Microbial Biosystems Journal
Journal / Microbial Biosystems Journal / Submissions

 

Manuscripts for the Microbial Biosystems should normally not exceed 10 typed pages. Longer papers should be discussed beforehand with the Executive Editor. To submit a manuscript to Microbial Biosystems send:

1. A Word file of the manuscript (The template can be downloaded here), double spaced, with font 12, preferably Times New Roman, with at least 25-mm margins on all sides should be submitted to the submission page.

Papers must be submitted in WORD with the text line numbered in the left margin, to facilitate the review process.

2. The content of any submissions should be original and must not be submitted simultaneously for consideration towards publication in any other conference or journal. All submissions will be checked against a plagiarism checker.

3. One complete set of illustrations comprising original line drawings and first-class photographic prints intended for use by the printer in preparing the published version of your paper (identify each separate item with your name and short title of the paper). Mounted illustrations Must Not exceed A4 in size.

4. A covering letter that clearly states the name and address of the person with whom the Editors should correspond and which confirms explicitly that (a) all named authors have agreed to the publication of the work, and (b) the manuscript does not infringe any other person's copyright or property rights.

5. The names of 3-5 referees not in your institution with appropriate expertise who might be considered as possible referees for your paper.

6. Reviews not exceeding 20 pages of printed text, including tables, figures and references. Prospective authors are invited to contact the Executive Editor with suggestions for reviews.

7. Short Communications not exceeding two pages of printed text should be prepared following the general style guidelines below but should not be divided into separate text sections. Short communications should be clearly labeled as such, before the Title on the first page of the manuscript.

8. Papers already published or in press elsewhere will not be accepted. If any part of the subject matter or experiments included in a manuscript submitted to the Journal has been the subject of any prior publication, this prior publication must be identified.

9. Article-processing charges: All articles published in our journals are open access and freely available online, immediately upon publication. This is made possible by an article-processing charge (APC) that covers the range of publishing services we provide. The APC, payable when your manuscript is editorially accepted and before publication, is charged to either you, or your funder, institution or employer. The article processing charge for Non-Egyptian is 200$ and for Egyptian is 1500 EGP.

ALL manuscripts should conform to the following guidelines:

1. Manuscripts should be written in Standard English using British spelling. Poorly written or formatted papers may be returned directly to the author before review. Papers should be mainly written in the past tense, particularly the Materials and Methods and the Results.

2. Manuscripts should be typed clearly, paper, printed with font size 12, preferably Times New Roman, left alignment, with at least 25-mm margins on all sides including tables, figures and references (one page of printed text = approx. 600 words). All pages (including the tables, figures, legends and references) must be numbered consecutively.

3. The manuscript should be arranged in the following order :

Title page (page 1)

• The title should be brief but informative and clearly relevant to the content. A subtitle may be used to supplement and thereby shorten an excessively long main title. Papers must not form part of a numbered series. The author's full name(s) should be given with first names in full and all initials (if more than one, use 'and' before the last name and indicate to whom correspondence should be addressed). Affiliation(s) and Present Address (es) should be indicated through the use of superscript numbers. Full postal, telephone, fax and email address details should be given for the corresponding author.

Key words/Abstract/Abbreviations (page 2)

Key words should be provided (a maximum of 6, in alphabetical order, suitable for indexing).
Abstract (brief and informative, not to exceed 250 words). No abbreviations should be used in the abstract.
Abbreviations (arranged alphabetically, only those which are not familiar and/or commonly used).

Main text

The text should be presented under the following headings: Introduction (including a consideration of the current literature and the objectives of the study), Materials and Methods (with sufficient detail to allow the work to be repeated), Results and Discussion. Results and Discussion may be combined if appropriate, Conclusion.
Tables should be placed after the References, followed by Figure Legends and finally Figures.
New paragraphs should be clearly indicated by indentations. The relative importance of headings and subheadings should be made clear by the use of bold and/or italic text as necessary. Artificial word breaks at the ends of lines must be avoided. Where non standard abbreviations are to be used extensively, give each in full followed by the abbreviation in parentheses at the first time of usage. Include all abbreviations on the second page (see above). The use of footnotes should be avoided. However, if essential, they should be typed on the appropriate page, but clearly separated from the text with a line above them.
Citations of personal communications and unpublished data should be avoided, unless absolutely necessary. Such citations should appear in the text only, in parentheses, as in the following examples: (Kamel A. Kamel, personal communication) (Ahmed Abdel-Azeem, unpublished data).
Tables and Figures should be kept to a minimum and should not be used where data can be adequately described by text alone. Data must be presented in Tables or Figures and not duplicated between each.
Genetic sequence data will only be considered acceptable if accompanied by an accession number for an appropriate data bank (e.g. EMBL).
This should be given at the end of the main body of text, preceding the acknowledgements.
Statistical treatment of results. Numerical data which lack statistical analysis are valueless and will not be published. Data from a sufficient number of independent experiments should be reported to permit evaluation of the reproducibility and significance of results. When any significance is claimed, the test of significance used should be stated and an estimate of the probability given. If you use complex statistical transformations a few lines of explanation in plain English of the purpose and the outcome of the test should be provided.
Acknowledgements (including funding agencies and help from other colleagues) should follow the main text and precede the references.
Names of microbial species and genera should be given in italics. As a guide for acceptable style please consult a recent issue of the journal. The use of fungal, bacterial names and the proposal of new taxa should follow the conventions of the International Code of Algae, Fungi and Plants Nomenclature.
References

Literature references should be listed alphabetically after the main text. Citations in the text should be referred to by author name and year of publication, enclosed in parentheses, e.g. (Smith 1989; White et al. 1990).
Abbreviate titles of periodicals according to the style of the Bibliography Guide for Editors and Authors (Biosis, Chemical Abstract Service and Engineering Index, Inc., 1974).
References should contain: author(s) name(s) followed by author(s) initials, year, title of article (only first word and proper nouns capitalized), abbreviated journal title, volume number and inclusive page numbers. A recent issue of the journal and the following examples should be used for style guidance:
Gonzalez A.E., Martinez A.T., Almendros G. and Grinbergs J. 1989. A study of yeasts during the delignification and fungal transformation of wood into cattle feed in Chilean rain forest. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. 55: 221−236 Trijbels−Smeulders M.A.J.M., Adriaanse A.H., Gerards L.J. and Kimpen J.L.L. 2003. Strategy to prevent neonatal early onset group B streptococcal disease in the Netherlands. Rev. Med. Microbiol. 14: 35−39.
Books must include the location and name of the publisher.
Books (edited by someone other than author of article): Goodfellow M. 1992. The family Nocardiaceae. In: Balows A, Trper HG, Dworkin M, Harder W & Schleifer K H (Eds. The Prokaryotes (pp 1188 1213). Springer Verlag, New York
Books (Monographs):
Hicks C.R. 1973. Fundamental Concepts in the Design of Experiments. Holt, Rinehard and Winston, New York.
Citations relating to the use of Internet sources should be used minimally and only where the source is clearly reputable e.g. significant organisations. The name of the host organisation should be indicated and the URL should be given in the text only enclosed in parentheses. However, the URL for databases and online tools for bioinformatics should be given and where possible accompanied by an appropriate literature citation. The following examples are given for style guidance. World Health Organisation (http://www.who.int/en/) PROSITE (Gattiker et al. 2002; http://ca.expasy.org/prosite) NationalCenter for Biotechnology Information BLAST server (Altschul et al. 1997;) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST

Tables

Each table should be typed on a separate page. Tables should be numbered with Arabic numerals, followed by a title in bold font. A short explanatory text should follow the title such that the table can be understood without reference to the main text. Horizontal rules should be indicated, and verticals avoided. Table footnotes should be marked with superscript numbers. Each table must be mentioned in the text.
Reproducibility of all results should be indicated noting how many times experiments were repeated and whether mean or representative results are shown. Valid statistical tests of significance should be applied where appropriate.
Tables may be edited by the publisher to permit more compact typesetting.

Figure Legends

These should follow the Tables on a separate page. Each figure should be mentioned in the text. Figures and their legends should be identified by Arabic numbers and headed "Figure 1" etc., followed by a title in bold font. A short explanatory text should follow the title such that the figure may be understood without reference to the main text. Where multi−part figures are used, each part should be clearly identified in the legend, preferably with (lower case) letters. Reproducibility of all results should be indicated noting how many times experiments were repeated and whether mean or representative results are shown. Valid statistical tests of significance should be applied where appropriate.
Figures

Line drawings must be in black and white and should not contain shading. Extremely small type should be avoided as figures are often reduced in size. Do not give magnification or scales in the figure legends: instead draw bar scales directly on the figures. Colour plates will be inserted only at the author's expense. Quotes will be provided for each individual case.

Abbreviations and units

• SI units should be used, e.g.; mg, g, kg, km, m, cm, mm, ppm, cpm, qmCi (microCurie), l (litre), ml, s (second), min (minute), h (hour), mol, m3, kg per ha or kg ha3 (the minus index form is always to be used in tables). Gene names should be presented in italic font.