Authors may suggest potential reviewers for their paper in the letter of submission, but the journal will usually regard such suggestions as a guide only and is under no obligation to follow them. Authors may also specify the names of those they wish to be excluded from the review process for a particular paper; in such cases their wishes are usually respected, unless, of course, in the opinion of the journal such a request unreasonably excludes all the expertise available to it in that scientific area.
Handling of papers
Copies of submitted papers are sent simultaneously to a selected Adviser (or, occasionally, to another independent reviewer) and to a relevant Editor. The Adviser (or other reviewer) assesses the paper and sends a report directly to the Editor by a date stipulated by the editorial office. The Editor will, in the meantime, have reached an independent judgement and, on receipt of the report, compiles a combined editorial report based on both opinions. In some cases, Editors will seek further advice from other scientists, and the report then reflects the views of all consulted. If the Editor and Adviser disagree, even after direct discussion, a second Editor is asked for an opinion and, if need be, a further Adviser. This may also be done when review of a paper demands expertise in more than one field of biochemistry. All papers are therefore seen by at least two independent scientists, and sometimes by more. The time taken for review is monitored by the editorial office, so that the policy of the journal to give authors rapid decisions is sustained.
When a paper is judged to have scientific merit and thus to be basically acceptable, the editorial office sends an appropriate letter to the authors together with an editorial report containing comments for the authors' consideration. After revision by the author the paper is checked by an Editor before being finally prepared for press by the subeditors. After typesetting, proofs are supplied to authors (except for Accelerated Publications) for correction of printer's errors only. Information regarding the purchase of offprints will be provided on a form supplied with the proofs; no free offprints are available.
If a paper is to be declined, the reports and correspondence are seen by the Chairman or one of the Deputy Chairmen, who then writes an explanatory letter to the authors. Papers may be declined for several reasons. They may, in the opinion of the reviewers, be unsatisfactory scientifically in that the methodology is open to criticism or that the conclusions are not sufficiently supported by the evidence presented. They may contain material that is, in principle, of interest but which is not clearly expounded; many papers suffer from being overlong, with the result that the salient points are not as clear to the reader(s) as to the author(s). They may be sound but only of peripheral biochemical interest and thus of more relevance to another discipline. Finally, and often most contentiously, they may represent an insufficient advance in knowledge. It cannot be overemphasized that, because of pressure for space in the journal, scientific soundness alone is not sufficient reason for publication of a paper: it must represent a definite and significant contribution to the field of study. Thus, in general, preliminary or confirmatory papers, or those reporting the existence of well-known biochemical processes in sources not previously studied, will not be accepted.
The Chairman's, or Deputy Chairman's, letter will set out the reasons why a paper has been declined and will indicate whether this decision is a final one or whether suitable revision might improve the paper sufficiently for it to be reconsidered. In this latter instance, encouragement for resubmission does not imply that a revised version will necessarily be accepted. In all cases the decision of the Chairman of the Editorial Board will be final.
If a paper that is returned to the authors for amendment, for whatever reason, is not resubmitted within 3 months (1 month for Accelerated Publications) it will be treated as a new paper and the date of receipt will be altered to the date of resubmission.
It is accepted that the reviewers may from time to time come to decisions that are not easily accepted by authors. This may be because of a conflict of opinion or, for example, and as frequently happens, because the authors' point is felt by the reviewers to be obscured by the presentation. The journal is always willing to hear from authors and to consider their views sympathetically. Appeals against decisions will always be considered by the Editorial Board. In rare cases, and if the reviewers and the Chairman agree, the usual anonymity of the reviewers may be set aside to allow discussion between all parties concerned.
ONLINE SUBMISSION OF PAPERS
Submission of a paper to the Biochemical Journal implies that it has been approved by all the named authors, that all persons entitled to authorship have been so named, that it reports unpublished work that is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that conflicts of interest are declared and that if the paper is accepted for publication the authors will transfer to the Biochemical Society the copyright of the paper, which will then not be published elsewhere in the same form, in any language, without the consent of the Society. Authors will be required to sign an undertaking to these effects.
Easy Steps to submission as PDF
Step 1. Prepare the text in Microsoft Word 6.0 or a later version. Do not use Asian fonts as this will make your manuscript unreadable for reviewers. Use standard fonts such as Times or Times New Roman and symbol font for Greek and other special characters.
Step 2. Prepare graphics at publication quality resolution, using applications capable of generating high resolution TIFF or EPS files. Number each figure.
Step 3. Using Adobe Acrobat (see http://adobe.com/products/main.html for information), save your manuscript text and graphics in a single file in PDF format with one and a half line spacing. The PDF file should be printed and carefully reviewed before final submission. It is this version that is circulated on the Web for review. For detailed information on how to generate a PDF file go to http://www.biochemj.org/bj/submitpdf.htm. Step 4. After converting your manuscript text and figures to a single PDF file, carefully review a printed copy. Check file size (about 1 MB or less, but should not exceed 5 MB). If the file size exceeds 5 MB, please see http://www.biochemj.org/bj/submitpdf.htm for suggestions.
Step 5. Submit the necessary information using the submission template at the web site http://www.biochemj.org/submit. You will need:
- Contact information for the Submitting Author
- Information about the authors and the manuscript
- A cover letter
- The text and graphic PDF file for your manuscript with one and a half line spacing.
Submission not in PDF Format
If you cannot submit your manuscript as a PDF file, you may submit separate text and graphics files online. We will only accept the text of your manuscript as a Microsoft Word file created with MS Word 6.0 or a later version. Other word processing programs will not work for review. Do not use Asian fonts as this will make your manuscript unreadable for reviewers. Use standard fonts such as Times or Times New Roman and symbol font for Greek and other special characters. Do not embed figures in the text and be sure the number of the figure is visible in the figure. The MS Word and graphics files will be converted into a PDF file by the Editorial Office. However, you will be asked to approve the electronic version of the manuscript after the conversion to PDF. Carefully review a printed copy for changes in figures, formatting and symbols. A delay in review will occur if corrections are necessary because the manuscript must be resubmitted.
At this stage in the submission process we will accept graphics saved as TIFF, EPS, GIF, JPEG or BMP files. For graphics, we cannot accept certain application programs such as Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Access), Corel Perfect Office (WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations), Lotus SmartSuite (Freelance Graphics, 1-2-3, Approach, WordPro) and SigmaPlot. However, most of these applications will allow you to save graphics in one of the above formats.
General requirements
The main way in which authors can contribute to shortening the time between receipt and publication of a paper is to follow the requirements and suggestions in these Instructions to Authors, and to write in a concise style, although sufficient information must always be included to permit repetition of the experimental work and to support the conclusions that are drawn. Papers containing prolix or repetitive text or unnecessary Figures or Tables will always be returned for revision, with consequent delay in publication. Fragmentation of research into the `least publishable unit' should be avoided, and authors considering the submission of a series of papers on the same topic, which usually involves some degree of repetition, should consider whether appropriate combination of two or more papers could be achieved without loss of clarity of presentation.
The Biochemical Journal publishes papers in all fields of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology; therefore it is important that papers on specialized subjects should be written in such a way that their approach and conclusions are intelligible to the informed, but non-specialist, reader of the journal.
The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject papers that cannot adequately be assessed because of a poor standard of English.
Format of papers
Before preparing papers, authors should consult a current issue of the journal to make themselves familiar with the general format, such as the use of cross-headings, layout of Tables and citation of references.
The full title should be concise but informative enough for use in coding for information storage and retrieval; it should not contain abbreviations other than the accepted ones listed in Table 1. Papers should also be headed by the authors' names (with one forename in full for each author, other forenames being given as initials) and by the name and full postal address (including postal code) of the establishment(s) where the work was done. The e-mail address ot the corresponding author will be published, unless requested otherwise. If there is more than one establishment involved in the work, authors' names should be linked to the appropriate establishment by the use of symbols *, †, ‡, ¡ì, and ¶ in that order. A short (page heading) title of up to 75 characters (but not containing any abbreviations other than those listed in Table 1) should also be suggested.
Separate papers in a series should not be numbered, but subtitles may be used.
The synopsis should be of less than 250 words (60 words for Accelerated Publications) and normally only 3¨C4% of the length of the paper. It should be as informative as possible, but should not contain inessential details or material not described in the body of the paper. References quoted in the synopsis must be given in full (surnames of all authors, year of publication, name of journal, volume number, inclusive pagination), and must not form part of the numbered reference system. Up to six keywords, of which at least three do not appear in the title, should be provided.
The main body of the paper should be divided into: (a) introduction; (b) experimental, including materials and methods; (c) results, with appropriate quantification and statistical treatment of data; (d) discussion; (e) acknowledgements, including details of financial support and declarations of interest (if any); (f) numbered references; (g) Tables and Figures. It is often an advantage to combine (c) and (d) with gains of conciseness and clarity. The discussion section should not recapitulate the results, but only discuss their implications. The number of references should not normally exceed 50, and 20¨C30 references are frequently adequate.
Authors may find it helpful to know that a full page of text in the Biochemical Journal contains approximately 1200 words. When calculating the printed length of papers, allowance must be made for the space taken up by insertions such as Figures, Tables and Schemes, and this is best assessed by inspection of similar insertions in a recent copy of the journal. A quick method of estimating the printed text length of typescripts is to add the number of pages (including references, but not Figure or Table legends) to the number of Figures and Tables and divide the total by 4. This assumes double-spaced typing in A4 format with normal margins.
Procedure for submission
Types of paper
1. Research Papers are the normal form of publication, and may be of any length that is justified by their content. Authors should, however, note that no paper, whatever its scientific merits, will be accepted if it exceeds the minimum length required for precision in describing the experiments and clarity in interpreting them. As a guide, most Research Papers are of between six and eight printed pages. A concise well-written paper tends to be published more quickly. To allow the reviewers to assess possible overlap with previous work, all papers must be accompanied by duplicate copies of the author's relevant published work, including that on the WWW, and of all related papers that are in press or under editorial consideration in this or other journals. Failure to do so may seriously delay evaluation of the paper.
2. Accelerated Publications (APs) are short papers (normally no more than four printed pages) bringing particularly novel and significant findings to the attention of the research community. It is intended that a decision on acceptance or rejection will be made within 10 working days of receipt, and publication of accepted APs in an issue will follow within 2 months. APs receive full but accelerated reviewing. The criteria of `novelty and significance' are strictly enforced, and papers may be rejected solely on the grounds of lack of novelty and significance. APs are not a path to accelerated publication of sound but non-urgent material. Papers reporting nucleotide sequences only are not acceptable as APs.
APs should be arranged in the usual style for a Biochemical Journal paper (synopsis, introduction, methods, results and discussion, with sufficient experimental detail to permit repetition of the work) and should not normally be longer than four printed pages of the journal [about 4000 words (24000 characters) of uninterrupted text, including references, but this number should be decreased to allow for the space taken up by Figures and Tables]. Papers submitted as APs that clearly exceed this length will be treated as Research Papers and the authors informed. The online submission procedures outlined above for Research Papers should be followed. The covering letter must contain a brief statement of why it is believed that the paper merits accelerated treatment.
The first colour figure in an AP is published free of charge (a saving of ?00); subsequent colour figures in the same paper cost ?00 each
3. Reviews will usually be solicited, although unsolicited reviews will be considered for publication. Prospective authors should first consult the Reviews Editor, via the London or La Jolla editorial office, and should enclose a short (one page) summary of the area they propose to cover.
Submission checklist
¡¤ Covering letter (including justification for Accelerated Publications)
¡¤ Master electronic copy of typescript, as one one and a half-line-spaced PDF
o complete text in appropriate style, pages numbered
o names (including forenames) and addresses of authors
o name, address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address of corresponding author (all correspondence and proofs will be sent to this author)
o synopsis
o short (page heading) title
o keywords
o abbreviations footnote
o acknowledgements and declarations of interest (if any)
o checked references in the Numbering System
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) is included before the configurational symbol and separated therefrom by a hyphen. Between the symbol (abbreviated name) of one monosaccharide group or residue and the next are placed two locants that indicate the respective positions involved in this glycosidic union. These locants are separated by an arrow (directed from the locant corresponding to the glycosyl carbon atom to the locant corresponding to the carbon atom carrying the hydroxy group involved) and are enclosed in parentheses. The position of a branch is indicated above or below the main chain, with the numerals and an arrow indicating the glycosidic linkage:
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