The Open Biology Journal

Research articles should be of 4000-6000 words with 75 or more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables, etc.

The length of a published comprehensive review article is from 35000 to 40000 words with 100 or more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Systematic Reviews include systematic updates in review protocols, methods, research, and results from all relevant fields for any studies and updates on already published issues. The total number of words for a published systematic review is from 35000 to 40000 words with 100 or more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Letters should be 3000-6000 words with 40 or more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables, etc.

Section headings should be numbered sequentially, left aligned and have the first letter capitalized, starting with the introduction. Sub-section headings however, should be in lower-case and italicized with their initials capitalized. They should be numbered as 1.1, 1.2, etc.

The Introduction section should include the background and aims of the research in a comprehensive manner.

This section provides details of the methodology used along with information on any previous efforts with corresponding references. Any details for further modifications and research should be included.

Repeated information should not be reported in the text of an article. A calculation section must include experimental data, facts and practical development from a theoretical perspective.

Results should be precise.

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, and present reproducible procedure. Extensive citations and discussion of published literature should be avoided.

The Results and discussions may be presented individually or combined in a single section with short and informative headings.

A small paragraph summarizing the contents of the article, presenting the final outcome of the research or proposing further study on the subject, may be given at the end of the article under the Conclusion section.

All clinical investigations must be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki principles. Authors must comply with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ( www.icmje.org) with regard to the patient's consent for research or participation in a study.

Patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers must not be mentioned anywhere in the manuscript (including figures). Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study.

In addition to the standard patient consent for participation in research, authors are responsible for obtaining patient consent-to-disclose forms for all recognizable patients in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in the Journal, in derivative works, or on the journal's web site and for providing the manuscript to the recognizable patient for review before submission. The consent-to-disclose form should indicate specific use (publication in the medical literature in print and online, with the understanding that patients and the public will have access) of the patient's information and any images in figures or videos, and must contain the patient's signature or that of a legal guardian along with a statement that the patient or legal guardian has been offered the opportunity to review the identifying materials and the accompanying manuscript.

For research involving animals, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the standards set forth in the eighth edition of Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals(grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals_prepub.pdf; published by the National Academy of Sciences, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.).

A specific declaration of such approval and consent-to-disclose form must be made in the cover letter and in a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the Methods section especially in the case of human studies where inclusion of a statement regarding obtaining the written informed consent from each subject or subject's guardian is a must. The original should be retained by the guarantor or corresponding author. Editors may request to provide the original forms by fax or email.

Research work on animals should be carried out in accordance with the NC3Rs ARRIVE Guidelines. For In Vivo Experiments, visit https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines

Authors must clearly state the name of the approval committee, highlighting that legal and ethical approval was obtained prior to initiation of the research work carried out on animals, and that the experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations stated below.

• US authors should cite compliance with the US National Research Council's "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals"
• The US Public Health Service's "Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" and "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals"
• UK authors should conform to UK legislation under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 Amendment Regulations (SI 2012/3039).
• European authors outside the UK should conform to Directive 2010/63/EU.
• Research in animals must adhere to ethical guidelines of The Basel Declaration and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines.
• The manuscript must clearly include a declaration of compliance with relevant guidelines (e.g. the revised Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK and Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or relevant permissions or licences obtained by the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

All experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), must comply with international guidelines. The manuscript must clearly include a declaration of compliance of field studies with relevant guidelines and/or relevant permissions or licences obtained by the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Bentham Science Publishers supports retrospective registration of systematic reviews, in a suitable registry (such as PROSPERO). The registered systematic review must include the registration number as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

If the manuscript has an individuals’ data, such as personal detail, audio-video material etc., consent should be obtained from that individual. In case of children, consent should be obtained from the parent or the legal guardian.

A specific declaration of such approval and consent-to-disclose form must be made in the copyright letter and in a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the article especially in the case of human studies where inclusion of a statement regarding obtaining the written informed consent from each subject or subject's guardian is a must. The original should be retained by the guarantor or corresponding author. Editors may request to provide the original forms by fax or email.

Randomized drug clinical trial studies are biomedical or health-related interventional and/or observational research studies conducted in phases in human beings who are randomly allocated to receive or not receive a preventive, therapeutic, or diagnostic intervention that follows a pre-defined protocol. The study is intended to determine the safety and efficacy of approaches to disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Authors of randomized controlled trials are encouraged to submit trial protocols along with their manuscripts. All clinical trials must be registered (before recruitment of the first participant) at an appropriate online public trial registry that must be independent of for-profit interest (e.g.,www.clinicaltrials.gov). If you wish the editor(s) to consider an unregistered trial, please explain briefly why the trial has not been registered.

• All randomized clinical trials should include a flow diagram and authors should provide a completed randomized trial checklist (see CONSORT Flow Diagram and Checklist; www.consort-statement.org) and a trial protocol.
• Studies of diagnostic accuracy must be reported according to STARD guidelines; (www.stard-statement.org)
• Observational studies (cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional designs) must be reported according to the STROBE statement, and should be submitted with their protocols; (www.strobe-statement.org).
• Genetic association studies must be reported according to STREGA guidelines; (www.medicine.uottawa.ca)
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses must be reported according to PRISMA guidelines; (www.prisma-statement.org)
• To find the reporting guidelines see (www.equator-network.org)

Important points to remember while submitting clinical trials:

• Each manuscript should clearly state an objective or hypothesis; the design and methods (including the study setting and dates, patients or participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria, or data sources, and how these were selected for the study); the essential features of any interventions; the main outcome measures; the main results of the study; a comment section placing the results in context with the published literature and addressing study limitations; and the conclusions. Data included in research reports must be original.
• Trial registry name, registration identification number, and the URL for the registry should be included at the end of the abstract and also in the space provided on the online manuscript submission form. If your research article reports the results of a controlled health care intervention, list the trial registry, along with the unique identifying number (Please note that there should be no space between the letters and numbers of your trial registration number). Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g., phase 1 trials), are exempted.
• All reports of randomized trials should include a section entitled “Randomization and Masking”, within the Methods section.
• The manuscript must include a statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee that has approved the experiments, including any relevant details.
• The SI system of units and the recommended international non-proprietary name (rINN) for drug names must be used. Kindly ensure that the dose, route, and frequency of administration of any drug you mention are correct.
• Please ensure that the clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies follow the guidelines on good publication practice: (www.gpp-guidelines.org)

The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned requirements. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements.

Greek symbols and special characters often undergo formatting changes and get corrupted or lost during preparation of manuscript for publication. To ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, these special characters should be inserted as a symbol but should not be a result of any format styling (Symbol font face) otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF/XML.

Authors are encouraged to consult reporting guidelines. These guidelines provide a set of recommendations comprising a list of items relevant to their specific research design. All kinds of measurements should be reported only in International System of Units (SI). Chemical equations, chemical names, mathematical usage, unit of measurements, chemical and physical quantity & units must conform to SI and Chemical Abstracts or IUPAC.

• [1]  Alfredson H, Bjur D, Thorsen K, Lorentzon R, Sandstrom P. High intratendinous lactate levels in painful chronic Achilles tendinosis. An investigation using microdialysis technique. J Orthop Res 2002 Sep; 20(5): 934-8.
• [2]  Danielson P, Alfredson H, Forsgren S. Distribution of general (PGP 9.5) and sensory (substance P/CGRP) innervations in the human patellar tendon. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc 2006; 14(2): 125-32.

• [3]  Bolster MB, Silver RM. In: Clements PJ, Furst DE Ed, Systemic Sclerosis. Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams & Wikins. 2004; 121-9.

• [4]  Lozada CJ, Altman RD. Management of osteoarthritis. In: Arthritis and Allied Conditions. Koopman WJ, Ed. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins 2001.

• [5]  Brown AM, Stubbs DW, Eds. Medical physiology. New York: Wiley 1983.

• [6]  Harris AH, Ed. Economics and health: 1997: Proceedings of the 19th Australian Conference of Health Economists; 1997 Sep 13-14; Sydney, Australia. Kensington, N.S.W.: School of Health Services Management, University of New South Wales 1998.

• [7]  Suresh E, Lambert CM. Combination treatment strategies in early rheumatoid arthritis. BMJ [serial on the Internet]. 2005 April 28; [cited 2005 April 30] 64: [about 12 screen]. Available from http://ard.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/64/9/1252

• [8]  Tsoref L. Joint analysis using ultrasound. United States patent US 7204807. 2007 Apr.

• [9]  Citations for articles/material published exclusively online or in open access (free-to-view) , must contain the exact Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s), except those posted on an author’s Web site unless editorially essential, e.g. ‘Reference: Available from: URL’.

Some important points to remember:

• References must be complete and accurate.
• Online citations should include the date of access.
• Journal titles should conform to the present ACM Guide to Computing Literature/Chemical Abstracts etc. abbreviations.
• If the number of authors exceeds six then et al. will be used after three names (the term “et al.” should be in italics).
• Take special care of the punctuation convention as described in the above-mentioned examples.
• Avoid using superscript in the in-text citations and reference section.
• Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications (which can only be included if prior permission has been obtained) should not be given in the reference section but they may be mentioned in the text and details provided as footnotes.
• The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

Illustrations must be provided according to the following guideline:

• Illustrations should be embedded in the text file, and must be numbered consecutively in the order of their appearance. Each figure should include only a single illustration which should be cropped to minimize the amount of space occupied by the illustration.
• If a figure is in separate parts, all parts of the figure must be provided in a single composite illustration file.
• Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate, as well as high-resolution component files.

Line Art image type is normally an image based on lines and text. It does not contain tonal or shaded areas. The preferred file format should be TIFF or EPS, with the color mode being Monochrome 1-bit or RGB, in a resolution of 900-1200 dpi.

Halftone image type is a continuous tone photograph containing no text. It should have the preferred file format TIFF, with color mode being RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination image type is an image containing halftone , text or line art elements. It should have the preferred file format TIFF, with color mode being RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 500-900 dpi.

Illustrations may be submitted in the following file formats:

• Illustrator
• EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
• PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
• PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
• Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)
• TIFF
• JPEG (conversion should be done using the original file)
• BMP
• CDX (ChemDraw)
• TGF (ISISDraw)

Bentham Open does not process figures submitted in GIF format.

For TIFF or EPS figures with considerably large file size restricting the file size in online submissions is advisable. Authors may therefore convert to JPEG format before submission as this results in significantly reduced file size and upload time, while retaining acceptable quality. JPEG is a lossy format. However, in order to maintain acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files are saved at High or Maximum quality.

Zipit or Stuffit tools should not be used to compress files prior to submission as the resulting compression through these tools is always negligible.

Please refrain from supplying:

1. Graphics embedded in word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document.
2. Optimized files optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG) because of the low resolution.
3. Files with too low a resolution.
4. Graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Technical requirements for graphic/ figure submissions.

There are many software packages, many of them freeware or shareware, capable of converting to and from different graphics formats, including PNG.

General tools for image conversion include Graphic Converter on the Macintosh, Paint Shop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick, available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.

Bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be converted to EPS as they result in a much larger file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP, and poor quality. EPS should only be used for images produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can be saved in, or exported as, EPS format. If the images were originally prepared in an Office application, such as Word or PowerPoint, original Office files should be directly uploaded to the site, instead of being converted to JPEG or another format of low quality.

[As according to the ACS style sheet]