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Terms of submission
BiO considers for publication original research that has not been previously published. Submission to BiO implies that this is the case and that the submitted manuscript is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
During the submission process, authors are asked to declare that the manuscript has been seen and approved by all authors. Submission also indicates that authors agree to abide by BiO’s publishing policies, including the declaration of any competing interests to the journal on submission of a manuscript.
BiO uses the CRediT Taxonomy to define author contributions to primary research papers and requires that the independent contributions of each author be provided during online submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that contributions are agreed on by ALL co-authors prior to manuscript submission. Please refer to journal policies for further information on our authorship policies.
BiO offers advance online posting of articles on its Accepted manuscripts web site, which is updated weekly, and issues are published monthly online. It is also possible to post the accepted author manuscript within one week of acceptance. Please contact the Editorial Office if you wish to take up this option.
We support the Think.Check.Submit. initiative.
Online submission
New manuscripts
BiO is committed to making submission as easy as possible for authors. As part of this commitment, BiO offers format-free submission.
At first submission, authors are not required to format their manuscript according to journal guidelines. However, for the benefit of reviewers and editors, we do encourage authors to make their manuscripts as easy to read as possible by using appropriate line spacing, line and page numbers, and ensuring that figures are clearly numbered and/or accompanied by their legend.
At submission, you will have the opportunity to list any reviewers that, because of conflicts of interest, you would prefer not to review your article. (Note: reviewer exclusion is at the discretion of the Editor.)
For new submissions, we recommend that you submit your paper as a single PDF file that contains all the necessary text, figures and tables.
Our submission system converts submitted files (PDFs or individual files) into a PDF file for the review process. The corresponding author must check and approve the PDF to complete the submission process; if there are problems with figure resolution, please contact the Editorial Office.
During the submission process, you will be asked to provide an email address for each author and suggested reviewer. When providing a non-institutional email address (e.g. gmail), an ORCID identifier is also required. Papers submitted using non-institutional email addresses and without ORCID iDs will require additional verification steps, which may cause delays. All corresponding authors are also required to submit an ORCID iD and it is best practice to use an ORCID iD to identify each author.
As a service to our authors, and to facilitate rapid dissemination of research results, BiO offers two-way integration of our manuscript submission system with the bioRxiv preprint server (operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) – avoiding the need to re-enter information or upload files in multiple submission systems. During submission to BiO, authors can opt to deposit their article in bioRxiv through a simple one-click process. In addition, authors depositing a manuscript in bioRxiv can transfer their paper directly to BiO through their transfer portal. Once deposited in bioRxiv, either directly or through our deposition portal, the unrefereed manuscript will become free for anyone to read almost immediately and cannot be removed, regardless of the editorial decision made at BiO. It will be citable with a bioRxiv DOI, its usage can be tracked, and it can be updated. Please ensure that all co-authors agree to preprint deposition before uploading or transferring to bioRxiv. Consideration of your manuscript for review and/or publication by BiO is not influenced by whether you choose to post it on bioRxiv.
Revised and accepted manuscripts
For revised submissions and accepted manuscripts, please provide all the necessary text and figures as individual files.
For more information on suitable file formats, please see our manuscript preparation and figure preparation guidelines.
All revised manuscripts should adhere to our manuscript preparation guidelines and authors should complete and submit our submission checklist with their manuscripts. This form asks authors to confirm that they have followed best practice guidelines regarding experimental subjects, data reporting and statistics. The checklist is based on the NIH Principles and Guidelines for Reporting Preclinical Research and is intended to help ensure high standards for reporting and to aid reproducibility.
To help you meet your funder requirements, you will be asked to provide details of all funding sources from ALL authors. Please provide the full official funding agency name as listed on the Crossref Funder Registry, and all relevant grant numbers. See our manuscript preparation guidelines for more details.
Please note that revised manuscripts will be treated as a new submission if they are not submitted within 3 months of the date of the initial decision.
For more information on the types of articles that can be submitted to BiO, please visit our Article types page.
Transfer option
Papers rejected from Development, Disease Models & Mechanisms, Journal of Cell Science, Journal of Experimental Biology and eLife can be transferred to BiO, strictly with the authors' approval, for editorial consideration.
For authors who originally submitted to Development, Disease Models & Mechanisms, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology, there is a simple one-click manuscript-transfer option in BenchPress should their paper not be accepted. Under this service, any existing referees' reports from the original peer review can also be passed to BiO, again with the authors' approval, for a more-rapid publication decision. Where necessary, additional peer review may be undertaken.
There is no need to reformat the article or resupply manuscript information.
We encourage authors to transfer their manuscripts to BiO following editorial rejection or rejection after peer review. The criteria for acceptance at BiO are very different. Editors and Reviewers are asked to confirm that the experimental work is properly conducted and that the conclusions are adequately supported by the data. We do not require any assessment of the potential impact of a paper. The transfer of any existing reviews – even if negative – usually enables a rapid decision to be made without the need for further review, as this may help the BiO Editor to identify simple revisions that would allow a paper to be accepted (average time to first decision of 8.5 days for articles transferred with reviews).
For authors who made their original submission to eLife, please click here for more information. BiO also accepts the transfer of peer review reports from submissions to other, non-Company, journals.
Article publication charge
To provide Open Access, the costs of publication in BiO are covered in part by charging a fee to the authors or the research supporters for each accepted article. This Author Publication Charge is $1495 (plus VAT if applicable) and covers peer review, journal production, online systems employed for the purposes of submitting, trafficking and hosting articles, and the cost of archiving significant volumes of data, including supplementary material files, in perpetuity. Payments can also be made in Euros or pound sterling. APC fees are set in the three currencies and do not follow the constantly changing exchange rate. This means that authors are not adversely affected by fluctuations in their local exchange rate.
BiO has a small budget for the complete or partial waiving of publication charges for authors in developing countries and others in genuine financial hardship. Corresponding authors based in the countries listed here will be granted a full waiver upon application. Funds for waivers are limited, however, as the journal would not be sustainable without income from author charges to cover its costs. Payment requests will be sent to the corresponding author following acceptance of their paper.
The decision to publish a paper in BiO is wholly independent of payment or ability to pay, and is based solely on the validity and supportability of the work detailed in each manuscript. Editors and reviewers do not have access to information regarding authors' financial contributions. BiO is published by the not-for-profit publisher The Company of Biologists, a charitable organisation run by scientists to support the research community.