Information for Authors
Journal of Biosciences
Journal of Biosciences is an Open Access journal. Full texts of all articles are available at https://www.ias.ac.in/listing/issues/jbsc
There are no submission, publication, or colour figure charges. Papers are available as portal document format (pdf) files online only and not as reprints, except in the case of Special Issues when they may be printed based on demand.
Submission of a manuscript will be held to imply that the work reported in it is original, that the results have not been previously published (either in part or whole) and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere; and further, that if accepted, will not be published elsewhere. Manuscripts that are not written in clear and understandable English are liable to be returned for re-writing even if they may be publishable on the basis of their scientific content.
Please read the PACT FORM before submission.
Authors should upload the electronic versions of their manuscripts via the Editorial Manager / eBiosciences at http://www.editorialmanager.com/jbsc/
Text and figure legends should be uploaded as a single Word doc, docx or LaTeX file in single column, double spaced and with line numbering throughout. Pages should have at least 2.5 cm margins on all sides, and text should not be right-justified. Images and figures should be attached as separate files either as .jpg, .pdf or .tiff files (600 dpi). See more information on Figures and Images below.
Journal of Biosciences does not consider manuscripts that have been previously published. Posting to a preprint server, such as BioRxiv, Authorea, Open Science Framework, and Research Square, is not considered prior publication. Posting a manuscript to a preprint server while under review is allowed up until the point of acceptance.
In the cover letter, authors are invited to suggest names, addresses and email IDs of three experts who in their opinion can review the paper. The reason for the choice of each referee should be clearly indicated. The final choice of referees will, however, remain with the editorial board.
Title Page
The names of authors with initials and their institutional affiliations, and addresses, must be provided. The email address of the corresponding author should be given.
The journal ‘strongly recommends’ provision of ORCID IDs of all the authors, although this is not mandatory. Provision of ORCID IDs will help in quick processing of the article.
An abbreviated running title of not more than 50 characters (including spaces) must also be provided.
Abstract
Papers must have an abstract of not more than 200 words summarizing the significant results reported. The abstract must not contain unexplained abbreviations or references. Results must be written in the past tense. Speculation should be kept to a minimum.
Keywords
Three to six keywords must be provided.
Text
The paper must be divided into sections, starting with Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and ending with Discussion. It should usually not be more than 10,000 words.
The main sections should be numbered 1, 2 etc.; the sub-sections 1.1, 1.2, etc., and further subsections (if necessary) 1.1.1, 1.1.2, etc. Please refer to latest published papers for details on formatting headings and subheadings.
All measurements should be given in SI units. Avoid numbers at the beginning of a sentence, but if you have to use them, spell them out.
Taxonomic affiliation such as Phylum, Order and Family as well as the common name of the main study organism should be given in the title or at the first mention unless such information is likely to be obvious to a broad range of biologists. Scientific names of genera and species should be in italics. Authority for names of taxa (not common model taxa such as Drosophila) should be cited at the first mention of a taxon in the text, but not elsewhere. Accepted common names of plants and animals (and other organisms) and of plant and animal or other diseases should neither be capitalized nor placed within quotation marks.
Words and phrases not of English origin and not in common use, e.g. in vitro, in situ, should be in italics.
Provide the full gene or protein name followed by its symbol in parentheses upon first usage (e.g., huntingtin gene (HTT)). Always use standard gene names and symbols, which can be found in standard databases (e.g., human: www.genenames.org; rat: rgd.mcw.edu; mouse: www.informatics.jax.org; zebrafish: zfin.org; flies: flybase.org; worms: www.wormbase.org). Symbols for genes are italicized (e.g., IGF1), whereas symbols for proteins are not italicized (e.g., IGF1). Italicize the first three letters of enzymes (EcoRI, BamHI).
Use SI units for all quantities (cm, g, etc.). For chemical nomenclature and symbols follow standards of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
Tables
All tables must be numbered consecutively in arabic numerals in the order of appearance in the text.
Tables should be self-contained and have a descriptive title. Tables must be double-spaced. Tables may contain footnotes to explain details. Footnotes should be referenced by italicised superscripts such as a, b, c, etc. in the table.
Figures and Photographs
All figures should be numbered consecutively in arabic numerals in the order of appearance in the text.
Images should be sharp, of high contrast, with an embedded scale bar.
The preferred figure formats are EPS for vector graphics exported from a drawing program and TIFF for grey-scale illustrations. For vector graphics, employed fonts must be embedded in the files. Save colour illustrations as RGB in TIFF format. In some cases, JPG and PDF formats at high resolution are also acceptable.
Use fonts such as Arial or Helvetica for figure axis labels and numerics. Use the same font for all figures in the manuscript.
To prepare acceptable figures, reduce your figures to the size at which you would want them to be printed and determine that the axis labels and numerals are clearly visible at that size, and that the resolution of the figure is optimal without any blurring. Avoid crowding of multiple sub-figures within a single figure. If possible, ensure that your colour figures meet colour-blind standards by using available colour blindness simulators.
Figures that do not meet minimum standards may cause rejection of the manuscript without review.
Acknowledgements
This section should give due credit to all legitimate contributions by persons and institutions to this work. Please avoid gratuitous statements.
Funding
List all funding sources for this work.
Conflict of interest
Authors must disclose, at submission, any association that poses or could be perceived as a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript.
Author contributions
In this section, the authors must clearly state their individual role in the manuscript, e.g. conceptualisation, collecting data, data analysis, obtaining funding, and writing manuscript.
It is recommended that authors follow the Credit Attribution scheme available in https://casrai.org/credit/. This CRediT Taxonomy will allow for greater detail and uniformity in providing the roles of each author in the paper.
Journal of Biosciences does not allow addition or deletion of authors, or change in author order once the manuscript has been submitted. Any such change, except due to extreme circumstances such as the demise of an author, will result in rejection of the manuscript.
References
References should be cited in the text by author and year, not by number. If there are more than two authors in a paper, reference should be made to the first author followed by et al. in the text. List papers in chronological and not alphabetical order within parentheses (Zachary and Brown 1998; Pendel et al. 2012; Xu and Chang 2021).
Please click on the following link to download the style template file in Endnote to prepare the references: References Style File (Endnote Software). Please refer to recent papers in the journal for reference style or use the provided style template file. Use journal abbreviations provided in Web of Science.
References at the end of the paper should be listed alphabetically by authors' names, followed by initials, year of publication, full title of the paper, name of the journal, volume number, initial and final page numbers. If there are more than 5 authors in a paper, gives the names of the first 5 and follow by et al. in the citation
References to books should include: name(s) of author(s), initial(s), year of publication, title of the book, edition if not the first, initials and name(s) of editor(s) if any, preceded by ed(s), place of publication, publisher, and pages referred to.
References to theses must include the year, the title of the thesis, the degree for which submitted and the university.
Examples:
Hong-Goka BC and Chang FL 2004 Estrogen receptors alpha and beta in choroid plexus epithelial cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Neurosci. Lett. 360 113–116
Peiter E, Fischer M, Sidaway K, Roberts SK and Sanders D 2005a Multiple RNA surveillance pathways limit aberrant expression of iron uptake mRNAs and prevent Iron toxicity in S. cerevisiae. Mol. Cell 19 39–51
Ramanna MS and Hermsen JHTh 1979 Genome relationships in tuber-bearing Solanums; in Biology and taxonomy of Solanaceae (eds) JG Hawkes, RN Lester and AG Skelding (London: Academic Press) pp 647–654
Samiwala EB 1987 DNA cloning in Haemophilus influenzae, PhD thesis, University of Bombay, Bombay
Zar JH 1974 Biostatistical analysis (New Jersey: Prentice Hall)
Supplementary Figures and Tables
Additional information and analysis can be provided in Supplementary Figures and Tables which should be numbered in the order that they are referred to in the text.
Supplementary figures and tables should be numbered and cited as follows: Supplementary figure 1A-D, 2, 3, etc.; Supplementary table 1, 2, etc.
Review Articles
Both mini-reviews (approximately 1000–1500 words and no more than 2 tables and/or illustrations) and full-length reviews (of no fixed length but not more than 12000 words, excluding the bibliography) are acceptable. Review articles are usually by invitation only. Alternatively, if an author wishes to write a review, she/he should contact the Editor-in-Chief, explaining clearly why such a review is necessary. Once a decision is made about the necessity and value of such a review, the author will be commissioned to write such a review, which will undergo the normal process of evaluation.
A review should be topical, sufficiently critical and comprehensive with regard to citations to the literature. It should draw attention to outstanding problems and take care to accommodate different points of view. It should stand out from other recently-published reviews on the same theme.
The format requirements for original research articles apply to reviews too.
Clipboards
Clipboards are short pieces (approximately 1000 words) that call attention to articles of particular note outside Journal of Biosciences. They are written only at the invitation of Editorial Board members and are peer-reviewed. Clipboards place these noteworthy articles in an overall context. A copy of the original publication should accompany the submission for the purposes of review.
Perspectives
Perspectives present a viewpoint on an important area of research. They are usually not more than 5000 words in length (not including the references). Perspectives focus on a specific field or subfield within a larger discipline and discuss current advances and future directions. Perspectives are of broad interest to non-specialists and may add personal insights to a field, but should be balanced and objective. Perspectives are written only at the invitation of Editorial Board members and are peer-reviewed. A proposal to write a Perspectives piece may be sent to the Editor-in-Chief who will consult with the Editorial Board about commissioning it.
Graphical Abstract
We encourage authors to submit Graphical Abstracts. This is not mandatory but, if submitted, must be of high quality and encapsulate the major findings. The same specifications as mentioned for preparation of figures will apply. Abstracts that do not meet expected standards will not be accepted. The graphical abstract will be displayed online in the Contents list of the article but will not appear in the article PDF file.
Graphical Abstracts should be uploaded as a separate, single high-resolution (600 dpi) image file, in .jpg format. The image must be labeled as “Graphical Abstract”.
