About BMC Biology

This page includes information about the aims and scope of BMC Biology, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Scope

BMC Biology is the flagship biology journal of the BMC series, publishing peer-reviewed research and methodology articles of special importance and broad interest in any area of biology, as well as reviews, opinion pieces, comment and Q&As on topics of special or topical interest.

Re-review opt-out In response to widespread frustration with delays to publication through iterative reviewing, we give our authors a choice (more information).

Editorial team

Editor

Miranda Robertson

Deputy Editors

Penelope Austin

Ann Le Good

Senior Editor

Kester Jarvis

Editorial Coordinator

Alice Plane

Assistant Editor

Shannon Harper

Production Staff

Luke Prescott

Tim Wakeford

Open access

All articles published by BMC Biology are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in BMC Biology are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. BMC Biology therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1515/$2410/€1900 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

All articles published in BMC Biology are included in:

• Biological Abstracts
• BIOSIS
• CABI
• CAS
• Citebase
• Embase
• EmBiology
• Global Health
• Google Scholar
• Index Copernicus
• MEDLINE

• OAIster
• PubMed
• PubMed Central
• Science Citation Index
• Science Citation Index Expanded
• SCImago
• Scirus
• Scopus
• SOCOLAR
• Zetoc
• Zoological Record

The full text of all research articles is deposited in digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

BMC Biology is tracked by Thomson Reuters (ISI)and has an Impact Factor of 5.75.

Publication and peer review process

Research papers submitted to BMC Biology are assessed by a dedicated in-house staff in consultation with an Editorial Board of internationally respected scientists. Decisions on the suitability in principle of research submissions for BMC Biology are made before the paper is sent for review, and generally take two to four working days. Decisions on papers sent for peer review normally take no longer than four weeks, and can be accelerated in some circumstances. BMC Biology operates a re-review opt-out policy aimed at providing the benefits of rigorous peer review while avoiding undue iterations.

The re-review opt-out policy of BMC Biology

To minimize frustration and delay to authors, and help maximize the efficiency of peer review, BMC Biology offers authors who are asked to make revisions before a final decision is taken on their papers the opportunity to choose whether the paper is seen again by referees.

Essential features of our policy are as follows:

• All submitted research articles are subjected to immediate rapid screening by the editors, in consultation with the Editorial Board or others working in the field as appropriate, to ensure they are likely to be of the level of interest and importance appropriate for the journal. Contributors who are in doubt about the suitability of their manuscript may send a presubmission enquiry.

• Papers considered appropriate in principle for the journal are then sent to referees who are asked only whether the data are adequate to support the conclusions. At least one referee will usually be selected from those nominated by the author.

• Every effort is made by the editors to clarify differences of opinion between referees, and resolve disputes between authors and referees, in consultation with the Editorial Board, before decisions are made on publication.

• Where referees advise that the paper must be revised, with additional information, analysis, or experimental data, before a decision can be made, the authors will be requested to meet the referees’ criticisms and may choose whether the revised paper is seen again by the referees.

• Where authors choose not to go back to referees on revision, the editors will assess the revisions and the authors’ responses to the referees.

• Where authors would prefer that referees are consulted on their revisions, but are anxious to avoid delay to publication, the referees will be asked to comment again within a week, after which the editors will if necessary make a decision without their input.

Every effort is made to give a clear account of the reasons for each decision.

Submissions to BMC Biology may include large datasets, as well as large numbers of illustrations and moving pictures where these are necessary or desirable to substantiate the conclusions of the paper. Tabular data may be displayed in a form that can be read directly by other software packages (e.g. statistical programs), and relevant links (e.g. to PubMed, sequences, or other papers available on the web) may be included.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My BMC Biology, a personalized section of the site.

Portability of peer review

In order to support efficient and thorough peer review, we aim to reduce the number of times a manuscript is re-reviewed after rejection from BMC Biology, thereby speeding up the publication process and reducing the burden on peer reviewers. Therefore, please note that, if a manuscript is not accepted for publication in BMC Biology and the authors choose to submit a revised version to another BioMed Central journal, we will pass the reviews on to the other journal's editors at the authors' request. We will reveal the reviewers' names to the handling editor for editorial purposes unless reviewers let us know when they return their report that they do not wish us to share their report with another BioMed Central journal.

Copyediting and proofs

All articles published in BMC Biology are copyedited before publication of the final version.

Articles published in BMC Biology are published immediately on acceptance in the form of a provisional PDF. Copyedited and fully formatted PDF and full-text (HTML) versions are made available shortly after that.

Edited versions will be sent by email and corrections should be returned within two working days. Please provide a typed list of corrections clearly indicating where the corrections should be made and please send this list by email.

The editing is designed only to correct such things as misused words, spelling errors, missing references or incomplete citation information.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

BMC Biology will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Information on duplicate/overlapping publications can be found here. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Correspondence concerning articles published in BMC Biology is encouraged. A 'post a comment' feature is available on all articles published by BMC Biology. Comments will be moderated by the editorial office (see our Comment policy for further information) and linked to the full-text version of the article, if suitable.

Editorial standards

BioMed Central is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and endorses the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions.

Ethical guidelines

Submission of a manuscript to BMC Biology implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be made available if requested by the editorial staff.

For research carried out on animals, authors are encouraged to comply with the "Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments" (ARRIVE) guidelines and must comply with local or institutional ethics approval requirements on the care and use of animals for research. A statement detailing such ethics approval and/or guidelines must be included in the Methods section. Relevant information should be included in the appropriate section of the article as outlined in the guidelines.

BMC Biology's publisher, BioMed Central, has a legal responsibility to ensure that its journals do not publish material that infringes copyright, or that includes libellous or defamatory content. If, on review, your manuscript is perceived to contain potentially libellous content the journal Editors, with assistance from the publisher if required, will work with authors to ensure an appropriate outcome is reached.

The involvement of scientific (medical) writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding, as described in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) guidelines on the role of medical writers in developing peer-reviewed publications. If medical writers are not listed among the authors, their role should be acknowledged explicitly.

Standards of reporting

BMC Biology supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of biomedical research. We recommend authors refer to the EQUATOR network website for further information on the available reporting guidelines for health research, and the MIBBI Portal for prescriptive checklists for reporting biological and biomedical research where applicable. Authors are requested to make use of these when drafting their manuscript and peer reviewers will also be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating these studies. Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including randomized controlled trials (CONSORT), systematic reviews (PRISMA), observational studies (STROBE), meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE), diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD) and qualitative studies (RATS). For authors of systematic reviews, an additional file, linked from the Methods section, should reproduce all details concerning the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.

Standardised gene nomenclature should be used throughout. Human gene symbols and names can be found in the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) database and any enquiries, or requests for new gene symbols, should be directed via email to hgnc@genenames.org. Nomenclature committees for other species are listed at http://www.genenames.org/about/faq#otherspecies. For mutation nomenclature please use the guidelines suggested by the Human Genome Variation Society.

Data and materials release

Submission of a manuscript to BMC Biology implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Nucleotide sequences

Nucleotide sequences can be deposited with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL/EBI) Nucleotide Sequence Database, or GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information).

Protein sequences

Protein sequences can be deposited with SwissProt or the Protein Information Resource (PIR).

The accession numbers of any nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided, in square brackets with the corresponding database name; for example, [EMBL:AB026295, EMBL:AC137000, DDBJ:AE000812, GenBank:U49845, PDB:1BFM, Swiss-Prot:Q96KQ7, PIR:S66116].

The databases for which we can provide direct links are: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL), DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), GenBank at the NCBI (GenBank), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Protein Information Resource (PIR) and the Swiss-Prot Protein Database (Swiss-Prot).

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry data should be supplied in the mzML format recommended by the HUPO Protein Standards Initiative Mass Spectrometry Standards Working Group guidelines (http://www.psidev.info/index.php?q=node/80). We also recommend that the data is deposited in the ProteomeExchange (http://proteomexchange.org/) through the PRIDE website (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/), and protein interaction data can be submitted to members of the IMEx consortium (http://www.imexconsortium.org/submit-your-data).

Structures

Protein structures can be deposited with one of the members of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids structures can be deposited with the Nucleic Acid Database at Rutgers. Crystal structures of organic compounds can be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.

Chemical structures and assays

Structures of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem Substance. Bioactivity screens of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem BioAssay.

Functional genomics data (such as microarray, RNA-seq or ChIP-seq data)

Where appropriate, authors should adhere to the standards proposed by the Functional Genomics Data Society and must deposit microarray data in MIAME-compliant format in one of the public repositories, such as ArrayExpress or Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Deposition of high-throughput functional genomics sequencing data (such as RNA-Seq or ChIP-Seq data) with ArrayExpress or GEO in compliance with MINSEQE is also required.

Computational modeling

We encourage authors to prepare models of biochemical reaction networks using the Systems Biology Markup Language and to deposit the model with the BioModels database, as well as submitting it as an additional file with the manuscript.

Plasmids

We encourage authors to deposit copies of their plasmids as DNA or bacterial stocks with Addgene, a non-profit repository, or PlasmID, the Plasmid Information Database at Harvard.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should, in the first instance, contact the Editor who will provide details of the journal's complaints procedure.

Competing interests

BMC Biology requires authors to declare any competing financial or other interest in relation to their work. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

Plagiarism detection

BMC Biology's publisher, BioMed Central, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In cases of suspected plagiarism CrossCheck is available to the editors of BMC Biology to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. CrossCheck is a multi-publisher initiative allowing screening of published and submitted content for originality.

Citing articles in BMC Biology

Articles in BMC Biology should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. BMC Biol [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. BMC Biol 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in BMC Biology?

High visibility

BMC Biology's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

BMC Biology offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through BMC Biology and BioMed Central.

Flexibility

Online publication in BMC Biology gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in BMC Biology are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on BMC Biology's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in BMC Biology may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in BMC Biology. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in BMC Biology retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.