Plant Image Science (Plant Image Sci)
Plant Image Science (hereinafter referred to as PIS), is the official journal of the Korean Society of Plant Image Science. Since its launch in 2025, PIS has been published as an online continuous publication, with articles released immediately upon acceptance and final proofing. The journal serves as a premier platform for advancing plant imaging technologies that contribute to digital breeding through phenotypic analysis, precision agriculture and smart farming through remote precision diagnostics, innovative crop protection through precise diagnosis of pests, diseases, and weeds, and autonomous precision agricultural machinery development through image-based field diagnostics.
Authors who wish to submit a manuscript are strongly encouraged to carefully review the Aims and Scope section of the journal. All submissions must adhere to the Instructions for Authors. PIS follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (a joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA; https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/) unless otherwise specified.
PIS is an international, peer-reviewed journal that advances the understanding of plant structure, function, and dynamics through imaging and quantitative analysis. The journal provides a multidisciplinary platform for research integrating plant physiology, phenomics, and imaging technologies—from molecular to canopy scales—to elucidate how plants grow, interact, and respond to their environments.
PIS promotes scientific progress that deepens insight into plant function while fostering innovation in sensing and computational technologies that enable such understanding. The journal particularly welcomes studies that connect image-derived data to physiological mechanisms, genetic and phenotypic variation, and crop improvement across row crops and horticultural crops, fruit trees, and protected cultivation systems.
The scope of Plant Image Science encompasses fundamental and applied research on imaging and quantitative analysis for plant science, including but not limited to:
Through these areas, Plant Image Science aims to bridge plant biology, imaging technology, and data science—promoting knowledge exchange among physiologists, agronomists, agricultural engineers and systems/robotics/instrumentation engineers, remote sensing experts, and computational scientists. The journal supports the mission of the Korean Society of Plant Image Science to advance plant imaging for digital breeding, precision agriculture, and sustainable crop management. PIS publishes original research articles, reviews, short communications, and technical papers that contribute to a mechanistic, quantitative, and imaging-based understanding of plants and their environments.
Upon acceptance for publication, authors retain the copyright to their work. Authors grant the Korean Society of Plant Image Science (the publisher of PIS) a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to publish, reproduce, distribute, translate, and make the article available in any medium or format, including for indexing, abstracting, and long-term preservation.
All articles published in PIS are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This means that both authors and third parties may freely read, download, distribute, and reuse the published content for non-commercial purposes, as long as proper attribution is given to the original source. Authors retain the right to use their published articles in whole or in part in future works (e.g., theses, dissertations, books), presentations, and repositories, provided the use is non-commercial and includes appropriate citation.
PIS accepts submissions that have previously been made available as preprints if they have not undergone peer review. A preprint is a draft version of a paper made available online before submission to a journal. Note that posting a preprint does not affect the peer review process. The author(s) can make the article available at any postprint media, provided the original work is properly cited.
PIS adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in the Guidelines on Good Publication (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines).
Authorship credit should be based on: 1) Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, and/or analysis and interpretation of data 2) Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content 3) Final approval of the version to be published 4) Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Every author should meet all of these four conditions. After the initial submission of a manuscript, any changes whatsoever in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or rearranging the order of authors) must be explained by a letter to the editor from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. Copyright & Licensing for all submissions are governed by Section 3; no separate form is required.
Corresponding author(s) and first author(s): PIS permits multiple corresponding authors and first authors, as long as they are clearly indicated in the manuscript. The authorship notice on the published paper adheres to the style guidelines outlined in the Composition of Manuscripts section. If there are multiple corresponding authors, the submitting author of the manuscript through the online submission system will be responsible for corresponding with the editorial office.
Submitted manuscripts must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without prior permission from the Editorial Board. Upon submission, manuscripts undergo screening for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication using Crossref Similarity Check. If plagiarism or duplicate publication is detected, the manuscript will be rejected, and penalties will be applied to the authors. The process and penalties in such cases adhere to the guidelines outlined in the “Process for managing research and publication misconduct” section.
A letter of permission is required for any and all material that has been published previously. It is the responsibility of the authors to request permission from the publisher for any material that is being reproduced. This requirement applies to text, figures, and tables.
It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html).
The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include financial support from or connections to companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.
Research involving humans should be done in accordance with the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013), available from: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/. Studies involving humans that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that their names, initials, dates of birth, or other protected information should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.
For studies involving human subjects where identifiable or sensitive information is collected, copies of written informed consent documents must be retained. Identifiable information encompasses personally identifiable information such as names, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, birthdates, email addresses, and home addresses; health information including diagnoses, treatment records, medical record numbers, biometrics (fingerprints, iris patterns), and DNA sequences; and geographic location data like real-time location and residential addresses. Sensitive information covers health status details such as HIV status, mental health records, reproductive health information; financial data including bank account numbers, credit card numbers, income information; legal information like criminal records and legal dispute histories; racial and ethnic data; sexual orientation and gender identity; political opinions; and religious or philosophical beliefs. For clinical studies involving human subjects, certification, agreement, or approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s institution is required. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to address any queries regarding IRB approval and study conduct.
When PIS encounters suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, ethical issues with a submitted manuscript, instances where a reviewer has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and so on, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Discussion and decisions regarding suspected cases are conducted by the Editorial Board.
Cases that require editorial expressions of concern or retraction shall follow the COPE flowcharts available from: https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts. If corrections are needed, they will follow the ICMJE Recommendation for Corrections, Retractions, Republications, and Version Control available from: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/corrections-and-version-control.html.
The policy of PIS is primarily aimed at protecting the authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher of PIS. If not described below, the process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics available from: https://publicationethics.org/appeals
Submitters, authors, reviewers, and readers may register complaints and appeals in a variety of cases including falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship dispute, conflict of interest, ethical treatment of animals, informed consent, bias or unfair/inappropriate competitive acts, copyright, stolen data, defamation, and legal problems. Individuals or institutions wishing to report such cases can send a letter via the contact page on our website: https://www.plantimagescience.org/. For complaints or appeals, concrete data along with answers to all factual questions (who, when, where, what, how, why) should be provided.
The Editor, Editorial Board, or Editorial Office is responsible for them. A legal consultant or ethics editor may assist in decision making.
It depends on the type or degree of misconduct. The consequence of resolution will follow the COPE guidelines.
The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarism and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoiding any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preserving the anonymity of reviewers.
Any researcher worldwide can submit a manuscript if its scope is appropriate.
Manuscripts should be submitted in good scientific English.
Research reports frequently omit important information. As such, reporting guidelines have been developed for various study designs, which some journals may request authors to adhere to. Authors are encouraged to consult the relevant reporting guidelines for their specific research design. A good source of reporting guidelines is the EQUATOR Network (https://www.equator-network.org/) and the United States National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/research_report_guide.html).
Manuscripts submitted to PIS shall be written based on academic research findings obtained from conducting original studies in English.
Manuscripts are categorized into original research articles, review articles, and technical papers according to contents.
Manuscripts shall be written in the order of title, author name and address, abstract, main text, and references. For more details, refer to the latest issue of PIS.
Manuscripts shall be written on word processors using the style of file regulated by PIS. The font size shall all be 11pt.
Manuscripts shall be submitted using the online submission system of PIS’s website (https://www.plantimagescience.org/).
PIS adopts an online continuous publication model. Accepted articles are published online immediately after the completion of peer review, revision, and final proofing, ensuring timely dissemination of research findings.
Submission is limited to the members of PIS who are paying the membership fee. Non-members wishing to make submissions can obtain this right by submitting the membership application form and paying the annual fee along with their submissions.
The publication rights of the submitted manuscripts are owned by PIS, and the author’s act of submission demonstrates acknowledgement thereof. PIS can disclose the submitted papers via internal and external electronic databases.
Authors should ensure correct use of the terms, sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and gender. If the study involved an exclusive population, for example, only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases. Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.
In manuscripts with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used:
“conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y.”. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.
Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If there is no conflict of interest, please state “The authors declare no conflict of interest.”
To promote transparency and reproducibility of research, authors are encouraged to include a Data Availability Statement in the manuscript. This statement should provide information on where the data supporting the results of the study can be found, including links to publicly archived datasets or institutional repositories, if available.
If the data are not publicly available due to ethical, legal, or commercial constraints, authors should clearly explain the reasons. Examples of data availability statements include the following:
Authors are encouraged to use recognized data repositories where appropriate and ensure data are stored in formats suitable for long-term access.
Authors who used generative AI or AI-assisted tools must disclose such use in a dedicated section titled “Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in the Writing Process” before the References list. This requirement applies to any AI technology used during manuscript preparation, including but not limited to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Grammarly, DeepL, and similar tools.
AI and AI-assisted technologies may be used only for
The following uses are strictly prohibited
Mandatory Disclosure Statement Format:
“During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [specific tool name and version] for [specific purpose]. The authors reviewed and edited the content as necessary and take full responsibility for the content of this publication.”
Required Information
This policy will be reviewed annually and updated as necessary to address
Authors are encouraged to consult the most current version of these guidelines and contact the editorial office for clarification on AI usage policies.
Authors must confirm the final version of the manuscript to be published. If there are no further changes, authors should notify PIS of this.
Authors should verify the accuracy or integrity of any part of the manuscript edited by PIS. Each edited version of the manuscript according to the edits and revisions should be confirmed by the authors, and any revisions should be notified to PIS. Authors must agree to take responsibility for their notifications to PIS regarding “revision requests” or “no further corrections.”
All authors are encouraged to register for an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID ID) and include it in the manuscript and during the submission process. ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers and supports automated linking between professional activities.
Register at: https://orcid.org
If the manuscript is accepted, ORCID IDs will be published alongside the authors’ names.
Manuscripts shall be prepared in the following manner
Figures, figure captions, tables and table captions shall be inserted after the references in principle, but are also permitted to be inserted in the main text.
For the title, the first letter of each word shall be capitalized and in bold.
For the heading, which is the shorter version of the title, the first letter of each word shall be capitalized and in normal font.
The author name shall be in bold.
The authors’ addresses should include affiliations, addresses, and zip codes. If there are co-authors, all relevant addresses should be provided. E-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers (to contact the main author) should be included for communication during the editing process.
If there are multiple corresponding authors, they should be clearly indicated.
If there are multiple co-first authors, they should be clearly indicated.
Section headings such as ABSTRACT, 1. INTRODUCTION, and REFERENCES shall be capitalized, and subsection or subsection headings shall have only the first letter of each word capitalized. All headings other than subsections shall be in bold. The abstract, acknowledgments and references shall not be numbered.
Section headings shall be centered, and subsection headings left aligned.
Sections and subsections shall be organized in the order of 1., 1.2, and 1.2.1 if necessary.
All tables and figures included in the paper shall be cited within the main text with the necessity justified.
Articles that are cited shall be written using the author’s last name and year of publication at the relevant section of the paper as shown below.
If there are 2 or 3 authors, use the symbol “&” instead of “and”. If there are 3 authors, put a comma before “&”.
If there are 3 or more authors, use “et al.” when making citations in the main text. Use a normal font instead of italics, and put a period at the end. But in references, if there are 5 or more co-authors, write only up to 5 names and mark the rest with “et al.”
When citing two or more articles published by the same author in the same year, they shall be differentiated using symbols such as “a, b, c” next to the year. The same rule also applies to the references.
References shall be provided in alphabetical order of the authors’ names. If there are multiple articles by the same author, write the article in the order of publication. If there are articles by a single author and co-authors including the same person, the article published by a single author shall be provided first.
References shall be written in English.
If one of the reference data is too long and it moves on to the next line, make an indentation starting with the next line.
The guidelines for writing each reference are as follows.
Author (last name, initials), year, title of article, title of journal, volume, page
Sandage, A. & Tamman, G. A. 1993, Hyperspectral analysis of plant stress responses, Journal of Plant Image Science, 41, 110-116
Author (last name, initials), year, title of book (location of publisher: publisher), page or first page-last page
Chandrasekhar, S. 1942, Principles of Plant Imaging (New York: Dover), pp.242-255
Author (last name, initials), year, title of paper, title of book, ed. publisher name (location of publisher: publisher), page
Huchra, J. P. 1986, Hyperspectral imaging in precision agriculture, Plant Imaging Technologies, eds. E. W. Kolb et al. (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press), p.65
Author (last name, initials), year, in series name, title of book, ed. publisher name (location of publisher: publisher), volume, page
Holmberg, E. 1975, in Plant Science Methods, Computer Vision in Agriculture, eds. A. Sandage & J. Kristian (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press), vol.9, p.123
Author, year, title of thesis/dissertation, institution
Burstein, D. 1976, Automated plant phenotyping using machine learning, PhD Thesis, University of California: Santa Cruz
Hong, W. & Park, H. 2004, technical document of a science institute (Hyperspectral Camera Calibration Results), PIS-TM-2004-011
Hong, W. 2000, private communication Burstein, D. 1976, private communication
Citing a general website article with an author Author, A. A. Year, Month Date of Publication, Article title. Retrieved from URL
Anonymous, Article title, Year, Month Date of Publication, Retrieved from URL
Author, A. A. Publication Year, Article title. Periodical Title, Volume(Issue), pp-pp. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx or Retrieved from journal URL
Papers in publication or that are in preparation for publication shall be marked “in press”, “submitted”, and “in preparation”.
If there are 2 or more authors, put “&” before the last author. If there are 3 or more authors, put a comma before “&”. : Hale, J. R., Tayler, R. J., & Suwart, K. R. 1993, . . .
The title of the journal shall be summarized according to the general standard of the SCI academic journals.
Write the volume in Arabic numerals for journal articles, and as “vol.2” for books in series.
All equations shall be centered.
Mark all equations with the serial number (1), (2), … on the right side of the page.
When citing equations, mark them with Eq. (3), Eqs. (3,5), Eqs. (3-6).
To mark vectors, write the text in bold instead of using arrows above the text.
Do not write a title for an equation.
Do not use vertical lines in any of the tables, but use only horizontal lines.
All tables shall have the serial number in Arabic numerals, which shall be used to mark “Table 1” or “Tables 1 and 2” when making a citation.
All tables shall have a brief title. The title shall be located above the table, and have a period at the end.
Tables shall be centered. When organized with the text, they shall be located at the top or bottom of the page.
All horizontal lines of tables shall be used at the bottom section above the table column heading and last section in single lines.
Each column heading shall be in simple words and the first letter capitalized.
When necessary, footnotes can be used under the table using Arabic numerals in superscripts.
Unit symbols are to be included not on the body of the table, but on the column headings.
Do not put special effects such as shading on the tables.
All figures shall have the serial number in Arabic numerals, “Fig. 1” or “Figs. 1 and 2” or “Figs. 1-5” when making a citation.
All figures shall have adequate captions containing the explanations of the contents, lines and symbols to improve understanding. Put figure captions below the figures and align text on both sides.
Figures as well as texts in the figures shall meet the resolution requirement of 600dpi and above.
Texts in the figures shall be as close to 11pt font size as possible when printed so that they match the main text.
Figures shall be done in black and white printing. But if color printing is required, this is allowed on the assumption that the author covers the additional costs.
All graphs shall have borders on all four sides, and a clear indication of the name of each axis, numbers and units. For other general figures (schematic diagrams, flowcharts, etc.), borders are not required.
When forming a single figure by combining multiple figures, put captions such as (a), (b), (c) clearly inside the figure.
For photographic data, the original shall be submitted if good results are not available with half-tone printing. In this case, the author is required to cover the additional printing cost.
All figures shall be submitted in electronic files.
If figures are submitted separately from the main text, they shall be labeled with a file name and the serial number for figures at the bottom of figure printing.
All figures shall be centered. When organized with the text, they shall be located at the top or bottom of the page.
Abbreviations shall be given in full names when mentioned for the first time. The full names shall be included once again in the main text even if the abstract has already mentioned them.
Example: Hyperspectral Imaging System (HSI)
Symbols of elements shall be written in Roman type and not italicized.
SI units and standard agricultural units shall be used in common abbreviations (cm, m, km, nm, μm, ha, kg, etc.).
All sentences shall not begin with symbols or numbers.
The references cited in the main text shall precisely match the list of references.
The basic publication fee is $ 200.
The publication fee is subject to change without prior notification based on decisions made by the board according to the circumstances of PIS.
The publication fee shall be deposited into the designated account within 7 days after receiving the invoice. If the publication fee is not paid, the relevant author (as well as co-authors) may be deprived of submission rights in the future.
These guidelines for journal submissions shall be published in PIS to remind the members.
These guidelines are to be posted on the PIS website for easy access and reference by the members.
Manuscripts that do not conform to the guidelines designated by PIS will be promptly returned to the authors, along with a reminder of these guidelines.
PIS has an online submission and peer review system available through the PIS website (https://www.plantimagescience.org/).
All manuscripts received by PIS undergo review. Initially, each manuscript is assessed for format compliance and alignment with the journal’s aims and scope. If the manuscript meets these two criteria, it is assigned to at least two reviewers with relevant expertise in the field.
PIS follows a double-blind review process, ensuring that both the reviewers and authors remain anonymous to each other. The authors’ names and affiliations are removed during peer review.
Once the manuscript is sent to reviewers, PIS awaits assessments from at least two reviewers. In addition, if deemed necessary, assessment of statistical analysis in the paper by a statistical expert may be required. The acceptance criteria for all papers are based on the quality, originality, and scientific significance of the research. The acceptance of the manuscript is decided based on the critiques and decision recommendations from the reviewers.
An initial decision will typically be made within 4 weeks of receiving a manuscript, and the reviewers’ comments are sent to the corresponding author by e-mail. The corresponding author must indicate the revisions made in response to the reviewers’ comments item by item. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 4 weeks of the editorial decision is regarded as a withdrawal. A final decision on acceptance/rejection for publication is then communicated to the corresponding author by the editor.
All manuscripts from editors, employees, or members of the editorial board are processed in the same manner as other unsolicited manuscripts. During the review process, the authors will not engage in the decision process. Editors will not handle their own manuscripts even if they are commissioned manuscripts.
We do not guarantee acceptance without review, nor do we promise very short peer review times for unsolicited manuscripts. Commissioned manuscripts are also reviewed before publication.