Authors
Instructions to Authors
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Aims and scope
Editorial policyGeneral requirements | Permissions | Authorship | Conflict of interest | CopyrightSubmission to public databases Manuscript submission Review and publication process Organization and format
Use of human subjects or animals in research | Disclaimer | Page charges
Color charges | Correction of English
Aims and scope
The Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering (JBB) aims to contribute to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and technology in the fields of bioscience and biotechnology. JBB publishes papers on a broad range of topics in the areas of genetics and molecular biology; protein-, enzyme-, and gene-engineering; enzymology, physiology and biotechnology of microbes, plants, and animals; brewing and food technology; environmental biotechnology; biochemical engineering; cell and tissue engineering; medical biotechnology; and bioinformatics. The genomics, systems biology, structural biology, and bioengineering related to these advanced scientific spheres, which hold much promise for the future, are also within the scope of JBB.
Editorial policy
General requirements
Manuscripts submitted to the journal must represent reports of unpublished original research, which are not under consideration for publication elsewhere in any medium. Related manuscripts that are in press or submitted elsewhere must accompany the submission. The submission for publication must be approved by all the authors.
Permissions
The corresponding author must obtain permission from the copyright owner to reproduce figures or tables that have been published elsewhere and credit the sources in the relevant figure legend or table footnote of the manuscript.
Authorship
Authorship credit should be based on substantial contributions to the overall design and execution of the work. The corresponding author (the single person to whom all the correspondence on the manuscript should be addressed) is responsible for ensuring that all contributors meet the authorship criteria and for informing all authors of the manuscript's status throughout the review and publication process. The order of authorship on the byline should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Statements regarding equal contributions by two or more authors (e.g., the first two authors contributed equally to this work) are permitted as footnotes to bylines. Membership in the Society for Biotechnology, Japan (SBJ) is not a prerequisite for submission.
Conflict of interest
Authors are requested at the time of submission to disclose any commercial association as well as consulting, stock ownership, equity interests, and patent-licensing arrangements that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with their submitted paper. Sources of any financial support of the project must be credited in the Acknowledgments section.
Copyright
JBB is copyrighted by the Society for Biotechnology, Japan (SBJ), and authors are considered to have transferred their rights to the Society. Requests for any reproduction or translation of JBB articles should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal. This request must include a statement of intended use as well as explicit specification of the material to be reproduced.
Use of human subjects or animals in research
Manuscripts reporting experiments on human subjects should clearly state that the research has complied with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964, as revised in 2004. Experiments using animals should be conducted in accordance with the institutional and national standards and authors are required to indicate whether the guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Disclaimer
SBJ assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by the contributors to the Society's publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the position of SBJ.
Page charges
All authors are required to pay page charges of 4,500 JPY per printed page (subject to change without notice). If the research was not supported by grants, special funds, or contracts, the publication charge may be waived upon request to the Editor-in-Chief when submitting a manuscript.
Color charges
The color charges are 40,000 JPY per printed page.
Correction of English
Manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to English proofreading for clarity of the language if necessary. Note that the charge for English correction must be borne by the author.
Submission to public databases
Nucleotide and amino acid sequences
Before publication, authors must deposit novel nucleotide and/or amino acid sequence data in any one of the three major collaborative databases: DDBJ (http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp), EMBL (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/), and GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). The accession number(s) should be listed in a separate paragraph at the end of the Materials and Methods section for Regular papers and Accelerated Publications, and at the end of the text for Notes. The suggested wording for referring to accession numbers is "These sequence data have been submitted to the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases under accession no. A13579".
Structural determinations
Papers describing new structures of macromolecules must include entry codes assigned by the Protein Data Bank (http://pdbdep.protein.osaka-u.ac.jp and http://rcsb-deposit.rutgers.edu/). The atomic parameters and structure-factor amplitudes should be released when the manuscript is published. For details, authors should refer to the guidelines of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) (Acta Crystallographica. Section D, Biological crystallography, 56, 2, 2000; doi:10.1107/S090744499901567X).
Microarray data
Results based on microarray experiments should satisfy the Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) standard criteria (http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame.html) and must be deposited in the appropriate public databases: ArrayExpress (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/microarray-as/aer/#ae-main[0]), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) or Center for Information Biology Gene Expression Database (CIBEX) (http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/index.jsp). The accession number(s) should be listed in a separate paragraph at the end of the Materials and Methods section for Regular papers and at the end of the text for Notes.
Manuscript submission
Online submission
From January 1, 2008, all submissions to JBB must be made electronically via the JBB Online Submission System at the following URL: http://www.jbb.sfbj.org/authors/online.html. E-mailed submissions will not be accepted. For a new submission, first go to the Online submission site and fill out the submission form. When the manuscript information has been successfully uploaded, you will shortly receive an automatic e-mail notification with the link to the file upload step. Submit an abstract file (including title, author information and key words) and a complete manuscript file (including figure legends, tables and figures) in Word format through the link. The system will convert the source files to PDF. You should approve the PDF files created within 24 hours; otherwise the submission will be automatically canceled. For more details, see the Online submission site.
When requested for revision, submit revision files (responses and the revised version of the manuscript) through the link in the e-mail of Editor's decision, not from the original submission site. You need not re-enter the submission form for revision submission.
If the manuscript is a resubmission, the former manuscript number should be indicated.
Review and publication process
Review process
All manuscripts are considered to be confidential and are reviewed by the International Editors, members of the Editorial Boards, and qualified ad hoc referees. When a new manuscript is submitted to the journal, it is given a number (e.g., JBB10001) and assigned to one of the editors. Always refer to this number in communications with the editor and the Journal Office. Reviews are normally completed within 3 to 4 weeks from receipt of the manuscripts and the corresponding author will be notified of the editor's decision to accept, reject, or require revision. Note that manuscripts may be editorially rejected without review, on the basis of lack of conformity to the standards set forth in these instructions.
When requested for revision, authors must submit the revised version along with a point-by-point response to each reviewer and the editor. If the revision is not submitted within 3 months, the submission will be withdrawn and any revised version will be considered as a new submission. Additional time for revision is granted upon request, at the discretion of the editor.
Manuscripts that have been rejected or withdrawn may be resubmitted with appropriate modifications based on the editor's comments. In such cases, the revised version must be submitted as a new submission, accompanied by the former manuscript number, but not be sent to the original editor directly.
Notification of acceptance
When the whole review process is completed, the corresponding author and the journal staff are notified of the editor's decision to accept a manuscript for publication.
Disk submission
The production stage proceeds out of the JBB Online Submission System. Within 5 to 10 weeks after acceptance, the journal staff will send a copyedited version of the manuscript in hard copy and instructions for disk submission to the author by express mail. Authors should supply a floppy disk or CD, two hard copies of the final version, and a details of disk contents form to the Journal Office. Manuscript files should be supplied in Microsoft Word. To avoid technical problems, the printer reproduce figures in digital format by scanning. Authors must ensure that the final version has been updated to incorporate all revisions.
Proofs
Proofs will be sent to the corresponding author by express mail, accompanied by the original typescript, a reprint order form, and instructions for handling proofs. It is the author's responsibility to read the entire proofs, including tables and figure legends. Proofs must be returned by express mail or courier within 48 h, not faxed or sent by e-mail, to the Society's Business Office. Authors are recommended to keep a copy of the proof.
Corrections of printing errors and minor changes necessary for clarity may be made at the proof stage, but major additions or deletions cannot be permitted except in extraordinary cases. The cost of such alterations may be billed to the authors.
Reprints
Reprints may be purchased by all coauthors (minimum order of 100). An order form and the price list are sent with the proofs to the corresponding author.
Organization and format
Manuscript type
Regular papers: Full-length papers describing the results of original research. Manuscripts should be written to emphasize clearly and concisely the novel aspects of the information reported, and preferably not exceed 6 printed pages (36,000 characters).
Notes: Short research reports which contain material of unique interest but are not sufficient to form the basis of Regular papers. Notes should not exceed three printed pages (18,000 characters), and must have a short abstract of no more than 50 words. Do not use section headings in the text but describe materials and methods, results, and discussion in a single section. The editors reserve the right to decide what constitutes a Note.
Technical notes: Short research reports which contain new techniques, useful methods, and technical information for all aspects of practical biotechnology research and applications. The format should be the same as that of Notes.
Reviews: Reviews survey recent developments in a topical area of research and should be sharply focused and balanced accounts for progress in fields of interest to the readers of the journal. Preferred paper length ranges from 5 to 10 printed pages (30,000 to 60,000 characters). Authorship is normally by invitation, although we are keen to receive proposals for prospective articles from authors. Authors considering submission of a review article must first send a brief synopsis (approximately 500 words), citing key references, to the Journal Office by e-mail (please do not submit the completed manuscripts prior to this consultation). If the proposal is accepted, authors may submit the manuscript via the JBB Online Submission System.
Letters to the editor: Letters to the editor are confined to discussions of articles that have appeared in JBB within the previous three months. Although the format is optional, they are peer-reviewed, and substantially edited by JBB editors in consultation with the authors. Letters should not exceed 2 pages including figures and tables.
Accelerated publications: Accelerated publications are papers bringing particularly novel and significant findings to the readers of this journal. Accelerated publications receive full but accelerated peer-reviewing. The review process will be as rapid as possible (our goal is 7 to 10 days). The novelty and significance are strictly important, and authors must submit a statement explaining the importance of the research and the need for accelerated publication. The statement should be of less than 500 words, written separately from the text, and placed on the top of the manuscript file. The format should be the same as that of Regular papers, being not longer than 5 printed pages (30,000 characters). Manuscripts requiring major revisions will not be accepted. Accelerated publications must be submitted via the Online Submission System. Neither e-mail nor hard-copy submission is accepted. Choose "Other" for manuscript type in the Online Submission Form and specify in the Remarks to Journal Office and Editor field that the manuscript is submitted for accelerated publication.
Errata
Erratum provides a means of correcting errors that occurred during the publication process, such as misspelling, mislabeling in a figure, a missed word, and so on. Please contact the Business Office before you send Errata.
Style
The whole manuscript (including References, figure legends, and table footnotes) must be typed in 12 point and double-spaced (a minimum of 6 mm between lines). Times or Times New Roman is recommended. Format your documents for A4 size (210 × 297 mm). Number each page at the bottom, beginning with the title page. Manuscript pages should have line numbers. Items should be provided in the following order: Title page, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References, Figure legends, Tables, and Figures. Due to technical reasons, symbols, shading, double underlines, and wavy lines are not available in text body and tables.
Manuscripts that do not conform to these instructions may be editorially rejected and returned to the authors for reformatting.
Title and running title
The title of a paper should be a label. Avoid a complete sentence. Serial titles are not accepted. The title should not contain any jargon or nonstandard abbreviations. Provide a running title of no more than 54 characters including spaces for Regular papers and Reviews.
Authors
The full name and the complete mailing address of each author should be given. Place numbers in superscript after the name of each author and the relevant address. An asterisk should follow the name of the corresponding author. Any changes of address may be given in a footnote.
Key words
A list of 5 to 10 key words that will be useful for indexing or searching must be included on the title page. Avoid abbreviations. General terms, such as "activity", "culture", "enzyme" and so on, should not be used unless qualified, e.g., "surface activity", "fed-batch culture", and "enzyme stability". Inappropriate key words may be omitted at the publication stage.
Correspondent footnote
A single e-mail address, a single telephone number, and a single fax number for the corresponding author should be provided.
Abstract
An abstract should provide the context or background for the study and state the purpose of the research, scope of the experiments, major findings, and principal conclusions. References in the abstract must be cited in full as "Takahashi et al., J. Biosci. Bioeng., 102, 46-52 (2006)". The abstract should be written in the past tense as a single paragraph not exceeding 250 words.
Introduction
Provide a context or sufficient background information for the study. Do not include data or conclusions from the work being reported. Subheadings should not be used and an exhaustive review of the literature should be avoided.
Materials and Methods
Provide sufficient technical information to allow the experiments to be reproduced. Previously published methods should be cited, and truly novel procedures could be described in detail. If a manuscript concerns a commercial product, the manufacturer's name and their location (city, state, and country) must be indicated in this section.
Results
The results of experiments and representative data should be stated clearly and precisely in a past tense. Do not repeat experimental details previously provided in the Materials and Methods section. Subheadings can be used.
Discussion
Discussion should be restricted to interpretation of the results. Subheadings can be used. When appropriate, you may combine the Results and Discussion section.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgements should be brief in a single paragraph and should precede the references. Personal acknowledgements precede those of agencies and institution.
References
All listed references must be cited in the text. Arrange the citations in order of their appearance in the text and number consecutively. Abbreviate journal names according to the List of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE (National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health, 2007; available at ftp://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/online/journals/ljiweb.pdf. Use periods after abbreviations. One-word titles (e.g., Biochemistry) are never abbreviated. In-press references must provide the publication title and the probable year of publication. In-press articles should be included in the manuscript file after the figure section.
The following types of references are not valid for listing: unpublished data, manuscripts submitted, meeting abstracts, personal communications, letters (irrespective of type) and authors' replies to letters, company publications, patents, theses, computer software, databases, and websites. References to such sources should be made parenthetically in the text.
List all authors when there are 12 or fewer; if more than 13, list the first 10 names followed by "and other 3 authors".
Follow the style shown in the examples below.
1. Takahashi, H. and Honda, H.: Prediction of peptide binding to major histocompatibility complex class II molecules through use of boosted fuzzy classifier with SWEEP operator method. J. Biosci. Bioeng., 101, 137–141 (2006).
2. Ashiuchi, M. and Misono, H.: Poly-γ-glutamic acid, p. 123–174. In Fahnestock, S. R. and Steinbüchel, A. (ed.), Biopolymers, vol. 7. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim (2002).
3. Ivanova, N., Sorokin, A., Anderson, I., Galleron, N., Candelon, B., Kapatral, V., Bhattacharyya, A., Reznik, G., Mikhailova, N., Lapidus, A., and other 13 authors: Genome sequence of Bacillus cereus and comparative analysis with Bacillus anthracis. Nature, 423, 87–91 (2003).
4. Ohtomo, M., Kimura, K., Watanabe, S., and Toeda, K.: Production of components containing γ-aminobutyric acid from rice bran by Lactobacillus brevis IFO12005. Seibutsu-kogaku, 84, 479–483 (2006). (in Japanese)
5. Kim, M-H., Kino-oka, M., Kawase, M., Yagi, K., and Taya, M.: Response of human epithelial cells to culture surfaces with varied roughnesses prepared by immobilizing dendrimers with/without D-glucose display. J. Biosci. Bioeng. (2007). (in press)
Examples for references cited in the text:
... as described previously (Ike, M., Abstr. 58th Annu. Meet. Soc. Biotechnol., Jpn., p. 3, 2006).
…were analyzed (Tanaka, S., Ph.D. thesis, Osaka University, Osaka, 2007).
… was observed (Murata, K. and Hashimoto, W., unpublished data).
… by the methods previously described (Kuroda, A., Miyamoto, K., and Ohtake, H., Japanese patent 2006-176450, 2006).
Tables
Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text. Type each table double-spaced on a separate page with a short descriptive title typed directly above and with essential footnotes below. Tables must be made using the Microsoft Word table function. Microsoft PowerPoint and PDF are not acceptable formats. Do not embed tables as Excel files and image files (JPEG, TIFF, EPS etc.) in Word documents except those containing artwork or chemical structures, which should be scanned by the printer at the modification stage. Tables not created using the Microsoft Word table function will need to be reformatted by the author.
Figures
Figures must be restricted to the minimum and numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Multipanel figures should be labeled with an upper-case, bold letter (A, B, C). Photomicrographs should have internal scale markers. Figure files submitted through the JBB Online Submission System are for reviewing purposes only. Authors are requested to submit production quality hard copies when the review process is completed. The printer will scan the hard copies at high resolution. If any figures should be printed in color, authors must specify on the hard copy at the down right corner of each figure. We recommend that authors submit figures in black and white, if they need no color printing.
The final sizes of figures are as follows:
Maximum width for a 1-column figure: 8.5 cm
Maximum width for a 2-column figure: 17.5 cm
Maximum height: 23.2 cm
Figure legends
Type or print out legends for figures using double spacing, starting on a separate page, with Arabic numerals corresponding to the figures. When symbols, arrows, numbers, or letters are used to identify parts of the figures, identify and explain each one clearly in the legend. Do not insert symbols but describe using English terms such as "closed circles" or "open triangles". Explain the internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.
