Obviously you can. You know that, there's lot of use of a single plant species. You may use same plant extract to a variety of test agents to check the bioefficacy of this plant. You may test your plant extract as antifungal, antibacterial, antiviral, molluskicidal, insecticidal, pesticidal etc. agent . You can publish your works separately for each of the tests. You may also publish your works combined 0f 2/3 tests. It's up to you. And it indicates the weight of your paper.

I think, bio-activity of the same plant species can only be published if that species occur as morphotype/cytotype/ polyploid, and have different/additional bio-activity than the already published.

One plant specimen may have many reported medicinal use. Then different types of study may be performed to validate each of those claims. In such case, the scientist may publish each category of research separately.

Thanks.

Obviously you can. You know that, there's lot of use of a single plant species. You may use same plant extract to a variety of test agents to check the bioefficacy of this plant. You may test your plant extract as antifungal, antibacterial, antiviral, molluskicidal, insecticidal, pesticidal etc. agent . You can publish your works separately for each of the tests. You may also publish your works combined 0f 2/3 tests. It's up to you. And it indicates the weight of your paper.

When you ask "of the same plant specimen", do you mean that (a) the experimental data derived from an indivdual replicate plant is used in 3 separate publications?, or (b) 3 different bioactivity responses are derived for extracts from the species of interest and published separately?

I would think (a) feels like multiple publication which tends towards inappropriate academic activity. While (b) is somewhat more legitimate, there may still be the impression of excessive publication simply to boost one's publication numbers.

Surely an author would rather write a single paper on a plant species that has anti-bacterial/viral/etc properties and report the multiple experiments in a (reputable) journal somewhere, than prepare a series of single-experiment papers across multiple low-reputation journals that would eventually trigger a self-plagiarism alert?

Dear Matthew Wheal

Lets say one author has already published his/her work on a journal using a title "antibacterial activities of Mango"

Can I use the same title to publish my own data for the same plant or do I have to alter the title a bit?

You have to take into account the one author's work (cite it), then state where it is wrong, deficit, inadequate or just different. Then show how you are going to fill the gap in your own work.

Possible titles would be

"Antibacterial activities of Mango refuted" or

"Antibacterial activities of Indonesian Mango"

"Antibacterial activities of Mango skins"

"Antibacterial activities of Mangos explained"

Climate and soil from region to another may influence plant activities and phytochemical constituents.