Instructions for Authors

General information

Submission process

Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The submitting author takes responsibility for the article during submission and peer review.

To facilitate rapid publication and to minimize administrative costs, Journal of Biological Engineering accepts only online submission. The submission process is compatible with version 3.0 or later of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and with most other modern web browsers. It can be used from PC, Mac, or Unix platforms.

Files can be submitted as a batch, or one by one. The submission process can be interrupted at any time - when users return to the site, they can carry on where they left off.

See below for examples of acceptable word processor and graphics file formats. Additional files of any type, such as movies, animations, or original data files, can also be submitted as part of the publication.

During submission you will be asked to provide a cover letter. Use this to explain why your manuscript should be published in the journal and to elaborate on any issues relating to our editorial policies detailed in the instructions for authors.

Assistance with the process of manuscript preparation and submission is available from the customer support team (info@biomedcentral.com).

We also provide a collection of links to useful tools and resources for scientific authors, on our Tools for Authors page.

Publication and peer review processes

Journal of Biological Engineering uses online peer review to speed up the publication process. The time taken to reach a final decision depends on whether reviewers request revisions, and how quickly authors are able to respond.

Once an article is accepted, it is published in Journal of Biological Engineering immediately as a provisional PDF file. The paper will subsequently be published in both fully browseable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Journal of Biological Engineering, BioMed Central and PubMed Central, and will also be included in PubMed.

The ultimate responsibility for any decision lies with the Editor-in-Chief, to whom any appeals against rejection should be addressed.

Article-processing charges

Journal of Biological Engineering levies an article-processing charge of £750 (€1110, US$1465) per article accepted for publication. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a BioMed Central member the cost of the article processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are supporter members of BioMed Central, however, a discounted article processing charge is payable by the author. We offer a £30 discount for manuscripts formatted with EndNote 5 (or later versions) or Reference Manager 10. Waivers may be granted, particularly for authors from developing countries. For further details, see more information about article-processing charges.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript submitted to the journal must not already have been published in another journal or be under consideration by any other journal, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Manuscripts that are derived from papers presented at conferences can be submitted unless they have been published as part of the conference proceedings in a peer-reviewed journal. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party. Authors who publish in the Journal of Biological Engineering retain copyright to their work ( more information). Correspondence concerning articles published in the Journal of Biological Engineering is encouraged.

Submission of a manuscript to the Journal of Biological Engineering implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

Generic drug names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses in the Methods section.

We ask authors of the Journal of Biological Engineering papers to complete a declaration of competing interests, which should be provided as a separate section of the manuscript, to follow the Acknowledgements. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'. Much has been written about competing interests (or conflict of interest, as other journals call it) within scientific research, but the following articles provide some background:

R Smith: Beyond conflict of interest. BMJ 1998, 317 :291-292

R Smith: Making progress with competing interests. BMJ 2002, 325 :1375-1376

CD DeAngelis, PB Fontanarosa, A Flanagin: Reporting financial conflicts of interest and relationships between investigators and research sponsors. JAMA 2001, 286 :89-9

K Morin, H Rakatansky, FA Riddick Jr, LJ Morse, JM O'Bannon 3rd, MS Goldrich, P Ray, M Weiss, RM Sade, MA Spillman: Managing conflicts of interest in the conduct of clinical trials. JAMA 2002, 287 :78-84

For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be mailed or faxed to the editorial staff. The manuscript should also include a statement to this effect in the Acknowledgements section, as follows: "Written consent was obtained from the patient or their relative for publication of study.”

The Journal of Biological Engineering supports initiatives to improve the performance and reporting of clinical trials, part of which includes prospective registering and numbering of trials. While there are initiatives to ensure that all clinical trials are registered (most notably the recent statement from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors - see http://www.icmje.org/clin_trialup.htm), we are focusing on controlled trials of healthcare interventions, for now. Authors of protocols or reports of controlled trials of health care interventions must register their trial prior to submission in a suitable publicly accessible registry. The trial registers that currently meet all of the ICMJE guidelines can be found at http://www.icmje.org/faq.pdf.

The trial registration number should be included as the last line of the abstract of the manuscript.

The Journal of Biological Engineering also supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of biomedical research. Checklists have been developed for randomized controlled trials (CONSORT), systematic reviews (QUORUM), meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE), diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD) and qualitative studies (RATS). Authors are requested to make use of these when drafting their manuscript, and peer reviewers will also be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating these studies. For authors of systematic reviews, a supplementary file, linked from the Methods section, should reproduce all details concerning the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies.

The involvement of medical writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding, as described in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) guidelines on the role of medical writers in developing peer-reviewed publications. If medical writers are not listed among the authors, it is important that their role be acknowledged explicitly. We suggest wording such as 'We thank Jane Doe who provided medical writing services on behalf of XYZ Pharmaceuticals Ltd.'

Submission of a manuscript to the Journal of Biological Engineering implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Preparing main manuscript text

File formats

The following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:

• Microsoft Word (version 2 and above)
• WordPerfect (version 5 and above)
• Rich text format (RTF)
• Portable document format (PDF)
• TeX/LaTeX (use BioMed Central's TeX template)
• DeVice Independent format (DVI)
• Publicon Document (NB)

Users of other word processing packages should save or convert their files to RTF before uploading. Many free tools are available to facilitate this process.

TeX/LaTeX users: We recommend using BioMed Central's TeX template and BibTeX stylefile. If you use this standard format, you can submit your manuscript in TeX format. If you have used another template for your manuscript, or if you do not wish to use BibTeX, then please submit your manuscript as a DVI file. We do not recommend converting to RTF.

Publicon users: Information about Publicon and instructions for authoring in Publicon are available.

Note that figures must be submitted as separate image files, not as part of the submitted DOC/ PDF/ TEX /DVI file.

Article types

When submitting your manuscript, you will be asked to assign one of the following types to your article:

Research

Book review

Review

Please read the descriptions of each of the article types, choose which is appropriate for your article and structure it accordingly. If in doubt, your manuscript should be classified as Research, the structure for which is described below.

Manuscript sections for Research articles

Manuscripts for Research articles submitted to The Journal of Biological Engineering should be divided into the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Background
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• List of abbreviations used (if any)
• Competing interests
• Authors' contributions
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Figure legends (if any)
• Tables and captions (if any)
• Description of additional data files (if any)

You can download a template (Mac and Windows compatible; Microsoft Word 98/2000) for your article. For instructions on use, see below.

The Accession Numbers of any nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided, in square brackets and include the corresponding database name; for example, [EMBL:AB026295, EMBL:AC137000, DDBJ:AE000812, GenBank:U49845, PDB:1BFM, Swiss-Prot:Q96KQ7, PIR:S66116].

The databases for which we can provide direct links are: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL), DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ ), GenBank at the NCBI (GenBank), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Protein Information Resource (PIR) and the Swiss-Prot Protein Database (Swiss-Prot).

Title page

This should list the title of the article. The title should include the study design, for example:

A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial

X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study

The full names, institutional addresses, and e-mail addresses for all authors must be included on the title page. The corresponding author should also be indicated.

Abstract

The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 350 words and must be structured into separate sections: Background, the context and purpose of the study; Methods, how the study was performed and statistical tests used; Results, the main findings; Conclusions, brief summary and potential implications. (Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract); Trial registration (if your research article reports the results of a controlled health care intervention, please list your trial registry, along with the unique identifying number, e.g. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN73824458. Please note that there should be no space between the letters and numbers of your trial registration number.)

Background

The Background section should be written from the standpoint of researchers without specialist knowledge in that area and must clearly state - and, if helpful, illustrate - the background to the research and its aims. Reports of clinical research should, where appropriate, include a summary of a search of the literature to indicate why this study was necessary and what it aimed to contribute to the field. The section should end with a very brief statement of what is being reported in the article.

Methods

The Methods section should include the design of the study, the setting, the type of participants or materials involved, a clear description of all interventions and comparisons, and the type of analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate.

Results and Discussion

The Results and Discussion may be combined into a single section or presented separately. Results of statistical analysis should include, where appropriate, relative and absolute risks or risk reductions, and confidence intervals. The Results and Discussion sections may also be broken into subsections with short, informative headings.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions of the research and give a clear explanation of their importance and relevance. Summary illustrations may be included.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided, which should precede the competing interests and authors' contributions.

Competing interests

A competing interest exists when your interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by your personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment were they to become public after the publication of the manuscript.

Authors are required to complete a declaration of competing interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.’

When completing your declaration, please consider the following questions:

Financial competing interests

• In the past five years, have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? Is such an organization financing this manuscript (including the article-processing charge)? If so, please specify.
• Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future? If so, please specify.
• Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the manuscript? Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript? If so, please specify.
• Do you have any other financial competing interests? If so, please specify.

Non-financial competing interests

Are there any non-financial competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript? If so, please specify.

If you are unsure as to whether you, or one your co-authors, has a competing interest please discuss it with the editorial office.

Authors' contributions

In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section.

An "author" is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. To qualify as an author one should 1) have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) have given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.

We suggest the following kind of format (please use initials to refer to each author's contribution): AB carried out the molecular genetic studies, participated in the sequence alignment and drafted the manuscript. JY carried out the immunoassays. MT participated in the sequence alignment. ES participated in the design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. FG conceived of the study, and participated in its design and coordination and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship. Please also include their source(s) of funding. Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study.

The role of a medical writer must be included in the acknowledgements section, including their source(s) of funding.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements.

Please list the source(s) of funding for the study, for each author, and for the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements section. Authors must describe the role of the funding body, if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

References

All references must be numbered consecutively, in square brackets, in the order in which they are cited in the text, followed by any in tables or legends. Reference citations should not appear in titles or headings. Each reference must have an individual reference number. Please avoid excessive referencing. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.

Only articles and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited; unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list but may be included in the text. Notes/footnotes are not allowed. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited author(s) is the responsibility of the author. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Citations in the reference list should contain all named authors, regardless of their number.

We encourage authors to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted. Authors submitting articles in EndNote 5 or higher or Reference Manager 10 format will save £30 on the £750 (€1110, US$1465) article processing charge. In order to obtain this discount, you should upload the manuscript file containing your EndNote or Reference Manager-formatted bibliography as a .doc file. Please ensure you do not convert to another format (e.g. RTF or PDF). On upload, the discount will be automatically granted and you will receive a confirmation on-screen and by email. You will also be able to preview an HTML version of the extracted references during submission, and we urge authors to check this. EndNote or Reference Manager users should also make sure that any changes made to the reference list are done within their reference management program, rather than by manually editing the formatted bibliography. This is because manually introduced changes will not be picked up in the automatically extracted list.

Further details about EndNote and Reference Manager are available on the BioMed Central site, including information about how to upgrade.

Style files that conform to the BioMed Central style are available for EndNote and Reference Manager. Users of other reference management programs should be able to select other journal styles that output a numeric list styled similarly to the guide below.

Examples of the The Journal of Biological Engineering reference style are shown below. Please take care to follow the reference style precisely; references not in the correct style may be retyped, necessitating tedious proofreading.

Links

Web links and URLs should be included in the reference list. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html]

The Journal of Biological Engineering reference style

Article within a journal

1. Koonin EV, Altschul SF, Bork P: BRCA1 protein products: functional motifs. Nat Genet 1996, 13:266-267.

Article within a journal supplement

2. Orengo CA, Bray JE, Hubbard T, LoConte L, Sillitoe I: Analysis and assessment of ab initio three-dimensional prediction, secondary structure, and contacts prediction. Proteins 1999, Suppl 3:149-170.

In press article

3. Kharitonov SA, Barnes PJ: Clinical aspects of exhaled nitric oxide. Eur Respir J, in press.

Published abstract

4. Zvaifler NJ, Burger JA, Marinova-Mutafchieva L, Taylor P, Maini RN: Mesenchymal cells, stromal derived factor-1 and rheumatoid arthritis [abstract]. Arthritis Rheum 1999, 42:s250.

Article within conference proceedings

5. Jones X: Zeolites and synthetic mechanisms. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Edited by Smith Y. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996:16-27.

Book chapter, or article within a book

6. Schnepf E: From prey via endosymbiont to plastids: comparative studies in dinoflagellates. In Origins of Plastids. Volume 2. 2nd edition. Edited by Lewin RA. New York: Chapman and Hall; 1993:53-76.

Whole issue of journal

7. Ponder B, Johnston S, Chodosh L (Eds): Innovative oncology. In Breast Cancer Res 1998, 10:1-72.

Whole conference proceedings

8. Smith Y (Ed): Proceedings of the First National Conference on Porous Sieves: 27-30 June 1996; Baltimore. Stoneham: Butterworth-Heinemann; 1996.

Complete book

9. Margulis L: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.

Monograph or book in a series

10. Hunninghake GW, Gadek JE: The alveolar macrophage. In Cultured Human Cells and Tissues. Edited by Harris TJR. New York: Academic Press; 1995:54-56. [Stoner G (Series Editor): Methods and Perspectives in Cell Biology, vol 1.]

Book with institutional author

11. Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification: Annual Report. London; 1999.

PhD thesis

12. Kohavi R: Wrappers for performance enhancement and oblivious decision graphs. PhD thesis. Stanford University, Computer Science Department; 1995.

Link / URL

13. The Mouse Tumor Biology Database [http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/cancer_links.html]

Microsoft Word template

Although we can accept manuscripts prepared as Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, RTF or PDF files, we have designed a Microsoft Word template that can be used to generate a standard style and format for your article. It can be used if you have not yet started to write your paper, or if it is already written and needs to be put into The Journal of Biological Engineering style.

Download the template(Mac and Windows compatible Word 1998/2000) from our site, and save it to your hard drive. Double click the template to open it.

How to use the The Journal of Biological Engineering template

The template consists of a standard set of headings that make up a The Journal of Biological Engineering Research manuscript, along with dummy fragments of body text. Follow these steps to create your manuscript in the standard format:

• Replace the dummy text for Title, Author details, Institutional affiliations, and the other sections of the manuscript with your own text (either by entering the text directly or by cutting and pasting from your own manuscript document).
• If there are sections which you do not need, delete them (but check the rest of the Instructions for Authors to see which sections are compulsory).
• If you need an additional copy of a heading (e.g. for additional figure legends), just copy and paste.
• For the references, you may either manually enter the references using the reference style given, or use bibliographic software to insert them automatically. We provide style files for End Note and Reference Manager.

For extra convenience, you can use the template as one of your standard Word templates. To do this, put a copy of the template file in Word's 'Templates' folder, normally C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeTemplates on a PC. The next time you create a new document in Word using the File menu, the template will appear as one of the available choices for a new document.

Note - From version 6, EndNote includes a full set of structured article templates for BioMed Central journals. Users of EndNote are encouraged to upgrade if necessary and make use of these templates. More information is available here.

Preparing illustrations and figures

Illustrations should be provided as separate files, not embedded in the text file. Each figure should include a single illustration. There is no charge for the use of color figures. Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration.

If a figure consists of separate parts, it is important that a single composite illustration file be submitted which contains all parts of the figure.

Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate, as well as high-resolution component files. If photographs of patients' body parts, X-rays or scans are given as part of the manuscript, written and signed consent of the patient should also be sent or faxed to the editors.

Scaling/resolution

Illustrations should be designed such that all information is legible when viewed at a width of 600 pixels, since this is the default size for a The Journal of Biological Engineering (and PubMed Central) illustration on the web. Note that high resolution versions will also be made available to readers, so please submit figures at as high a resolution as possible (subject to the 10 MB limit on the size of each figure).

Text within figures should use either Arial or Helvetica fonts, although Courier may also be used if a monospaced font is required. Text too should be designed to be legible when the illustration is scaled to a width of 600 pixels.

Formats

The following file formats can be accepted:

• EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
• PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
• PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
• Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)
• TIFF
• JPEG
• BMP
• CDX (ChemDraw)
• TGF (ISIS/Draw)

The Journal of Biological Engineering is not able to process figures submitted in GIF format.

If the large size of TIFF or EPS figures is an obstacle to online submission, authors may find that conversion to JPEG format before submission results in significantly reduced file size (and upload time), while retaining acceptable quality. JPEG is a 'lossy' format, however. In order to maintain acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files are saved at High or Maximum quality.

Files should not be compressed with tools such as Zipit or Stuffit prior to submission. These tools will in any case produce negligible file-size savings for JPEGs and TIFFs, which are already compressed.

Image conversion tools

There are many software packages, many of them freeware or shareware, capable of converting to and from different graphics formats, including PNG.

Good general tools for image conversion include GraphicConverter on the Macintosh, PaintShop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick, which is available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.

Note that bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be converted to EPS since this will result in a much larger file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP , with no increase in quality. EPS should only be used for images produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can save in, or export as, EPS format. If images have been originally prepared in an Office application, such as Word or PowerPoint, then the Office files should be directly uploaded to the site, rather than converted to JPEG or another format that may be of reduced quality.

Figure legends

The legends should be included in the main manuscript text file , immediately following the references, rather than being a part of the figure file. For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals - i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3 etc); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 300 words.

Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.

Preparing tables

Each table should be numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, 2, 3 etc.). Tables should also have a title that summarizes the whole table, maximum 15 words. Detailed legends may then follow but should be concise.

Smaller tables considered to be integral to the manuscript can be pasted into the end of the document text file, in portrait format. These will be typeset and displayed in the final published form of the article. Such tables should be formatted using the 'Table object' in a word processing program to ensure that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review; this will not always be the case if columns are generated by simply using tabs to separate text. Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring the borders of each cell display as black lines. Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values. Color and shading should not be used.

Larger datasets can be uploaded separately as additional files. Additional files will not be displayed in the final, published form of the article, but a link will be provided to the files as supplied by the author.

Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or comma separated values (.csv). As with all files, please use the standard file extensions.

Preparing additional files

Although the Journal of Biological Engineering does not restrict the length and quantity of data in a paper, there may still be occasions where an author wishes to provide data sets, tables, movie files, or other information as additional information. These files can be uploaded using the 'Additional Material files' button in the manuscript submission process.

The maximum file size for additional files is 10 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission.

Any additional files will be linked into the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the paper. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided.

If additional material is provided, please list the following information in a separate section of the manuscript text, immediately following the tables (if any):

• File name
• File format (including name and a URL of an appropriate viewer if format is unusual)
• Title of data
• Description of data

Additional data files should be referenced explicitly by file name within the body of the article, e.g. 'See additional file 1: Movie1 for the original data used to perform this analysis.'

Formats and uploading

Ideally, file formats for additional files should not be platform-specific, and should be viewable using free or widely available tools. The following are examples of suitable formats:

• Additional documentation
• PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
• Animations
• SWF (Shockwave Flash)
• Movies
• MOV (QuickTime)
• MPG (MPEG)
• Tabular data
• XLS (Excel spreadsheet)
• CSV (Comma separated values)

As with figure files, files should be given the standard file extensions. This is especially important for Macintosh users, since the Mac OS does not enforce the use of standard extensions. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet).

Style and language

General

Currently, the Journal of Biological Engineering can only accept manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture.

Gene names should be italicized, but protein products should be in plain type.

There is no explicit limit on the length of articles submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise. There is also no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files that can be included with each article online. Figures and tables should be sequentially referenced. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article.

The Journal of Biological Engineering will not edit submitted manuscripts for style or language; reviewers may advise rejection of a manuscript if it is compromised by grammatical errors. Authors are advised to write clearly and simply, and to have their article checked by colleagues before submission. In-house copyediting will be minimal. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of a copyediting service such as that provided by Manuscript Presentation Service, International Science Editing and English Manager Science Editing. BioMed Central has no first-hand experience of these companies and takes no responsibility for the quality of their service.

Help and advice on scientific writing

The abstract is one of the most important parts of a manuscript. For guidance, please visit our page on "Writing titles and abstracts for scientific articles."

Tim Albert has produced for BioMed Central a list of tips for writing a scientific manuscript. MedBioWorld also provides a list of resources for science writing.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be used as sparingly as possible. They can be defined when first used or a list of abbreviations can be provided preceding the acknowledgements and references.

Typography

• Please use double line spacing.
• Type the text unjustified, without hyphenating words at line breaks.
• Use hard returns only to end headings and paragraphs, not to rearrange lines.
• Capitalize only the first word, and proper nouns, in the title.
• All pages should be numbered.
• Use the Journal of Biological Engineering reference format.
• Footnotes to text should not be used.
• Greek and other special characters may be included. If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full. Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF.

Units

SI Units should be used throughout (liter and molar are permitted, however).