Fitoterapia

The Journal for the Study of Medicinal Plants

Fitoterapia is a Journal dedicated to medicinal plants and fungi and to the bioactive natural products produced by these organisms. It publishes original contributions in seven major areas:

1. Chemical characterization of active ingredients of medicinal plants and fungi, including their endophytes
2. New analytical approaches for dereplication and standardization of biologically active extracts and metabolites from plant resources
3. Identification of bioactivity in plant and fungal extracts and in their constituents
4. Identification of biological targets and mechanism of activity of plant and fungal extracts
5. Production and genomic characterization of medicinal plants biomass
6. Biosynthesis of bioactive natural products of plant, fungi and endophytic origin
7. Critical reviews of the composition, history, clinical and legal status of medicinal plants, and accounts on topical issues.

Contributions reporting the following are NOT normally considered for publication:
1. Activity data on crude extracts that have not been characterized by analysis of their major constituents (HPLC fingerprint, LC/MS or NMR). Data on the extract composition simply taken from the literature are not acceptable. Characterization of only a few constituents is generally considered too partial.
2. Studies on the bioactivity of pure compounds purchased or obtained by Authors without any study or relationship with the producing organism.
3. Unexceptional and predictable bioactivity (e.g. antioxidant properties of phenolics or antibacterial activity of essential oils).
4. Uncritical ethnopharmacological investigations, where a list of plants and their use are simply recorded.
5. Genomic, transcriptomic and pharmacological studies without convincing wet lab experiments, or with little correlation to bioactive natural compounds.

In addition, the following immediate rejection criteria apply:
RULE 1: The manuscript does not fall into any of the areas of interest of the Journal.
RULE 2: The manuscript is too preliminary, reporting e.g. activity data without comparison to a reference, or without a positive control.
RULE 3: The botanical source is not clearly identified, authenticated, and documented (voucher).
RULE 4: Characterization of new compounds without spectral supporting material.
RULE 5: Bioactivity is not relevant to in vivo situations.
RULE 6: Reviews on topics already covered in the recent literature.