After the Biological and Biomedical Journal (BBJ) editor receives a manuscript, the first step is to confirm that the manuscript meets the journal’s rules for content and format, including similarity check (plagiarism) which should be less than 25%.
This journal uses a double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Each paper will review by two reviewers.
The journal does not charge subscription fees and does not allow advertising.
New submissions Submitted manuscripts are assigned to a handling Editor who is responsible for its evaluation. The Editor-in-Chief’s decision regarding publication is based on the reports of referees and the handling Editor’s recommendation, which will, at the Editor-in-Chief’s discretion, be transmitted to the authors.
Upon the first submission, this reviewing process takes about 4 to 6 weeks. After reading the peer reviewer's report, the editor will decide one of the following four options:
1- Reject the manuscript.
2- Accept the manuscript
3- Ask the authors to revise and resubmit the manuscript after responding to the peer reviewers’ feedback.
4- Ask for peer review from additional reviewers
Authors will be informed of the editorial decision, on average, within a month of submission of a Regular Paper. The status of your manuscript can be checked via email. The following information must be provided during the submission stage: • Names, institutions, and email addresses of all the co-authors. • Evidence of database submission • Approval of citation of any personal communications.
Revised submissions:
Please follow the instructions provided in the editorial decision letter. You will need to:
Any conflict of interest must be stated on the title page of the manuscript.
After Acceptance:
Accepted Articles in the Journal that have been peer-reviewed and accepted the copy-editing and proof correction process, or amended to Journal style. Graphics are sent as Proof
Proofs:
Page proofs will be sent electronically to the corresponding author, who will receive an e-mail alert containing a link to a secure website for the proofs. A working e-mail address must therefore be provided for the corresponding author. In the absence of the corresponding author, please arrange for a colleague to access the e-mail to retrieve the proofs. All authors have final responsibility for what is stated in the proofs of your manuscript. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editorial Office.
Copyright and Open Access Options
Copyright:
Once a paper is accepted, the corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting him/her to log into the link of the manuscript, they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper. The corresponding author may opt to either sign the copyright transfer agreement or publish the article with open access
Open Access Options:
Online Open is available to authors who wish to make their article immediately available via open access and access to all on BBJ Online Library, including those who don’t subscribe to the journal. BBJ will also submit the published article in INDEXING Central sites.
General Guidelines for Reviewers:
Manuscripts submitted to BBJ journals are reviewed by at least two experts, who can be volunteer reviewers or reviewers suggested by the academic editor during the preliminary check. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the editor on whether a manuscript should be accepted, requires revisions, or should be rejected.
Reviewers are invited to: accept or decline any invitations as soon as possible, suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined and request a deadline extension as soon as possible in case more time is required to provide a comprehensive report.
Potential Conflicts of Interest:
We ask reviewers to declare any potential conflicts of interest and email the journal Editorial Office if they are unsure if something constitutes a potential conflict of interest.
Reviewers should disclose any conflicts of interest that may be perceived as bias for or against the paper or authors.
Reviewers are also recommended to read the relevant descriptions in the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Declaration of Confidentiality:
Until the article is published, reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the Abstract, confidential. Reviewers should also be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.
Review Reports:
We have listed some general instructions regarding the review report for your consideration below.
To begin with, please consider the following guidelines:
Read the whole article as well as the supplementary material, if there is any, paying close attention to the figures, tables, data, and methods.
Your report should critically analyze the article as a whole but also specific sections and the key concepts presented in the article.
Please ensure your comments are detailed so that the authors may correctly understand and address the points you raise.
Reviewers must not recommend citation of work by themselves, close colleagues, another author, or the journal when it is not clearly necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript under review.
Reviewers must not recommend excessive citation of their work, another author’s work or articles from the journal where the manuscript was submitted as a means of increasing the citations of the reviewer/authors/journal. You can provide references as needed, but they must clearly improve the quality of the manuscript under review.
Please maintain a neutral tone and focus on providing constructive criticism that will help the authors improve their work. Derogatory comments will not be tolerated.
For further guidance on writing a critical review, please refer to the following documents:
COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Committee on Publication Ethics. Available online.
Hames, I. Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals: Guidelines for Good Practice. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, UK, 2007.
Writing a journal article review. Australian National University: Canberra, Australia, 2010. Available online.
Golash-Boza, T. How to write a peer review for an academic journal: Six steps from start to finish. Available online.
Review reports should contain the following:
A brief summary (one short paragraph) outlining the aim of the paper, its main contributions and strengths.
General concept comments:
Article: highlighting areas of weakness, the testability of the hypothesis, methodological inaccuracies, missing controls, etc.
Review: Comment on the completeness of the review topic covered, the relevance of the review topic, the gap in knowledge identified, the appropriateness of references, etc.
These comments are focused on the scientific content of the manuscript and should be specific enough for the authors to be able to respond.
Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures that point out inaccuracies within the text or sentences that are unclear. These comments should also focus on the scientific content and not on spelling, formatting or English language problems, as these can be addressed at a later stage by our internal staff.
General questions to help guide your review report for research articles:
Is the manuscript clear, relevant for the field and presented in a well-structured manner?
Are the cited references mostly recent publications (within the last 5 years) and relevant? Does it include an excessive number of self-citations?
Is the manuscript scientifically sound and is the experimental design appropriate to test the hypothesis?
Are the manuscript’s results reproducible based on the details given in the methods section?
Are the figures/tables/images/schemes appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand? Is the data interpreted appropriately and consistently throughout the manuscript? Please include details regarding the statistical analysis or data acquired from specific databases.
Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented?
Please evaluate the ethics statements and data availability statements to ensure they are adequate.
General questions to help guide your review report for review articles:
Is the review clear, comprehensive and of relevance to the field? Is a gap in knowledge identified?
Was a similar review published recently and, if yes, is this current review still relevant and of interest to the scientific community?
Are the cited references mostly recent publications (within the last 5 years) and relevant? Are any relevant citations omitted? Does it include an excessive number of self-citations?
Are the statements and conclusions drawn coherent and supported by the listed citations?
Are the figures/tables/images/schemes appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand?
During the manuscript evaluation, please rate the following aspects:
Novelty: Is the question original and well-defined? Do the results provide an advancement of the current knowledge?
Scope: Does the work fit the journal scope*?
Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses carefully identified as such?
Quality: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for presentation of the results used?
Scientific Soundness: Is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Is the data robust enough to draw conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results? Is the raw data available and correct (where applicable)?
Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (Please see the Aims and Scope of the journal.)
Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work advance the current knowledge? Do the authors address an important long-standing question with smart experiments? Do the authors present a negative result of a valid scientific hypothesis?
English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?
Manuscripts should only report results that have not been submitted or published before, even in part.
The studies reported should have been carried out in accordance with generally accepted ethical research standards.
Overall Recommendation:
Please provide an overall recommendation for the next processing stage of the manuscript as follows:
Accept in Present Form: The paper can be accepted without any further changes.
Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper can in principle be accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.
Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper may be rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.