AUTHOR RULES
General information
Results of scientific research and survey on different directions of current biotechnology, reviews, experimental artocles, short communications, articles on biotechnology history, conferences abstracts, and new publications on biotechnology and adjoining branches of science are published in English and have identical summaries in Ukrainian language.
Article submission and editorial processing is free of charge.
Bioethical norms
“Biotechnologia Acta” is focused on the rules recommended by the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes (Strasbourg, 1986) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
All procedures describing experiments involving laboratory animals, any biomaterials of human origin including donors and/or patients should be carried out guided by the bioethics norms. Experimental record should be reviewed and approved by the National Commissions on Bioethics and meet the International Standards.
If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration or comparable standards, the authors must explain the reasons for their approach, and demonstrate that the independent ethics committee or institutional review board explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.
The following statements should be included in the text before the References section.
In case of Ethical Approval it should be the following statement.
1. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
2. Statement on the Welfare of Animals
The welfare of animals used for research must be respected. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals have been followed, and that the studies have been approved by a research ethics committee at the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted (where such a committee exists).
If articles do not contain studies with human participants or animals by any of the authors, please select one of the following statement: "This article does not contain any studies with human or animals participants performed by any of the authors.”
Ethical responsibilities of authors
This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.
The authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:
– The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
– The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling.
– A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time.
– No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions.
– No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted.
Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.
– Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.
Editorial procedures and peer-review
The articles are reviewed - single-blind peer review - by three independent experts who are appointed by the Editorial Board and do not have conflicts of interest with the authors. By submitting a manuscript to the Editorial Board, authors agree to the review process. All submitted manuscripts are checked to determine whether they fit the scope of the journal, follow the ethical policies and are properly prepared. Manuscripts with insufficient originality or lack of significant message, as well as if they are not prepared as per journals instructions will be rejected or returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. After a preliminary assessment and acceptance of the subject of the paper as compliant with the profile of the journal, the paper is registered and the register number is handed over to the authors. The manuscripts which are found suitable for publication in Biotechnologia Acta are sent for single-blind review (authors’ identities are known to reviewers). The comments and suggestions received from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point by point response to reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript. Based on the comments and advice of reviewers the Editorial Board takes a decision to accept, reject or forward the manuscript to alternative reviewer. The final decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief. Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination and publication.
Authorship
Our authorship policy accommodates diverse types of research, providing a framework that makes clear the contributions of each author.
Author Contributions Section: To make author contributions transparent, all research articles should include an Author Contributions section. Please describe the contributions concisely and use initials to indicate author identity. Corresponding Author and Lead Contact: You must designate at least one corresponding author and only one lead contact.
Lead Contact: The lead contact is the corresponding author who is also responsible for communicating with the journal (before and after publication) and accountable for fulfilling requests for reagents and resources and for arbitrating decisions and disputes.
Basic requirements to the articles are novelty, relevance and validity of the given facts, reproducibility of the experimental data on the reported methods and drawing up of the manuscript according to the journal requirements. Citations to unpublished data and personal communications cannot be used to support significant claims in the paper. Papers will be held for publication until all “in press” citations are published.
Article submission
Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
The following documents are provided via e-mail
• full text of the article (including a summary in two languages, tables, figures and their captions placed as mentioned in the text and a list of references as well). This file should be named after the first author (family_name.doc);
• color illustrations for articles should be submitted as separate files in JPG or TIF format with a resolution of 300 dpi;
• full names, first names and patronymics of all authors and full postal addresses of their institution should be given, including post codes, in Ukrainian and English languages. The corresponding author/s should be indicated, including their e-mail and telephone;
• copyright contract signed by all authors (see the Licennse Agreement on the Journal site). If the Editorial Board rejects the article the Licennse Agreement automatically loses its force. Signing the Licennse Agreement by the authors means that they are familiar and agree with the terms of the contract.
General requirements to manuscript
The editors reserve the right to return the manuscripts that are not in accordance with the following instruction.
The date of the paper receipt is the date of arrival of its last, correct version to the editorial office.
The materials should be submitted in the Microsoft Word-supported format, page size of A4, book-oriented, font Times New Roman, at 14 point size, of one and a half spacing.
It is desireable that the manuscripts (including tables, list of references, figures, and figure captions) should not exceed 30 pages (60 thousand symbols) for review articles, 20 pages (40 thousand symbols) for experimental one, 8 pages for short reports, 5–6 pages for current events and reviews. Figure volume is 1/4 of the article. Pages should be numbered consecutively, including tables, references, figure captions, summaries, etc. All tables, figures and their captions should have a concise title and serial number. The notes on the table are placed straight under the table. Footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations.
Figures and images should be in one of the electronic formats *.tiff, *.bmp, *.jpg (300dpi).
For equations please use MathType or Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 (recommended font size 10.5, 8.5, 7.5, 14, 10)..
Section article
Experimental articles should have the following scheme:
• Title page;
• Structured abstracts;
• Text of the article;
• Acknowledgements (where applicable);
• Data concerning financial support (where applicable);
• References.
Title page:
• UDC (Universal Decimal Classification);
• article title;
• full names of all the authors;
• name and postal address of the institution which each author works in;
• e-mail of the corresponding author.
Article title should be brief (not more than 8-10 significant words), informative, contain keywords and cover adequately the content of the article.
Names of all authors should be given in full. Each author should list an associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country.
Name of the institution: If there are some authors and they work in different institutions, it needs to show in Arabic (indices) the names of the authors of the appropriate institutions.
Structured abstracts:
Abstracts up to 1,500 characters with spaces should contain:
• article title;
• names of all authors;
• text of the abstract for experimental articles should be carefully structured and contain the following sections: aim, methods, results, conclusion;
• keywords (not more than ten).
In addition, an abstract should:
• explain how the study was done which includes any model and organisms that were used, without getting into methodological specifics;
• summarize the most important results and their significance.
Abstracts should not include:
• citations;
• abbreviations.
Text of the article
Experimental articles should have the following sections (headlines):
• introduction (not entitled),
• materials and methods,
• results and discussion,
• conclusion
• acknowledgements
• reference list
Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.The relevance and purpose of the study is formulated in the introduction.
Materials and Methods
Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced. The methods already published should be indicated by a reference. Only relevant modifications should be described.
Results
The results should be clear and concise and describe the outcome of the study. Data should be presented as concisely as possible, if appropriate in the form of tables or figures, although very large tables should be avoided.
Tables
All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
The tables should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order.
For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
The footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.
Figure Numbering
All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
The figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
The figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,
"A1, A2, A3, etc." The figures in online appendices (Electronic Supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.
Figure Captions
Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
The figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.
Figure Placement and Size
The figures should be submitted separately from the text. Figures and images should be in one of the electronic formats *.tiff, *.bmp, *.jpg (300dpi). When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
Discussion
This section should highlight the significance and novelty of the presented results. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
Data concerning financial support
It needs to add some words concerning source of funding for the reported research because it is important to avoid any perception of conflicts of interest. This information could be placed at the end of the text before the references..
References
The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.
|On the common techniques it is enough to give references to publications. All the designations and denominations of physical units should be given in SI International System. Amino acids are indicated by abbreviated symbols of three letters or in single letter format FASTA.
Names of the enzymes and their codes should be given according to the recommendations of the International Biochemical Society (Enzyme Nomenclature – Acad. Press. San Diego. California and Supplement (1-6) in Eur. J. Biochem. (1993-1997, 1999) or electron version: http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/enzyme.
Names of companies and countries producers of the reagents and materials used in the experiments should be given. The number and species of the used animals as well as the methods of anaesthetization and euthanasia should be defined.
The authors should describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the results. All quantitative data require statistical analysis. Its results should be given in the tables and figures. Data validity is shown as follows: * — P ≥ 0.05.
Latin name of the genus and species of the organisms should be given in italics. Mentioning firstly, it is given full specific name (preferably with indication of taxon author), and subsequently the name of the genus could be given shortly with one letter, unless it concerns species belonging to different genera with the same first letter. Latin names of taxons are given according to current sources. It needs to use only standard abbreviations of names for measures, physical, chemical and mathematical variables and terms, all other abbreviations have to be interpreted.
If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, the authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references.
Only published or accepted manuscripts should be included in the reference list. The manuscripts that have been submitted but not yet accepted should not be cited. References must be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, citations should be indicated by the reference number in square brackets.
The authors are responsible for the correctness of the original sources.
Citation of published and readily accessible materials to readers is only available: articles, books, conference proceedings, dissertations, patents.
It is desirable that the manuscript has no more than 20 references in experimental work, 100 references in review, and refer to recent years.
Editorial staff has no responsibility for correctness and completeness of the given bibliographic data.
In 2023, a new rule regarding the list of authors was introduced:
-if an article has up to 3 authors, all authors should be listed;
- if an article has more than 3 authors, it is permissible to list the first 3 authors followed by a comma and "et al." to indicate the rest.
Notes
The authors can correct only found mistakes in the made up pages without making additional changes and supplements.Giving an article to “Biotechnologia Acta” journal, an author thereby deligates the rights to the Publisher (©Palladian Institute of Biochemistry of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) to edit, translate into any language, reproduce and publish the work in form and format adopted by the edi tor.
Copyright Permission Policy
These guidelines apply to the reuse of articles, figures, charts and photos in the Biotechnologia Acta journal.
For authors reusing their own material:
Authors need NOT contact the journal to obtain rights to reuse their own material. They are automatically granted permission to do the following:
- Reuse the article in print collections of their own writing.
- Present a work orally in its entirety.
- Use an article in a thesis and/or dissertation.
- Reproduce an article for use in the author's courses. (If the author is employed by an academic institution, that institution also may reproduce the article for teaching purposes.)
- Reuse a figure, photo and/or table in future commercial and noncommercial works.
- Post a copy of the paper in PDF that you submitted via the journal’s manuscript submission system.
- Link to the journal site containing the final edited PDFs created by the publisher.
For other parties using material for noncommercial use:
Other parties are welcome to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work — at no cost and without permission — for noncommercial use as long as they attribute the work to the original source using the citation above.
Examples of noncommercial use include:
- Reproducing a figure for educational purposes, such as schoolwork or lecture presentations, with attribution.
- Appending a reprinted article to a Ph.D. dissertation, with attribution.
The authors ought to give their manuscripts by e-mail:
© Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2023