Guide for Authors
Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications is the premier international journal devoted to the
very rapid dissemination of timely and significant experimental results in diverse fields of biological research. Research Areas now
include:
- Biochemistry
- Biophysics
- Cell Biology
- Developmental Biology
-
Immunology
- Molecular Biology
- Neurobiology
- Plant Biology
- Proteomics
Types of paper
BBRC accepts Short Communications and Mini-Reviews.
Contact details for submission
Papers should be submitted using the BBRC online submission system
http://ees.elsevier.com/bbrc. Authors who have questions regarding the electronic submission process should contact the Editorial Office prior to submission
(e-mail:
bbrc@elsevier.com; telephone: (619) 699-6857).
Page charges
This journal has no page charges.
Ethics in Publishing
For information on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication
see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
The work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance with
The Code of Ethics of
the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm;
EC Directive 86/609/EEC for animal experiments http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/s23000.htm;
Uniform Requirements
for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals http://www.nejm.org/general/text/requirements/1.htm. This must be
stated at the beginning of the Materials and Methods section.
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other
relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence,
or be perceived to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously
(except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication
elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was
carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any
other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or
acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual
content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.
Copyright
Upon
acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright
see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information.
An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'
form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles
including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution
outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions).
If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit
the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details
you are referred to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the
funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation
of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation
of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such
involvement then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Elsevier journals comply with current NIH public access policy
Funding
body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear
in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant
awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
https://languageediting.elsevier.com or our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com
for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside
vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms & Conditions:
http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.
Submission
Submission to this journal proceeds totally online and you will be guided stepwise through
the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is
used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF files at submission for the
review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of
the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail removing the need for a paper trail.
Peer Review Policy
The practice of peer review is to ensure that good science is published. It is an objective
process at the heart of good scholarly publishing and is carried out on all reputable scientific journals. Our Editorial Board therefore
plays a vital role in maintaining the high standards of BBRC while ensuring that it retains the speed of publication necessary for a
rapid communication journal.
Type of Peer Review
BBRC is a rapid communications journal. As such, the decision to publish
an article rests entirely with the handling Editor. Manuscripts are assigned to members of the Editorial Board based on expertise. This
Editor may accept the manuscript as it is, send it to a colleague for review, or reject it. Requests for revisions are rare. Should the
Editor request revisions, the manuscript will be treated as a new submission.
How long does the review process take?
Authors of manuscripts can expect an accept or reject decision normally within 2 weeks of receipt. Publication will then take place immediately
unless the author has, upon submission, requested an embargo.
Mini Reviews:
This section includes mini reviews, commentaries, and views on relevant subject matter, not simply short papers. Authors submitting a
manuscript for this section should, in a cover letter, indicate that they are "submitting a manuscript for the Mini Reviews section."
The authors of mini reviews may, if they wish, include a limited number of annotated references. Two hypothetical examples follow:
[1] J.Y. Smith, S.S. Doe, A novel retinoid-response gene set in vascular smooth muscle cells, J. Biol. 280 (2000) 5-8. [A very concise
review of recent findings.]
[2] J.Y. Black, R.J. Blue, Magnetic field exposure induces DNA degradation, Biol. Acta 120 (2001) 20-29.
[The first study presenting detailed information on the enzyme activity.]
Please submit your paper in Word Document format. Include a cover letter
with your submission to appear before the manuscript. It should be in letter format and address the submission to BBRC, including a brief
outline of the manuscript and why you think it is important to the readers of BBRC. The text of the manuscript should be in single-column
format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Please do not include any line numbers or running headers or footers such
as the manuscript title or corresponding author name. Please remove any "hidden edits" from your paper prior to submission by using track
changes then accept changes. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use
the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc.
Do not embed "graphically designed" equations or tables, but prepare these using the wordprocessor's facility. When preparing tables,
if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs,
not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also
the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication). Do not import the figures into the text
file but, instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text and on the manuscript. See also the section on
Electronic illustrations.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spell-check" and "grammar-check" functions
of your wordprocessor.
Manuscript size and length: Manuscripts should be
double-spaced throughout, with a minimum of 1-inch margins. The built PDF of the manuscript cannot exceed 3MB is size. The length of
the article when published will not exceed 6 printed journal pages, including all figures and tables. To achieve this, the submitted
article length must be no greater than 4,600 words and 4 figures (n.b. any figure larger than half a page will be counted as two figures).
The 4,600 word count includes the title page, all sections of the manuscript (including the references), and the figure and table legends.
Submissions should be organized as follows:
Cover letter
Title page
Manuscript text:
- Abstract → Keywords
- Introduction
- Materials and Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Figure/Table Legends
- Figures/Tables
- Supplementary Material
Article structure
Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate
background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
Material
and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated
by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described.
Results
Results should be clear and concise.
Discussion
This should explore
the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive
citations and discussion of published literature.
Conclusions
The
main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion
or Results and Discussion section.
Essential title page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae
where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name),
please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all
affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide
the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name, and, if available, the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also
post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address
and the complete postal address.
•
Present/permanent address.
If an author has moved since the work described
in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or "Permanent address") may be indicated as a footnote to
that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript
Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Abstract
A concise and factual
abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An
abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided,
but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential
they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
Keywords
Immediately
after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using American spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts
(avoid, for example, "and", "of"). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible.
These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
Abbreviations
Define
abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that
are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations
throughout the article.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a
separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote
to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing
assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
Accession numbers
Accession
numbers are unique identifiers in bioinformatics allocated to nucleotide and protein sequences to allow tracking of different versions
of that sequence record and the associated sequence in a data repository [e.g., databases at the National Center for Biotechnical Information
(NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine ('GenBank') and the Worldwide Protein Data Bank]. There are different types of accession numbers
in use based on the type of sequence cited, each of which uses a different coding. Authors should explicitly mention the
type of
accession number together with the actual number, bearing in mind that an error in a letter or number can result in a dead link
in the online version of the article. Please use the following format: accession number type ID: xxxx (e.g., MMDB ID: 12345; PDB ID:
1TUP). Note that in the final version of the
electronic copy, accession numbers will be linked to the appropriate database,
enabling readers to go directly to that source from the article.
Standards for
Reporting Enzymology Data (STRENDA)
This journal follows the recommendations of the STRENDA (
Standards for
Reporting
Enzymology
Data) Commission of the Beilstein-Institut for the reporting of kinetic and equilibrium binding data. Detailed
guidelines can be found at (
http://www.strenda.org/documents.html) or in this
pdf
file.
All reports of kinetic and binding data must include a description of the identity of the catalytic or binding entity (enzyme,
protein, nucleic acid or other molecule). This information should include the origin or source of the molecule, its purity, composition,
and other characteristics such as post-translational modifications, mutations, and any modifications made to facilitate expression or
purification. The assay methods and exact experimental conditions of the assay must be fully described if it is a new assay or provided
as a reference to previously published work, with or without modifications. The temperature, pH and pressure (if other than atmospheric)
of the assay
must always be included, even if previously published. In instances where catalytic activity or binding cannot be detected, an estimate of the limit of detection based on the sensitivity and error analysis of the assay should be provided. Ambiguous
terms such as "not detectable" should be avoided. A description of the software used for data analysis should be included along with
calculated errors for all parameters.
First-order and second-order rate constants: see
pdf
for full instructions.
Footnotes
Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number
them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors build footnotes into the text, and this
feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves
separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.
Table footnotes
Indicate each
footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.
Artwork
Electronic artwork
General points
• Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing
of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as "graphics" or enclose the font.
• Only use the following
fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions to illustrations separately.
•
Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure as a separate file.
A detailed guide
on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged
to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
Regardless of the application
used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please "save as" or convert the images to one of the following formats (note the resolution
requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings. Embed the font or save
the text as "graphics".
TIFF: color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line
drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a minimum of 500 dpi is required.
DOC, XLS or PPT: If your electronic artwork is created in any of these Microsoft Office applications please supply "as is".
Please
do not:
• Supply embedded graphics in your wordprocessor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
• Supply files that
are optimised for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.
Color
artwork
Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct
resolution. If, together with your accepted article, you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge,
that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations
are reproduced in color in the printed version.
For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs
from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. Please indicate your preference for color in print or on the Web only. For
further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please
note: Because of technical complications which can arise by converting color figures to "gray scale" (for the printed version should
you not opt for color in print) please submit in addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.
Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached
to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (
not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep
text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
Tables
Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the
table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that
the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
References
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference
cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full.
Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these
references are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution
of the publication date with either "Unpublished results" or "Personal communication" Citation of a reference as "in press" implies that
the item has been accepted for publication.
Web references
As a minimum,
the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names,
dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference
list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.
References in a special issue
Please ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and
any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special Issue.
Reference
style
Text: Indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors can be
referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given.
Example: "..... as demonstrated [3,6]. Barnaby and Jones [8] obtained
a different result ...."
List: Number the references (numbers in square brackets) in the list in the order in which they
appear in the text.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
[1] J. van der Geer, J.A.J. Hanraads, R.A. Lupton,
The art of writing a scientific article, J. Sci. Commun. 163 (2000) 51-59.
Reference to a book:
[2] W. Strunk Jr., E.B. White,
The Elements of Style, third ed., Macmillan, New York, 1979.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] G.R. Mettam, L.B.
Adams, How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: B.S. Jones, R.Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age, E-Publishing
Inc., New York, 1999, pp. 281-304.
You must also list a minimum of 3 authors
associated with a cited work before using "et al." in each of your references.
Journal abbreviations source
Journal names should be abbreviated according to
Index Medicus journal abbreviations:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html;
List of serial title word abbreviations:
http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php;
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service):
http://www.cas.org/sent.html.
Supplementary
and multimedia data
Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary and multimedia data to support and enhance your scientific
research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences,
high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the
electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order
to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data are provided in one of our recommended file formats.
Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each
file. Video files: please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or make a separate image. These will
be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your supplementary information. For more detailed instructions please
visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Submission checklist
It is hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending
it to the journal's Editor for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the
following items are present:
One Author designated as corresponding Author:
• E-mail address
• Full postal
address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been "spellchecked"
and "grammar-checked"
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference
list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources
(including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge)
and in print or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the
Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please
visit our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com.
Use of the Digital Object Identifier
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to
a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium
for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The
correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.
Post acceptance, please wait to make necessary minor corrections until the receipt of page proofs from our
Production department. One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author. Elsevier now sends
PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and
return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark
the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and scan the pages and e-mail.
Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant
changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do
everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections
are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be
guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response
is received.
For inquiries relating to the submission
of articles (including electronic submission where available) please visit this journal's homepage. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed. Also
accessible from here is information on copyright, frequently asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance
of an article, especially those relating to proofs, will be provided by the publisher.
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