Instructions for Authors (last update: 2024-10-10)
Scientific Journal HELIA is published by the IRA (International Researchers Association) in Pen Publishing platform authorized by ISA (International Sunflower Association).
HELIA publishes original theoretical, experimental and technical contributions arising from the scientific study of sunflower crops and farming systems.
The journal is addressed mostly to researchers, technicians, and any practitioners interested in journal’s field of interest.
Publication of an issue takes place twice a year in July and December, in both online & print versions. It publishes only English-language articles.
Crop agronomy; Sunflower genetic resources; Sunflower improvement and breeding; Phytopathology and plant protection; Sunflower physiology; Biochemistry, metabolism, structure, genetics, at diverse levels of integration; Ecology; Soil, water and mineral nutrition management and farming systems.
Helia is a double-blind journal. Manuscripts are reviewed anonymously by at least two independent reviewers selected by the Editors. The authors may provide the names, institution, country and e-mail addresses of up to four potential reviewers. Authors may also provide names of reviewers they wish to exclude from reviewing their manuscripts.
The editors reserve the right to reject submitted manuscripts without peer review if the studies are not novel or important enough to merit publication in the journal. Manuscripts deemed unsuitable (insufficient originality or limited interest to the target audience) will be also rejected without review.
Helia aspires to inform authors of the peer review decision within 8 weeks from submission date. Revised manuscripts should be returned within 12 weeks. Accepted articles will be published online within 3-4 weeks of acceptance.
Articles are first published online as DOI citable articles and are later assigned to an issue with final page numbers.
Manuscripts dealing with subjects that have been well studied in the literature, and that do not resolve questions raised by previous studies, or manuscripts that are statistically underpowered, are likely to be rejected without peer review.
Manuscripts are also returned to authors if they do not comply with the Instructions for Authors.
Manuscripts that have been rejected for publication will be reconsidered only at the discretion of the Editor(s). Authors wishing to request reconsideration of a previously rejected manuscript must do so in written form and submit a rebuttal by e-mail to the journal’s editorial office. Authors should provide detailed reasons why they believe the manuscript should be reconsidered. If the rebuttal is accepted, the author will be asked to re-submit the manuscript, or the decision will be reversed.
ISA and IRA does not consider the following purposes of a paper as pre-publication: publication in the form of a congress abstract, publication as an academic thesis, publication as an electronic preprint on recognized servers such as arXiv, RePEc, bioRxiv, ResearchSquare, etc.
Inclusive language recognizes diversity, conveys respect for all people, is sensitive to differences and promotes equal opportunities. Content should not make assumptions about readers’ beliefs or commitments; should not contain anything that might suggest that one person is superior to another because of age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability or health condition; and should use inclusive language throughout. Authors should ensure that their writing is free from prejudice, stereotypes, slang, references to the dominant culture and/or cultural assumptions.
We advise the following approach: Aim for gender neutrality by using plural nouns (clinicians, clients, partic- ipants) as standard and avoiding “he” or “she”, wherever possible. Instead, please use “they”. We recommend avoiding the use of descriptors that refer to personal characteristics such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability or health status unless they are relevant and valid.
Submit manuscripts exclusively online at: https://helia.ejournal.gen.tr/
We strongly recommend the authors register with institutional e-mail addresses, and refrain from using private e-mail addresses. A cover letter must be submitted for each manuscript upon first submission. It should contain a brief statement by the authors as to the element of novelty upon which they base their request for publication in Helia. Please address the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief. Revised manuscripts must be accompanied by a point-by-point reply to the reviewers’ criticisms. Major changes in the revised manuscript must be highlighted, preferably in tracked changes mode. A second, clean version should always be submitted for major changes.
The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a non-profit, publisher-independent system that is used to uniquely identify academics and their publications. Click here for detailed information about ORCID. Submitting authors can login with username and password. If the journal uses ScholarOne as submission tool, authors can also login with their ORCID number. Providing an ORCID number for each author is strongly recom- mended. ORCID numbers should be listed on the title page.
For information on plagiarism, please refer to COPE – Committee of Publication Ethics. Submission of a manu- script to a journal implies that the work described has not been published previously, except in the form of an abstract, academic thesis, lecture, or preprint; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (mul- tiple, redundant, concurrent publication); that publication of the work is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out; and that, if accepted for publication, it will not be published elsewhere, no matter in which language, without the written consent of the Publisher. Exceptions are listed under Preprint policy.
To exclude potential overlap with prior publication(s), your manuscript may be checked by the plagiarism check- er Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate). Previously published material must be referenced appropriately in the manuscript, regardless of whether the material was previously published in a subscription based, hybrid or open access journal, or in another language.
The authors are responsible for all aspects of the study and will ensure that any questions regarding the accuracy and integrity of any part of the work are adequately investigated and resolved.
With submitting your manuscript to Helia the authors declare that they are the sole and intellectual authors of the manuscript. We do not accept submissions that name Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or Machine Learning Tools as credited author(s) on a manuscript because such tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work and therefore cannot be considered as eligible authors. Where such tools or technologies are used as part of the design or methodology of a research study, their use should be clearly described in the Acknowledgments section.
Online proofreading: The corresponding author of an article receives the galley proofs in electronic form to check them for editing and typesetting accuracy. Corresponding authors receive an e-mail notification (“Check your proof”) with a link to the online proofreading system (Proof Central) through which they can access their galley proofs. The interface is similar to MS Word: authors can edit the text by entering their corrections directly, adding comments, and answering questions from the copy editor. If preferred, authors can also annotate and upload edits to the PDF version.
All instructions for proof corrections, including deadlines, will be given in the e-mail notification to the corre- sponding author, along with a user guide, providing step-by-step instructions for inserting corrections.
Substantial changes to an article accepted for publication will only be considered with the permission of the Editor or after additional peer review. The responsibility for proofreading lies solely with the authors. According to ISA and IRA policy, once an article has been accepted, no changes to the author list and article title are allowed (except typos). The ISA and IRA production team is instructed to enforce this policy during the production/proof correction process.
Electronic files of typeset articles in Adobe Acrobat PDF format are provided free of charge. The corresponding author will receive an e-mail notification when the article has been published online along with instructions on how to access the article.
Manuscripts submitted to subscription and hybrid journals are accepted on condition of transfer of copyright (for U.S. government employees: to the extent transferable) to the publisher. Once the manuscript has been accepted, it may not be published elsewhere without the consent of the copyright holders.
Authors publishing Open Access will see their articles automatically added to their publication pages on Research Gate.
There is no Article processing fee or open access fee. Publishing articles in Helia is free, no extra cost.
Manuscripts must follow certain ethical guidelines to be considered for publication. Accordingly, before submitting your manuscript, please make sure that you and your co-authors agree to the applicable requirements. For example, this may involve declaring and ruling out conflicts of interest or proving compliance with legal requirements related to human and animal testing.
Authors may wish to acknowledge individuals, working groups, institutions, etc. who provided help and support (other than financial) during research and the preparation of the manuscript (e.g., language checking, writing assistance or proof reading of the article, etc.). Individuals acknowledged are not included on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise.
We do not accept submissions that name Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or Machine Learning Tools as credited author(s) on a manuscript because such tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work and therefore cannot be considered as eligible authors. Where such tools or technologies are used as part of the design or meth- odology of a research study, their use should be clearly described in the Acknowledgments section.
Manuscripts that contain information on the use of humans should clearly state that the research complies with all relevant national regulations and institutional policies and has been approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board or any equivalent Committee. The Editors reserve the right to seek additional information or guid- ance from reviewers on any cases in which concerns arise. All investigations with human subjects must be con- ducted by following the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki, what is more authors must identify the Committee or Institutional Review Board approving the experiments, and provide a statement indicating approval of the research. If applicable, information on research ethics and/or approval by the Institutional Review Board should be given in the Methods section.
Manuscripts that contain information on the use of animals should clearly state that the research has complied with all relevant national regulations and institutional policies and has been approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board or any equivalent Committee. The Editors reserve the right to seek additional information or guidance from reviewers on any cases in which concerns arise. The research using animal subjects should be conducted according to the Principles of Laboratory Animal Care and similar documents (e.g. NIH). For manu- scripts reporting experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates, authors must identify the Committee approving the experiments, and must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with rele- vant regulations. If applicable, information on research ethics and/or approval by the Institutional Review Board should be given in the Methods section.
If required for submission, submit the “Template for Ethical and Legal Declarations” file that asks you to com- ment on Research Ethics. Provide the same information here. Make sure that the information in the manuscript matches the information in the template.
For research involving wildlife in natural settings, authors must have obtained an Institutional Animal Care ap- proval and state that they have complied with the relevant national, international, and institutional guidelines regarding the ethical treatment of the taxa of study and cite them.
If a study did not require human or animal ethical approval, a corresponding statement should be given in the Methods section. If required for submission, submit the “Template for Ethical and Legal Declarations” file provide the same information here, or Not applicable.
In view of research integrity, authorship is generally confined to an individual who has made a substantial intellectual or practical contribution to the conception or design of the project or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work of a publication and/or has drafted the work or reviewed/revised it critically for important intellectual content. The individual(s) listed as author(s) must agree to be accountable for said contribution and approve of the final version. Honorary authorship is not allowed.
Individuals who helped or participated in certain substantive aspects of the project or work (e.g., technical services staff), but whose contributions were not of sufficient extent to be listed as co-authors, should be appropriately acknowledged, usually in an Acknowledgements section.
Authors must declare their responsibility for the entire content of the manuscript and may indicate the individual contributions of each author, if applicable. The author contribution statement should appear on the title page before the Reference section as the following default statement: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission. or The author has accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
Please provide a title page as a separate file during the submission process including the following information:
Write at least one given and family name in full. For all other names, initial is sufficient. List authors in the order you want them to appear in the final version. Indicate the corresponding author by using an asterisk “*” after the family name. Please note that as per ISA and IRA policy, no author list changes are permitted after acceptance of a manuscript.
Author footnotes (superscript letters or numbers) to explain authorship details are not all allowed in the author line and will be converted to an author note on the first page. Kindly stick to the wording as in the examples below:
Provide a descriptive, concise and comprehensible main title as well as an abbreviated form of the main title (running head) with no more than 40 characters (including blanks). The short title will be displayed on the top of each page of the final version.
The article title and subtitle should be in sentence case. Use lowercase letters after colon.
For the corresponding author supply the following details: e-mail address, department, institution, street, city, postal code and country; for all other authors department, institution, city, postal code and country are manda- tory. Please also provide all details concerning the current institutional affiliation in case you changed affiliation during the manuscript preparation and publication process.
Supplying an ORCID is highly recommended (for more information and registration, please visit the ORCID web- page: https://info.orcid.org/benefits-for-researchers/)
All manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English. Please use British or American English consistently. ISA and IRA does provide a light copyedit of manuscripts, but authors remain responsible for being their own copyeditors. If you have reasons to doubt your proficiency with respect to spelling, grammar, etc. (e.g., because English is not your native language), then you may wish to employ – at your expense – the services of a profes- sional language editor.
Please see the Manuscript checklist for detailed information on length and structure of specific article types.
Give a concise summary of your article in an abstract of approx. 250 words in a single paragraph. As abstracts are published separately by abstracting and indexing services, please spell out abbreviations at first use and do not include footnotes, tables, figures or equations. Avoid using references. If it is essential to use a reference in the abstract, please expand it as per journal reference style.
Keywords are used by abstracting and indexing services as well as search engines to facilitate finding your paper. Together with the abstract of your paper, they are a key tool enabling readers to find your paper and for increasing citations.
Supply 3–6 specific keywords in alphabetical order and lower case, separated by semicolon.
These can be single words, but also short phrases representing the content. Make sure to select precise and con- cise keywords to your field or sub-field of research. Avoid abbreviations and the repetition of words already used in the article’s title.
Your manuscript should be subdivided into sections (and, if necessary, subsections). These sections should be la- beled with headings in a consistent format and with a clear hierarchy of section headings. Limit your subsections to a maximum of four levels. For subdivided sections ensure that they have at least two subheadings on one level.
Headings do not have an end period.
Headings should be numbered and in sentence case. Use lowercase letters after colon.
Please adhere strictly to the reference style of Helia as outlined in the Reference Style Sheet. The style sheet pro- vides examples for different types of citations in the text as well as for different bibliographic items in the refer- ence list. Please note: All references mentioned in the reference list must be mentioned in the text, and vice versa.
Graphs, line drawings, photographs, schemes, diagrams, etc. may be used to illustrate your findings. Publication of color figures is provided free of charge in both online and print editions. The publication quality always de- pends directly on the quality and size of the delivered data.
Please label the illustrations as “Figure”. Each figure should be uploaded separately as .jpg, .eps,.png or .tiff file. Images should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (color or black-white pixel graphics/half-tone images) in the intended size (600dpi combination of pixel graphic and line drawing, 1200dpi for line drawings). When drawing bar graphs, use patterning/color instead of grey scales (faint shading may be lost upon reproduction). Figures should not display any frames.
Figures should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals (from 1) throughout the text. If you include multi-part figures, please make sure to label all part figures by using uppercase letters. Please make sure that all figures are explicitly referred to in the text. Do not end the text immediately preceding the suggested positioning of a figure with a colon and avoid expressions such as “in Figure 1 below/above”, as the exact positioning of these elements cannot be determined until after the manuscript has been typeset. Note that figures will usually be placed on the top or the bottom of the page in the final layout.
Provide a concise and self-explanatory caption for each figure. In case of multi-part figures, please include a main caption as well as part figure captions.
The key to the symbols depicted in the figures should be included in the figure itself, where possible. Otherwise, include it in the caption. The caption itself should not be included in the figure.
Please make sure that letters, numbers, symbols, text, etc. included in the figure are clear, easy to read (not below 6pt, preferably in Arial or Helvetica) and uniform in style.
It is the authors’ responsibility to use images that do not infringe on any copyrights, performing rights, trademark rights, personal rights or any other third-party rights or are otherwise unlawful. Copyright permissions can be obtained through the Copyright Clearance Center (https://www.copyright.com/).
Number tables consecutively using Arabic numerals. Tables should be provided in an editable source format (Word, LaTex). Please avoid handing in tables as image or Excel files.
Provide a short descriptive title, column heads, and (if necessary) footnotes to make each table self-explanatory. In column heads, separate units with a comma and use parentheses or square brackets for additional measures (e.g., %, range, etc.). Use footnotes in alphabetical order (a, b, c, etc.) to give emphasis or further information. Expand abbreviations used in tables in footnotes.
In case bold type or italics are used to highlight information, please explain their meaning.
Avoid color, shading, vertical lines, and other cell borders. Note that most horizontal lines within the table body will be removed during the production process.
Indicate where to place the table approximately (e.g., [Place Table 1 near here]). Do not end the text immediate- ly preceding the suggested positioning of a table with a colon and avoid expressions such as “in Table 1 below/ above”, as the exact positioning of these elements cannot be determined until after the manuscript has been typeset. Note that tables will usually be placed on the top or the bottom of the page in the final layout.
The use of abbreviations and acronyms is permitted given that they are expanded in full when used the first time with the abbreviation in parentheses (applies to abstract and main text). Please use them consistently thereafter. Avoid using non-standard abbreviations unless they appear more than three times in the text. We recommend providing a list with an overview of all abbreviations.
Equations should be well-aligned and not crowded. Use only Latin and Greek alphabets. Avoid complicated superscripts and subscripts by introducing new symbols. Avoid repetition of a complicated expression by representing it with a symbol. For MS Word submissions create equations using the Microsoft equation editor or a corresponding add-on. Do not submit math equations as images, but as editable text. Number displayed equations consecutively with Arabic numerals (if referred to in the text).
Gene acronyms, alleles, genus, species, and non-abbreviated Latin expressions should be written in italic font type.
Capitalize the first letter of the genus, but not the species. Format all binomial names in italics. After the first use, genus names should be abbreviated to a first initial. For genus names starting with the same letter differentiate by including the second letter.
‘sp.’, ‘spp.’, ‘ssp.’, ‘var.’, ‘L.’, ‘subsp.’, etc. should be Roman.
Use SI units. For more information, please visit https://www.bipm.org/en/home
For all examples connected to an audio/video recording, supply audio/video clips. Deliver these clips as separate files and do not integrate them directly into the manuscript.
Name all your clips using the following convention:
e.g., audio-1-smith.MP3, video-1-smith.MP4,
[media]-[identifier]-[author-family-name].[extension]
Indicate the position in the article by placing a marker as follows:
[associated audio-1-smith.wav with example (1)]
Provide a short caption for each media file and number them consecutively. Any other media files can be included as part of the supplementary material.
File naming: audiosupplement-1-smith.MP3,
[media.supplement]-[identifier]-[author-family-name].[extension]
The following formats are preferred: audio files in MP3 (at least 16 bit) and video files in MP4 (at least a height of 480 pixels and a frame rate of 25). However, other common formats are also permitted.
Use appendices for information that supports your findings but is not essential for the understanding of your paper (e.g., lengthy mathematical proofs, tables, graphics, etc.). Cite appendices within the main text. Tables and figures in the appendix should be numbered consecutively as follows: Figure A.1, Table A.1, Figure A.2, Table A.2, etc. The appendix is placed at the end of the main text before the reference list.
Supplementary material which may offer further information on your work but does not belong to the core part of the article, will not be part of the typeset article PDF. The material will be made available as a separate download in the online version of the article. Supplementary material may contain questionnaires for discussed surveys, protocols, code samples, datasets, extensive tables, additional figures, multimedia files (audio, video, animations), etc. If the manuscript is accepted, supplementary material will be referenced in the print version, but will be published online only.
Please provide supplementary material data as separate file(s) of no more than 10 MB per file during submis- sion. Note that the material should be publication-ready (not in track-changes mode), as it will not be typeset, but published exactly as supplied. Within the text, the supplementary material must be cited consecutively and be referred to as supplementary material data (e.g., see Supplementary Material, Fig. 1, or Figure S1, Table S1, etc.)
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Dr. Yalçın KAYA, Turkey yalcinkaya22@gmail.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Zvonimir Sakač, MSc, Serbia maritimus17@gmail.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Dr Ahmet Semsettin TAN, Turkey a_s_tan@hotmail.com
