author submission with all required data as per author guidelines. (Day 0)
  2. Scrutiny by Managing Editor (Day 1 - 7)
    1. Revert back to authors to provide missing details/data. (If any)
    2. Desk Rejection with message (Due to incomplete submission, lack of sincerity in manuscript preparation, incompatible format etc.)
    3. Acceptance for Processing (assignment of Editor) (Day 1 - 7)
  3. Peer Review Round 1 (Conducted by the assigned Editor, who assigns the Reviewer 1) Day (8 - 14)
  4. Revert Back to Author/s (With comments of the R1 with decisions) Day (15 - 21)
    1. Acceptable by R1
    2. Revisions Required
    3. Out of Scope
    4. Reject (with reason)
  5. Peer Review Round 2 (Conducted by the assigned Editor, who assigns the Reviewer 2) Day (15 - 27)
    1. Acceptable by R2
    2. Revisions Required
    3. Out of Scope
    4. Reject (with reason)
  6. Discussion followed by final decision which is taken by the issue Editor in consultation with Editor-in-chief or an Associate Editor whoever has proficiency in the area. Day (21 - 28)
  7. Final decision communicated to the author/s. Day (28 - 31)
  8. Copy-editing and Translation in English followed by assignment of Issue and Unique Paper-ID (Internal to ShodhVarta).
  9. Publishing Online as Current Issue of ShodhVarta.

Editorial Board puts all efforts to keep the turnaround time as minimum as 21-28 days but usually it takes more as per availability of expert reviewer and punctuality of returned reviews.

As of today (22nd February 2024) average number of days to First Editorial Decision (Accept/Reject) is 40 days.*

The Journal has average Acceptance Rate of 3% percent.*
*Data provided for transparency as per the OJS instance of ShodhVarta.

  • Author responsibilities

Being an author ShodhVarta does not require all authors of a research paper to sign the cover letter upon submission, nor do they impose an order on the list of authors. Submission to ShodhVarta is taken by the publication to mean that all the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents. The corresponding (submitting) author is responsible for having ensured that this agreement has been reached, and for managing all communication between the publication and all co-authors, before and after publication.

  •  Indian Languages + English language

All manuscripts must be presented in any one of the 22 Indian Languages (as listed in 8th schedule of the constitution of India) along with a translation in Standard English.

  •  Author contributions statements

Authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript that specifies the contribution of every author.  

  • Correcting the record

Authors of published material have a responsibility to inform ShodhVarta promptly if they become aware of any part that requires correcting.

  • Pre-Publication responsibilities

The corresponding (submitting) author is solely responsible for communicating with ShodhVarta and for managing communication between co-authors. Before submission, the corresponding author ensures that all authors are included in the author list, its order has been agreed by all authors, and that all authors are aware that the paper was submitted.

After acceptance, the proof is sent to the corresponding author, who deals with ShodhVarta on the behalf of all co-authors; ShodhVarta will not necessarily correct errors after publication if they result from errors that were present on a proof that was not shown to co-authors before publication. The corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of all content in the proof, in particular that names of co-authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

  • A confidential process

ShodhVarta treats the submitted manuscript and all communication with authors and referees as confidential. Authors must also treat communication with ShodhVarta as confidential: correspondence with ShodhVarta, referee reports and other confidential material must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission from the ShodhVarta publishing team, regardless of whether or not the submission is eventually published.  

  • Referee suggestions

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent referees when they submit their manuscript, but these suggestions may not be used by ShodhVarta.  

  • License agreement and author copyright

ShodhVarta requires authors to assign copyright of their published original research papers to the journal. Digital copies of articles are published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/in (Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derives 2.5 India).

  • You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

  • Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Non-Commercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

No Derivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

  • Availability of materials and data

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Supporting data must be made available to Editorial Board Members and referees at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Referees may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets; ShodhVarta reserves the right to refuse publication in cases where authors do not provide adequate assurances that they can comply with the publication's requirements for sharing materials.

  • Digital image integrity and standards

High-resolution images are required at initial submission. When a paper is accepted, the publishing team will request high-resolution files suitable for publication.

All digitized images submitted with the final revision of the manuscript should be 300 DPI if possible.

A certain degree of image processing is acceptable for publication (and for some experiments, fields and techniques is unavoidable), but the final image must correctly represent the original data and conform to community standards. 

  • Authors should list all image acquisition tools and image processing software packages used. Authors should document key image-gathering settings and processing manipulations in the methods.
  • Images gathered at different times or from different locations should not be combined into a single image, unless it is stated that the resultant image is a product of time-averaged data or a time-lapse sequence. If juxtaposing images is essential, the borders should be clearly demarcated in the figure and described in the legend.
  • The use of touch-up tools, such as cloning and healing tools in Photoshop, or any feature that deliberately obscures manipulations, is to be avoided.
  • Processing (such as changing brightness and contrast) is appropriate only when it is applied equally across the entire image and is applied equally to controls. Contrast should not be adjusted so that data disappears. Excessive manipulations, such as processing to emphasize one region in the image at the expense of others (e.g. through the use of a biased choice of threshold settings), is inappropriate, as is emphasizing experimental data relative to the control.

When submitting revised final figures upon conditional acceptance, authors may be asked to submit original, unprocessed images.

  • Rejections, complaints and corrections

Correction and retraction policy

ShodhVarta operates the following policy for making corrections to its peer-reviewed content.

Publishable amendments must be represented by a formal online notice because they affect the publication record and/or the scientific accuracy of published information. Where these amendments concern peer-reviewed material, they fall into one of three categories: erratum, corrigendum or retraction.

Erratum. Notification of an important error made by the journal that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Corrigendum. Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Retraction. Notification of invalid results. All co-authors must sign a retraction specifying the error and stating briefly how the conclusions are affected, and submit it for publication. In cases where co-authors disagree, the publishing team will seek advice from independent referees and impose the type of amendment that seems most appropriate, noting the dissenting author(s) in the text of the published version.

  • Editorial decision-making

Decisions about types of correction are made by the journal's publishing team, with the advice of the referees, Editorial Advisory Panel or Editorial Board Members. This process involves consultation with the authors of the paper, but the publishing team makes the final decision about whether an amendment is required and the category in which the amendment is published.

When an amendment is published, it is linked bi-directionally to and from the article being corrected.

Authors sometimes request a correction to their published contribution that does not affect the contribution in a significant way or impair the reader's understanding of the contribution (e.g. a spelling mistake or grammatical error). ShodhVarta does not publish such corrections. The online article is part of the published record and hence its original published version is preserved. ShodhVarta does, however, correct the online version of a contribution if the wording in the html version does not make sense when compared with the PDF version (e.g. 'see left' for a figure that is an appropriate phrase for the PDF but not for the html version). In these cases, the fact that a correction has been made is stated in a footnote so that readers are aware that the originally published text has been amended.

  • Duplicate publication

Material submitted to ShodhVarta must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere. This rule applies to material submitted elsewhere while the ShodhVarta contribution is under consideration.

Author(s) have to furnish the following certificate at the time of submission of manuscript along with covering letter.

[This is to certify that the reported work in the paper entitled “..........” submitted for publication in the ShodhVarta is an original one and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere. I/we certify that citations to the previously reported works have been given and no data/tables/figures have been quoted verbatim from the other publications without giving due acknowledgement and without permission of the author(s). The consent of all the authors of this paper has been obtained before submitting.

[Signatures and names of all the authors]

Authors submitting a contribution to ShodhVarta who have related material under consideration or in press elsewhere should upload a clearly marked copy at the time of submission, and draw the Editorial Board Members' attention to it in their cover letter. Authors must disclose any such information while their contributions are under consideration by ShodhVarta – for example, if they submit a related manuscript elsewhere that was not written at the time of the original ShodhVarta submission.

If part of a contribution that an author wishes to submit to ShodhVarta has appeared or will appear elsewhere, the author must specify the details in the covering letter accompanying the submission. Consideration by ShodhVarta is possible if the main result, conclusion, or implications are not apparent from the other work, or if there are other factors, for example if the other work is published in a language other than English.

ShodhVarta is happy to consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.

If an author of a submission is re-using a figure or figures published elsewhere, or that is copyrighted, the author must provide documentation that the previous publisher or copyright holder has given permission for the figure to be re-published. ShodhVarta Editorial Board Members consider all material in good faith that the publication has full permission to publish every part of the submitted material, including illustrations.

  • Confidentiality and pre-publicity

Confidentiality

ShodhVarta keeps all details about a submitted manuscript confidential and does not comment to any outside organization about manuscripts that are either under consideration or that have been rejected. After a manuscript is submitted, correspondence with ShodhVarta, referees' reports and other confidential material, regardless of whether or not the submission is eventually published, must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission. Referees of manuscripts submitted to ShodhVarta undertake in advance to maintain confidentiality of manuscripts and any associated supplementary data.

Pre-publicity

ShodhVarta authors must not discuss contributions with the media (including other scientific journals) except in the case of accepted contributions, which can be discussed with the media once an embargo date has been set. Presentation and discussion of material submitted to ShodhVarta at scientific meetings is encouraged. Authors are free to publish abstracts in conference proceedings and to distribute preprints of submitted or 'in press' papers to professional colleagues, but not to the media. Material in a contribution submitted to ShodhVarta may also have been published as part of a PhD or other academic thesis.

  • Plagiarism and fabrication

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else's work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author re-uses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, to 'salami-slicing', where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.

Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large chunks of text have been cut-and-pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in ShodhVarta. However, minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example, when an author re-uses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper. 

  • Due credit for others' work

Discussion of unpublished work: Manuscripts are sent out for review on the condition that any unpublished data cited within are properly credited and the appropriate permission has been sought. Where licensed data are cited, authors must include at submission a written assurance that they are complying with originators' data-licensing agreements.

Referees are encouraged to be alert to the use of appropriated unpublished data from databases or from any other source, and to inform ShodhVarta of any concern they may have.

Discussion of published work: When discussing the published work of others, authors must properly describe the contribution of the earlier work. Both intellectual contributions and technical developments must be acknowledged as such and appropriately cited.

For promoting integrity in research and its publication, ShodhVarta follows the guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) available at https://publicationethics.org