Submissions

Author Guidelines

The Bioscience Journal is an interdisciplinary and open-access electronic journal that publishes scientific articles in a continuous flow in the areas of Agricultural Sciences, Biological Sciences and Health Sciences. Before submitting an article to the Bioscience Journal, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

ARTICLE TYPES

The following types of articles will be accepted: research articles (clinical studies, laboratory studies, cohort studies, case-control studies, ecological studies, and cross-sectional studies), systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis and scope review. Bioscience Journal does NOT accept narrative, critical reviews or integrative review, case reports, case series, short communications, letters to the Editor, and opinion articles.

REPORTING GUIDELINES

For all manuscripts reporting data from health research, authors must follow the reporting guidelines specific to the type of research: CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, STARD for studies of diagnostic accuracy, SRQR for qualitative research, and ARRIVE for animal pre-clinical studies. Authors can consult the reporting guidelines and also other resources relevant to research reporting at the EQUATOR Network website (https://www.equator-network.org). A Reporting Guidelines Checklist should be submitted along with the manuscript as a supplementary file in the submission process.

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

Manuscripts involving research on human beings, animals and systematic reviews are accepted for publication if they have received an identification number from one of their public registration databases and/or if research has been reviewed and approved by an appropriate institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee. Articles describing clinical trials must provide the protocol registration number in ClinicalTrials.gov (https://www.clinicaltrials.gov) and/or REBEC (https://ensaiosclinicos.gov.br) and/or the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform); the options are stated at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html. Articles describing animal research must provide the protocol registration number in the Animal Research Ethics Committee. Articles describing systematic reviews must provide the protocol registration number in the PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/) database. Manuscripts presenting clinical trials, animal research or systematic reviews without registration protocols will be promptly rejected without peer review. State the registry and registry number in the “Material and Methods” and “Ethics Approval” sections. In addition, a Certificate of Ethical Approval for research with human beings or animals should be sent as a supplementary file in the submission process, if applicable. If a recognizable photograph or any potential identifiable material of a patient will be used, a signed Statement of Informed Consent must be sent as a supplementary file in the submission process, for every patient. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article.

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

Submitted manuscripts must represent original research not previously published nor being considered for publication elsewhere. The Editors of Bioscience Journal combat plagiarism, double publication, and scientific misconduct with the software CrossCheck (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/) powered by iThenticate (https://www.ithenticate.com). Your manuscript may be subject to an investigation and retraction if plagiarism is suspected. Upon publication of an article, all rights are held by the publishers, including the rights to reproduce all or part of any publication. The reproduction of articles or illustrations without prior consent from the publisher is prohibited.

All manuscripts must be submitted with a Copyright Form (download here) signed by all authors. The form must contain the following three essential items relating to the manuscript:
(1) a statement of responsibility, whereby the authors declare responsibility for the content of the manuscript and agree to disclose all sources of funding and declare all potential conflicts of interest. Authors must also ensure that the article is original and is not under consideration by any other journal.
(2) a copyright statement, whereby the authors declare that, in the case of acceptance of the manuscript, the Bioscience Journal shall be the owner of the copyrights relating to same, which will become the sole property of the Journal.
(3) a statement of ethics, whereby the authors declare that the study protocol has received an identification number from a public registration database (in the case of articles describing clinical trials and systematic reviews) and/or was endorsed by an institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee (in the case of research with human beings or animals).

REGISTRATION IN ORCID

As a form of standardization of authorship, the Bioscience Journal made it mandatory to include the iD of the ORCID at the time of submission. After the first review, before forwarding for evaluation, the manuscripts that do not have the ORCID informed in the system will be notified for the inclusion of the identifier registration, and should contain at the time of registration, information on academic background and employment (employment, if any).

The ORCID identifier can be obtained free of charge at: https://orcid.org/register.

You must accept the standards for submitting ORCID iD, and include the full URL, accompanied by the expression "http://" (for example: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097). See here for the registration tutorial. ORCID registration is mandatory for all authors. On the platform you can directly enter the ORCID connection, thus allowing your connection to be validated by the system.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

• Only original and unpublished articles, written in English, will be accepted.
• The article must not be under evaluation for publication by another journal.
• The article must be submitted correctly to one of the following corresponding areas: Agricultural Sciences, Biological Sciences and Health Sciences.
• Cover Letter is mandatory and should contain information about the manuscript relevance, the main findings, and also its suitability within the scope of the Bioscience Journal.
• Authors are responsible for all opinions, results and conclusions contained in articles.
• All accepted articles become the property of Bioscience Journal, and their subsequent publication in other media is NOT allowed.
• In the case of article approval, changes in the names of authors and co-authors in the original version won't be allowed under any circumstances.
• Submissions must be made through the link:

http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/biosciencejournal/about/submissions

• Consult the “SUBMISSION CHECKLIST” section of this guideline to ensure that you are ready to submit your manuscript.
• A publication fee will be charged to the amount of R$ 50.00 (fifty reais) per published (formatted) page of the approved articles to national authors and $ 50 (fifty US dollars) for foreign authors (form of payment will be informed later). The Bioscience Journal does NOT charge a fee for submitting articles.
  

MANUSCRIPT FORMAT

All documents should be created using Microsoft Word. The text should be justified, typed in Calibri font, font size 12, with a 1.0 line spacing and a margin of 2.54 cm throughout the entire document.

Title Page

• Title Page: must list the article title (up to 35 words and should mention the study design), the author’s full name, ORCID identification number (as obtained from orcid.org), institutional affiliation, and the corresponding author’s e-mail address. Institutional affiliation must contain the department (if professor or undergraduate student) or name of the postgraduate program (if postgraduate student) or private clinic for example (if you have no institutional affiliation), followed by full name of the institution (do not include the acronym or abbreviation of the institution's name), city, state, and country. Do not include the degree/title of the authors.
• Acknowledgments: grants and any other financial support for the study should be acknowledged, always with the funding agency name, and with the protocol number whenever possible. Donation of materials used in the research can and should be acknowledged too. This section should also be used to acknowledge any other contributions from individuals or professionals who have helped in producing or reviewing the study, and whose contributions to the publication do not constitute authorship.
• Authors' Contributions: the Bioscience Journal supports the position taken by the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html) regarding authorship. Each author must have made at least one of the following contributions to the completion of the manuscript: 1) conception and design, 2) acquisition of data, 3) analysis and interpretation of data, 4) drafting the article, 5) critical review of important intellectual content. In addition, all authors must have made the following contribution: 6) final approval of the version to be published. A Declaration of Authorship Contributions signed by all authors must be sent as a supplementary file in the submission process. Up to 6 authors are accepted without need for justification. In the case of a specific and detailed justification of the role of every author, more than 6 authors may be mentioned. Contributors who do not qualify as authors should be mentioned under Acknowledgements.
• Ethics Approval: manuscripts involving research on human beings, animals and systematic reviews should state the public registration database and/or the institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee and the registry number in this section (see the “ETHICAL PRINCIPLES” section). In addition, a Certificate of Ethical Approval for research with human beings or animals should be sent as a supplementary file in the submission process, if applicable.
• Conflicts of Interest: the Bioscience Journal supports the position taken by the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/conflict-of-interest-disclosure-forms/) regarding potential conflicts of interest. In this section, authors are required to describe any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that may exist regarding the research or the publication of the article. A conflict of interest exists if authors or their institutions have financial or personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their actions. Types of conflicts include: consulting, royalties, research support, institutional support, ownership, stock/options, speakers bureau, and fellowship support. Any commercial entity whose products are described, reviewed, evaluated, or compared in the manuscript, except for those disclosed in the Acknowledgments section, are potential conflicts. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should state that. Failure to disclose any conflicts of interest is a form of misconduct. The existence and declaration of conflicts of interest is not an impediment to publication at all. Each author must download the Conflicts of Interest Form (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/), save it, fill it out and send it as a supplementary file in the submission process.

Main Document

• Title: must contain the article title with up to 35 words and should mention the study design.
• Abstract: must contain an unstructured text with up to 250 words including objectives, methods, results and conclusions. References and credits to suppliers and manufacturers of products or equipment must NOT be cited in this section.
• Keywords: must have three to six MeSH or DeCS terms that the authors think express the main article themes, in alphabetical order, separated by a period and starting with a capital letter. These keywords should be different from the words already used in the title and abstract, so that to improve the discoverability of the article by readers doing a search in PubMed or other databases. Please, check your keywords at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh and/or https://decs.bvsalud.org
• Main Text: must contain Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions. Please, do NOT combine the topics of Results and Discussion, they must always be presented separately. Abbreviations and acronyms should be avoided and when necessary they should be defined the first time they are used in the text. Credit suppliers and manufacturers of equipment, drugs, and other brand-name material mentioned in the manuscript within parentheses, giving the company name and primary location (city and country). The authors can and should use short subheadings, especially those concerning the reporting guideline items. As needed, use italic, superscript and subscript, but do NOT use boldface. Do NOT insert page or section breaks.
• Figures and Tables: must be sent separately from the main document, marked by their order number in Arabic numerals.  Use TIFF or JPG format for figures (black-and-white or color art) with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and maximum width of 16 cm. In the case of a figure with multiple graphs or photographs, they must be identified by capital letters in the upper left corner. Create tables using the Table function in Microsoft Word and save each one in a separate file. All the figures and tables must be cited in the text. Data given in tables should be commented on but not repeated in the text. A short descriptive title must be provided for each figure/table. All information contained inside the figures and tables must be in Calibri font, font size 12, line spacing 1.0. Figures and tables already published are NOT accepted, even if legal authorization has been obtained; they must have been prepared by the authors themselves.
• References: the Bioscience Journal uses the ISO 690:2010(E) style adapted. The authors should list up to 40 (research articles) or 60 references (systematic reviews), and at least 70% of them must be from the last five years. Bioscience Journal does NOT accept references of theses, dissertations, monographs, and conference abstracts. Authors should also avoid books and book chapters. Follow the instructions and examples below for the format and/or at https://dominiodelasciencias.com/ojs/documentos/ISO690-2010.pdf for further instructions.

CITATION IN TEXT

The citation must be presented in author-data format between parentheses before periods/full stops or commas in sentences. All authors must be listed if there are up to and including two authors, as in the following example: (Santos and Cunha 2015); for works with three or more authors, the first author must be cited, followed by the expression "et al.", as in the example: (Silva et al. 2012). If the authors' name occurs naturally in the text, the year follows in parentheses. In citations to particular parts of an information resource, the location of that part (e.g. page number) may be given after the year within the parentheses. If two or more information resources have the same author and year, they are distinguished by lower-case letters (a, b, c, etc.), following the year within the parentheses.

Example: The notion of an invisible college has been explored in the sciences (Crane 1972). Its absence among historians is noted by Stieg (1981b, p. 556). It may be, as Burchard (1965) points out, that they have no assistants, or are reluctant to delegate (Smith 1980; Chapman 1981).

CITATION IN LIST OF REFERENCES

All references must be ordered alphabetically and the authors must be listed if there are up to three authors; if there are four or more, the first author must be cited, followed by the expression "et al." At the end of each reference, please insert the "DOI" number if available. For this, authors must search the metadata for references on the Crossref website (https://doi.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery) and copy the DOI whenever available.

Citing an online journal article

Structure: AUTHORS, INITIALS. Title of the article. Journal Title. Year, Vol.(No.), series of pages. Available from: URL or doi

Example: GUNERHAN, H., HEPBASLI, A. and GIRESUNLU, U. Environmental impacts from the solar energy systems. Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization and Environmental Effects. 2008, 31(2), 131-138. https://doi.org/10.1080/15567030701512733

Citing a printed journal article

Structure: AUTHORS, INITIALS. Title of the article. Journal Title. Year, Vol.(No.), series of pages. ISSN.

Example: AHMED, M. and BOISVERT, C.M. Using computers as visual aids to enhance communication in therapy. Computers in Human Behavior. 2006, 22(5), 847-855. ISSN 0747-5632.

Citing a chapter in a book

Structure: AUTHORS, INITIALS., Year. Title of the chapter. In: Editors, eds. Title of the book, Place of publication: Publisher, pp. series of pages.

Example: CARDOSO, H.L. and OLIVEIRA, R., 2005. Virtual enterprise normative framework within electronic institutions. In: M-P. GLEIZES, A. OMICINI and F. ZAMBONELLI, eds. Engineering societies in the agents world V, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 14-32.

Citing a book

Structure: AUTHORS, INITIALS. Title of the book. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher, Year.

Example: SOMMERVILLE, I. Software engineering. 9th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2011.

Citing a chapter in an e-book

Structure: AUTHORS, INITIALS., Year. Title of the chapter. In: Editors, eds. Title of the e-book, Place of publication: Publisher, pp. series of pages. Available from: URL or doi

Example: STACHOWIAK, G.W. and BATCHELOR, A.W., 2014. Computational hydrodinamics. In: G.W. STACHOWIAK and A.W. BATCHELOR, eds. Engineering tribology, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 211-265. Available from: http://app.knovel.com/hotlink/toc/id:kpETE00005/engineering-tribology/engineering-tribology

Citing an e-book

Structure: AUTHORS, INITIALS. Title of the e-book. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher, Year. Available from: URL or doi

Example: WATTON, J. Fundamentals of fluid power control. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Available from: http://app.knovel.com/hotlink/toc/id:kpFFPC0002/fundamentals-fluid-power/fundamentals-fluid-power 

DOCUMENTS CHECKLIST

• Cover Letter to the Editor signed by the corresponding author (see the "GENERAL GUIDELINES" section).
• Title Page containing the Title Page, and the items Acknowledgments, Authors' Contributions, Ethics Approval, and Conflicts of Interest (see the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Main Document containing the article Title, Abstract, Keywords, Main Text, and References (see the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Figures (see the “Figures and Tables” item in the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Tables (see the “Figures and Tables” item in the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Copyright Form signed by all authors (see the "COPYRIGHT STATEMENT" section).
• Declaration of Authorship Contributions (see the “Authors' Contributions” item in the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Conflicts of Interest Form (see the “Conflicts of Interest” item in the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Reporting Guidelines Checklist, if applicable (see the "REPORTING GUIDELINES" section).
• Certificate of Ethical Approval, if applicable (see the "ETHICAL PRINCIPLES" section and the “Ethics Approval” item in the "MANUSCRIPT FORMAT" section).
• Statement of Informed Consent, if applicable (see the "ETHICAL PRINCIPLES" section).

PEER REVIEW POLICY AND PROCEDURES

After receipt of the article through the electronic submission system, it will be read by the Editorial Team, who will check whether the text complies with the Journal's submission guidelines regarding format. The Bioscience Journal has adopted the CrossRef Similarity Check system for identifying plagiarism and any text that has been plagiarized, in whole or in part, will be promptly returned to the author who must justify the similarity and/or rewrite the text, or the article will be promptly rejected. Self-plagiarism will also be monitored.

When the general format of the manuscript is deemed acceptable and fully compliant with the submission guidelines, and only then, the Editorial Team will submit the article to the Editor-in-Chief, who will firstly evaluate its scope. If the Editor finds that the topic is of interest for publication, he will assign at least two reviewers/referees with expertise in the theme, to evaluate the quality of the study. After a period varying from one to several weeks, the authors will then receive the reviewers' evaluations and will be required to provide all further information requested and the corrections that may be necessary for publication. A certificate of English review made by a company specializing in English proofreading services can be requested if there are misspelling and/or grammatical errors throughout the manuscript.

The modified article must be resubmitted accompanied by a letter answering the reviewers' comments, point by point. The modified article and the response letter are presented to the Editorial Team and reviewers, who will verify whether the problems have been resolved adequately. The text and the reviewers' final evaluations, along with the response letter, will then be sent to the Editor-in-Chief for a decision.

PRODUCTION PROCEDURE

Manuscripts that are found to be suitable for publication through their scientific merit will be considered "provisionally accepted". At this stage, the authors will receive a Template for formatting the manuscript in the style of publication of the Bioscience Journal. Only after sending the article in the format of this Template, the manuscript will be considered "definitely accepted". The Editorial Team will then provide page proofs for the authors to review and approve. The Journal reserves the right to make changes as to rules, spelling and grammar in the original, in order to maintain the standard patterns of the language, while respecting the style of the authors. The final proofs will be sent to the authors, together with the payment slip for publication. All authors should review and approve the proof, although the Journal asks the corresponding author to give final approval. No reprints will be provided. The articles will be available for printing in PDF format on the Journal website.