EDITORIAL POLICIES

1. Editorial Board: Important positions, their duties, and responsibilities

Generally, the journal is overseen by an Editorial Advisory Board, which consists of eminent and competent researchers in the field, who contribute by inviting contributions and proposing expert opinions on the suitability of submissions.

The Editorial Board of Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications consists of the following important positions, their duties, and responsibilities are as:

Editor-in-Chief: The editor-in-chief is primarily responsible for activities conducted for the journal and maintains the right to final acceptance or rejection of manuscripts. An experienced academician with quality publications is appointed by the Society for Science and Nature, Bhopal India, www.ssn.org, the official Publishers of Biosc.Biotech.Res.Comm to oversee the entire publication process of the journal. The EiC also foresees the overall development of the journal, its policies concerning the international standards of quality and ethics, devising strategies for the progress of the journal

Executive Editor: Executive Editor is who directs processing of the manuscripts which entail soliciting manuscripts from potential contributors, assessing the suitability of the manuscript concerning its scope, managing the peer review process, coordinating with the reviewers and board members, taking decisions on the revised submissions and occasionally assisting the Editor-in-chief in final acceptance or rejection of manuscripts.

Associate Editors: Their role is in handling the manuscripts, reporting to the Chief Editor, supervising the editorial team, managing submissions, assigning articles to experts for reviews, overseeing publication schedules, and other matters related to the smooth functioning of the journal.

Managing Editors: They are associates who will assist the Chief / Executive Editors in assessing the suitability of the manuscript for its scope, managing the peer review process, devising strategies for the progress of the journal, coordinating with the reviewers and board members.

Editorial  Assistants: The editorial team is made up of experienced and highly qualified researchers and faculty members of different subjects who help the management of editorial process. 

Editorial Board Members: The international editorial advisory board consists of a panel of researchers having expertise in the relevant field, who are appointed by the authorities of the journal for a specified term of 2 or more years. Editorial board members are required to: carry out peer reviewing of submitted manuscripts, assess submissions based on the policy and scope of the journal, organize publication of thematic issues, invite new authors and submissions, and provide editorials for thematic issues organized under their guest editorship.

Ethics (Ethics,  Conflict of Interest, Disclosure Statements, Duties and Responsibilities of Authors, Reviewers and Editors, Plagiarism and its Control, Malpractices and Ethical statements) Link to the copyright form and Plagiarism Check Statement

1. Ethics

To maintain fair practice we at, Society for Science & Nature (SSN), Bhopal, India, the official publishers of Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications, strongly believe in strictly following these guidelines for maintaining academic quality and scientific rigor.

Publication Ethics: Adherence to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, ensuring academic integrity and transparency is followed by Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications, considering only unpublished original articles for publication.

These features include providing information to the authors about the methods of selecting articles, especially on the explicit process of external peer review; statements indicating adherence to ethical guidelines; evidence that authors have disclosed financial conflicts of interest; data transparency and availability, timely correction of errata; explicit responsible retractions as appropriate; and opportunity for comments and dissenting opinions.

We are deeply committed to the fair practice of this publication, especially regarding plagiarism, originality, fraud, and conflict of interest.

Biosc. Biotech. Res. Comm. follows strict international guidelines for Originality and Plagiarism. We continuously have a vigil for strict compliance with policies against plagiarism, performing checks using standard software, and imposing consequences for violations

2. Conflict of Interest: disclosure requirements for authors, reviewers, and editors to prevent bias.

 Duties and Responsibilities of Authors: This includes clear guidelines on authorship, including changes in authorship, and requirements for authors to disclose contributions.

Authorship of the Manuscript: Only persons who meet these following authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; and (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication.

Manuscript Frame: It comprises an attractive title, author affiliations-ORCIDs, unstructured abstract, keywords, introduction, methods, results, and discussion, followed by a brief conclusion, disclosure statements, and references.

Study design/protocols must be robust, and all methods used must be cited properly with standard references so that they can be reproduced easily. The section of results must have proper data, tables, and figures with brief and non-repetitive explanations. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work.

Discussion must have a critical and comprehensive account of statements supported by up-to-date references. Conclusions must be drawn which must corroborate the data and interpretation, highlighting the novelty of the work.

References, as per journal format, need to be checked for presence in both text and reference sections, with all links to references from Google Scholar, PubMed, etc.

Providing a certificate by all submitting authors to avoid plagiarism and fraudulent data is mandatory in the form of the Copyright Form and Plagiarism Check Report of Biosc.Biotech.Res.Comm. Link of the copyright form  and Plagiarism Check Statement

3. Disclosures by Authors:

Mandatory Statements Required by Biosc. Biotech.Res.Comm in the Manuscript

Manuscript submissions by authors must align with the journal and editorial policies of Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications to prevent any bias.

We require the following  mandatory actions from our distinguished authors when they submit a manuscript:

1. The manuscript must be submitted online after logging in / registering by the corresponding author.
2. The work described has not been published before, and it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else.
3. All co-authors have read and approved the manuscript (MS) for publication.
4. The MS has been checked for plagiarism, and it is less than 15%.
5. Please complete the author’s ethical declaration/plagiarism check forms.
6. Mandatory Policy Statements to be Included in the Manuscript Before References

Use of  biological material/animal / human subjects/volunteers

If the work involves the use of animals or human participants, the authors should ensure that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant ethical laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee (s) have approved them. The manuscript should contain a statement to this effect, supported by an institutional review board ethical clearance certificate bearing approval number and date.

1. Ethics statement: Include an ethics declaration if your work reports research involving human or animal subjects, their data, and /or biological materials.
2. Funding statement: Include a statement declaring whether this work received funding. If you did receive funding, you must declare it and give the grant number or funding body details.
3. Competing / Conflict of interest statement: Data Availability Statement:
4. Acknowledgements (Optional):

 

4. Originality/ Plagiarism, its check, tools used, and Actions thereof

The authors of Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications should strictly ensure that they have written and submitted entirely original manuscripts to the journal, strictly following all norms of academic quality. If the authors have used the work and /or words of others, it has been appropriately cited or quoted as per standard ethics and norms of publication. 

Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others.

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behavior in Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications, which has a zero -plagiarism policy

If any manuscript is found to be published with plagiarized material at any stage in Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications, it will be immediately retracted with information to the authors. 

Also, authors who fail to comply with the reviewer’s comments in revising their manuscripts,  particularly in reducing accidental plagiarism, will be informed about dropping their manuscripts from publication in Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications, and their APC will be returned after standard deductions.

Instructions are given to all authors who propose to submit their contribution to Biosc.Biotech.Res. Comm. to kindly check their MS very minutely for plagiarism and similarity levels of their text matter of the manuscripts under submission using Ithenticate / Turnitin software. They have to certify in the Copyright form about this statement.

Link of copyright form and Plagiarism Check Statement

www.bbrc.in copyright and  anti-plagiarism form

MS having less than 15 % of similarity levels using standard worldwide accepted software will only be considered for publication in Biosc Biotech Res Comm .

5. Malpractice and Ethical Statements / Research Misconduct: policies addressing fraudulent or inaccurate statements, with corrective actions for misconduct

Biosc Biotech Res Comm Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement is based, in large part, on the guidelines and standards developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The relevant duties and expectations of authors, reviewers, and editors of the journal are set out below.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Biosc Biotech Res Comm follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

In addition, as a journal that follows the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, it is expected of authors, reviewers, and editors that they follow the best-practice guidelines on ethical behaviour contained therein. Link of the copyright form and Plagiarism Check Statement

 

 Data Access / Availability /  Sharing  and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable.

In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data centre), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Data must be made available on reasonable request/

Supplementary data, which are important for scientific progress, help in reproducibility, being one of the golden standards of the scientific method. This can be shared as per the submission guidelines of Biosc. Biotech. Res. Comm.  Authors must ensure that all submitted manuscripts have been prepared following academic quality writing, consisting of quality content. All supplementary information, like large data files, tables that are not practical to include in the manuscript itself, must be made readily available for the readers, reviewers.

MANUSCRIPT PROCESS

1. Peer Review:

A fair and unbiased review process, with at least two subject experts evaluating the manuscript quality of the journal, is one of the pillars of quality and ethics of publication, which, Biosc. Biotech. Res. Comm. follows strictly. Biosc Biotech Res Comm follows the anonymized peer-review procedure for submissions of all manuscripts to its journal.

All submitted manuscripts, after initial evaluation for scope, originality, conformity to the instructions and checklist of the journal, language, and academic quality writing, are then subjected to an extensive anonymized peer review in consultation with members of the journal’s editorial board and independent external referees (usually two reviewers).

All manuscripts are assessed in a time-bound frame (usually a month with the reviewers), and the decision based on all the peer reviewers’ comments, finally taken by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, is then conveyed to the author (s).

 The decision will be either : Manuscript accepted without any revisions/manuscript accepted with major/minor revisions, or outright rejection. The reasons for revisions /or rejections will be conveyed by the EiC with detailed comments sent to the authors, to be rebutted point by point by the corresponding author in a separate cover letter within a reasonable time in case of revisions.

2. Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers and Editors

Any manuscript received for review must be treated as a confidential document. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them to improve the paper. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. They must not put their own references in the revised MS,  as citations for their benefit.

Editors of  Biosc Biotec. Res. Comm will evaluate manuscripts exclusively based on their academic merit and scientific rigor. An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Editors should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

Duties of Editors

Fair play and editorial independence:

Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively based on their scientific rigor and academic merit (importance, originality, study’s validity, clarity) and their relevance to the journal’s scope. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content. 

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Publication decisions by the Reviewers

The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo strict anonymized peer review by at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. The Editor is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and levels of academic quality. The Editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of scientific endeavor. The journal shares the view of many that all scholars who wish to contribute to the scientific process have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing, maintaining all standards of academic quality, particularly the scientific rigor.

Promptness

Any invited referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This also applies to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Multiple, duplicate, redundant, or concurrent submission/ Retraction

Papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable. Such articles will be  immediately retracted and  due action will be taken against such fraudulent authors / institutions.

Fundamental errors in published works

When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. For guidelines on retracting or correcting articles, please contact the editor at www.bbrc.in

Duties of the Publisher: Handling of unethical publishing behavior

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the complete retraction of the affected work.  

 

 

Access and Storage of Journal Content

The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining our own digital archive as well as in international repositories like Portico, JStor/Ithaka and others. For details on Biosc.Biotech.Res.Comms archiving policy, please click www.bbrc.in

Correction and Retraction of Manuscript:

Procedures for correcting or retracting published articles in Biosc. Biotech.Res. Comm. with errors or misconduct are strictly dealt with as per standard international guidelines and policies of quality publication, ethics, and best practices.

Copyright and Licensing:

Articles submitted to Biosc Biotech Res Comm are evaluated according to their scientific merit. Editorial decisions on manuscripts submitted to our journal are based on independent, peer reviews. The journal is committed to an editorial process that is not compromised by any influence, thereby actively seeking and encouraging submissions from deserving scholars.

Each type of article has a special format and should comply with the updated Biosc Biotech Res Comm Instructions for authors/submission checklist, published in its issues. The following types of communications are considered for publication: Original Articles, Case Reports, Reviews. The journal has a special invited editorial section, entitled: Under Thousand Words, covering exciting Opinions, Perspectives, and Commentaries.  

All articles are published under a Creative Commons License, International Attribution 4.0 BY-CC, meaning thereby a free, unlimited use of the articles for academic purposes without any embargo, with proper citations/references. Authors have the copyright of their articles. We are particularly in demonstrating conformance with established guidelines and best practices without compromising on quality.