Instructions for Authors

BIOCELL

ISSN: 0327-9545 (Print)

ISSN: 1667-5746 (Online)

Shortcuts

General Format of Articles 
Declarations 
Chemical Compounds 

Data Sharing and Deposition

Suggesting Reviewers
English Editing Service
Authorship and Contribution
Publication Ethics
Editors and Journal Staff as Authors
Conflicts of Interest
Research Data and Supplementary Materials

Copyright and Licensing
Corrections and Retractions
Appeals and complaints

All manuscripts must be submitted via the online system, and manuscripts submitted for publication must be prepared according to the guidelines given below.

Template in MS Word: Microsoft Word template

References Style file for EndNote: Vancouver

This guideline is intended to assist authors as they prepare their manuscripts. To avoid any delay and time-consuming restructuring, BIOCELL asks and encourages authors to read the guidelines before writing the manuscript.

BIOCELL publishes review and research articles. All papers must be written in English, and follow a clear, concise style. The language editors may have to check the language and grammar of your submitted manuscript, and make editorial changes if deemed necessary.

General Format of Articles

A submission is composed by (1) the MANUSCRIPT FILE, and (2) the FIGURE FILES. Manuscripts should comprise:

Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.

Main text: For Articles, a structured format, e.g., Introduction, Material and Methods, Results (or Systematic Description), Discussion, Conclusion, is recommended, while Reviews may use a more flexible structure.

Back matter: Acknowledgment, Funding Statement, Author Contributions, Availability of Data and Materials, Ethics Approval, Conflict of Interests, Supplementary Materials (if any), Glossary (if any), Appendices (if any), and References.

For Review Articles

A Review article is a paper based on other published research. It is a secondary source. It does not report original research but rather critically evaluate previously published material. Typically, a review article analyzes or synthesizes existing literature on a subject with the aim of expanding on its current understanding or sums up the already existing work to relate it to its present status and suggest new research directions. Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and adhere to the PRISMA guidelines, and authors should also include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram as supporting files. 

For Case Reports

Case Reports should include a succinct introduction about the general medical condition or relevant symptoms that will be discussed in the case report; the case presentation including all of the relevant de-identified demographic and descriptive information about the patient(s), and a description of the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome; a discussion providing context and any necessary explanation of specific treatment decisions; a conclusion briefly outlining the take-home message and the lessons learned. Case Reports (on one case) are not accepted to the journal.

Begin each component on a separate page. Number all pages (starting with the title page), tables and figures in Arabic numerals. Do not number lines.

Front Matter

● Title

The title of your manuscript should be precise, clear, and directly related to the study. It should indicate whether the research involves human or animal trial data, or if it is a systematic review, meta-analysis, or replication study. Avoid including short forms like running titles or headers, as these will be removed by the Editorial Office.

● Author Information

Please provide the full names of all authors, including first and last names, with middle name initials included if necessary. Affiliations should follow the PubMed/MEDLINE standard format, including detailed address information such as city, postal code, state/province, and country. At least one author must be designated as the corresponding author, whose email address will be publicly displayed in the published article. Please note that after acceptance, changes to author names or affiliations may not be permitted. For authors with equal contributions, use a superscript symbol (#) for identification and include the following statement below the affiliation: “These authors contributed equally to this work.” Additionally, equal contributions should be clearly detailed in the author contributions section. Please review the relevant criteria to ensure authorship qualifications are met.

● Author Affiliations

All authors must include their current affiliation as well as the institution where the majority of the research for the manuscript was conducted. The primary affiliation should typically reflect the institution that provided the most support or where the bulk of the research was performed, but authors are encouraged to confirm any specific requirements with their institution, particularly regarding contractual agreements.

Accurate author names and affiliations are crucial to ensure proper attribution, citation, and to avoid issues related to recognition, promotions, or funding. Once an article is published, requests for updates or corrections to author details, including affiliations, may not be accommodated.

For Independent Researchers

Authors who are not currently associated with any university, institution, or organization, and were not during the development of the manuscript, should identify themselves as “Independent Researchers.”

● Abstract

Abstracts of a research paper should be typically 200 to 400 words in length, and 150 to 300 words for a review paper. Abstracts shall be running continuously and shall not include referencecitations. Abbreviations that appear only once in the abstract should be defined in full. If abbreviations appear more than once, the full definitions should be provided first before they can be used elsewhere.

● Keywords

Please list 3 to 10 pertinent keywords specific to the article yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

Main Text

Main Ttext should comprise: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results (or Systematic Description), Discussion, Conclusion. Combining Results and Discussion is not allowed.

● Materials and Methods

Any commercialized kits, reagents, instruments, software, antibodies, etc. used in the research, shall be provided with their full name, along with the information of the Manufacturers/suppliers/software details (Name, City, Province/State, Country). 

Accession numbers of RNA, DNA and protein sequences used in the manuscript should be provided.

● Figures and Tables

Order

1. Figures and tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals and placed within the text immediately following their first citation to maintain a seamless flow and clarity in the presentation, and the first citation of figures and tables in the main text must follow a sequential order. Ensure all figures are numbered in the order in which they appear. Figure discussions are organized in the following manner: e.g. Fig. 1a, Fig. 1b, Fig. 1c, Fig. 1d, followed by Fig. 2a, Fig. 2b, Fig. 2c, Fig. 2d, and so forth. Please do not include figure discussions as demonstrated in such instances: Fig. 1a, Fig. 1b, Fig. 3a, Fig. 2a, Fig. 1c, Fig. 1d, Fig. 2b, Fig. 2c, Fig. 4a, Fig. 3c, Fig. 3d, and so on. The inclusion of new figure discussions within the context of another figure's discussion is not acceptable.

Content

1. The figure content should be complete and the characters should not be masked. Unnecessary marks such as red wavy lines and hard (soft) returns are not allowed in figures;

2. Images of cells and western blots should be large enough to see the relevant features. In addition, uncropped, untouched, full original images of western blots should be uploaded with the other figure files;

3. Any special characters or icons in an image/table (e.g., ^*, ^**, ^***, ^#, ...) need to have a corresponding explanation (can be added in the image or caption);

4. Please remove all non-English terms or add a definition for them;

5. References in the form of “[xx]” are not allowed in images. “Author + Year” format can be used in the image, and all mentioned references must be cited in the caption if necessary;

6. No specific feature of an image should be augmented, altered, enhanced, obscured, moved, or removed. The focus should be on the data rather than its presentation (e.g., background, imperfections, and non-specific bands should not be “cleaned up”);

7. Ensure that permission has been obtained and there is no copyright issue. If copyright is needed, please provide a citation in the following format: “Reprinted/adapted with permission from reference [xx]. Copyright year, copyright owner’s name”. All figures, tables, and images will be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license, and permission must be obtained for the use of copyrighted material from other sources. If a figure or table has been published previously (even if you were the author of the manuscript), copyright permission for reuse of the figure or table will often be required. The acknowledgment and written permission from the copyright holder will be required where necessary. It is the responsibility of the authors to acquire the licenses, follow any citation instructions requested by third-party rights holders, and cover any supplementary charges.

Resolution and Format

1. Figures should be scaled to a maximum width of 16.51 cm (6.50 in) and height of 20 cm (7.87 in), preserving their original proportions without distortion. The preferred format is .tif, with RGB color space, a DPI of 500+ (accepted image resolutions: Line Art ≥ 900 dpi, Halftone ≥ 300 dpi, Combo ≥ 600 dpi), no alpha channels, and flattened layers;

2. To avoid any errors during position changes, please provide the combined image instead of editable pieces in the figure;

3. Please provide an editable table in MS Word format, not images (including algorithms, listings, etc.).

Labels and Captions

1. Figure labels must be sized in proportion to the image, sharp, and legible. The label size should be no smaller than 8-point and no larger than the font size of the main text;

2. Labels must be saved using standard fonts (Arial, Helvetica or Symbol font) and should be consistent for all the figures;

3. All labels should be in black, and should not be overlapped, faded, broken or distorted;

4. Space must be inserted before measurement units. The first letter of each phrase, not each word, must be capitalized;

5. Provide a short title (in the legend, not on the figure itself) and an explanation in brief but sufficient detail to make the figure intelligible without reference to the text. Statistical evaluations should indicate the test used.

Scale Bar

1. A scale bar, rather than magnification, must be provided for any micrographs. The scale bar should be explicitly and prominently displayed on each figure; one cannot simply add a line on the figures without any scale bar description or simply add a description of the scale in the figure legend without a scale bar in the figure. This practice is mandatory for all micrographs and petri dish diagrams.

● Acronyms/Abbreviations/Initialisms

Acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms must be defined upon their first use in three sections: the abstract, the main text, and the first figure or table. When first introduced, include the abbreviation or acronym in parentheses following the full term. Accepted abbreviations for statistical parameters are: P, n, SD, SEM, df, ns, ANOVA, t. Naming of chemicals should follow that given in Chemical Abstracts Service.

● International System of Units

The use of SI Units (International System of Units) is required. Whenever possible, convert imperial, US customary, or other units to SI equivalents.

1. There should be a space between the unit and Arabic number: 5 mm NOT 5mm.

2. There should be a space before and after the operator: 3 cm  × 5 cm NOT 3 cm×5 cm.

3. Please use Arabic number and SI Units (International System of Units) in the manuscript: 5 kg NOT five kilograms or 5 kilograms or five kg.

4. Do not use hyphen/dash or any connector symbol between the value and its unit: 5 kg NOT 5-kg.

5. Please clarify all units during a calculation or a mathematical relationship: 3 cm × 5 cm NOT 3 × 5 cm, 123 g ± 2 g or (123 ± 2) g NOT 123 ± 2 g, 70%–85% NOT 70–85%.

● Symbols

Greek letters must be inserted using the correct Greek symbol (using Times, Helvetica or Symbol font), NOT written in full, i.e., alpha: α; beta: β, ß, (available in Times and Helvetica); and gamma: γ, etc.

● Equations

For equations, if preparing your manuscript in Word, use the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Ensure that equations are editable and not inserted as images.

● Statistical Analysis

Appropriate statistical treatment of the data is essential. When statistical analysis is performed, the name of the statistical test used, the number for each analysis, the comparisons of interest, the alpha level and the actual p-value for each test should be provided.

● Scientific Naming and Formatting Rules

Linnean scientific names should be in italics, while higher than generic taxa should not. The generic name of drugs, as well as all other common names, should be written in lower case. Gene designations should be in lower case and in italics, while protein designations should be in regular capital letters. All the p in p value, whether in the text or on the figure, should be lowercase and italic.

For more details and examples, please refer to the template.

Back Matter

● Declarations

Please note that the 6 pieces of information (Acknowledgement, Funding Statement, Author Contributions, Availability of Data and Materials, Ethics Approval, Conflicts of Interest) need to be truthfully provided at the end of the article.

Acknowledgement

This section is intended for acknowledging any support not covered under the Author Contributions or Funding Statement sections. This may include administrative and technical assistance, as well as in-kind contributions such as materials or equipment provided for the research. Please be aware that the specific funding grant number should only appear in the Funding Statement. If there are no acknowledgments to be made, please use “Not applicable”.

Funding Statement

Authors should describe sources of funding that have supported the work, including specific grant numbers, initials of authors who received the grant, and the URLs to sponsors’ websites: “This research was funded by Name of Funder, grant number xxx” or “The APC was funded by xxx”. If there is no funding support, please write “The author(s) received no specific funding for this study”.

Author Contributions

The Author Contributions statement is mandatory for research articles, except for papers with a single author. It should represent all the authors and is to be included upon submission. All listed authors must have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contribution. We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:

“The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: Conceptualization, First-name Lastname1 and First-name Lastname2; methodology, First-name Lastname1; software, First-name Lastname1; validation, First-name Lastname1, First-name Lastname2 and First-name Lastname3; formal analysis, First-name Lastname1; investigation, First-name Lastname1; resources, First-name Lastname1; data curation, First-name Lastname1; writing—original draft preparation, First-name Lastname1; writing—review and editing, First-name Lastname1; visualization, First-name Lastname1; supervision, First-name Lastname1; project administration, First-name Lastname1; funding acquisition, First-name Lastname1. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript”.

Please turn to the CRediT role descriptors—CRediT for the term explanation.

Availability of Data and Materials

This statement should make clear how readers can access the data used in the study and explain why any unavailable data cannot be released. The following five statements are offered for reference:

1. Data openly available in a public repository.

    “The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL].”

2. Data available within the article or its Supplementary Materials.

    “The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its Supplementary Materials.”

3. Data available on request from the authors.

    “The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Corresponding Author, [author initials], upon reasonable request.”

4. Data not available due to [ethical/legal/commercial] restrictions.

    “Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.”

5. “Not applicable.” (This article does not involve data availability, and this section is not applicable).

Ethics Approval

Guidelines for ethical approval statements may differ based on the journal, a standard ethical approval statement will usually include:

1. Whether or not the study included human or animal subjects. In all cases, the ethical approval status of the work should be stated in the ethical approval statement.   

2. The committee which approved the study.

3. The compliance documents. What policies, declarations, acts, etc.

4. Persistent identifier: reference or approval number. Include the registration ID/reference number if applicable.

5. “Not applicable.” for studies not involving humans or animals.

Conflicts of Interest

Declare conflicts of interest or state: “The author(s) declare(s) no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

● Supplementary Materials

In addition to the data, computer code, and research materials transparency guidelines, TSP encourages authors to provide supplementary materials that complement their main articles and enhance the readers' understanding of the research. Supplementary materials may include additional data, figures, tables, multimedia content, or relevant information.

1. Supplementary Materials Submission: Authors should submit supplementary materials along with their main article during the manuscript submission process. These materials should be in a separate section and clearly labeled as "Supplementary Materials.".

2. Content Relevance: All supplementary materials should be directly relevant to the main research article and provide valuable additional insights or data that support or expand upon the article's findings. Supplementary materials should not duplicate information already presented in the main text.

3. File Formats: Supplementary materials can be submitted in various formats, such as Word, PDF, Excel, CSV, images (JPEG or PNG), audio (MP3), video (MP4), or any other appropriate format for the content type. 

4. Supplementary Data: Authors can provide raw data or additional data that support the article's findings but are not included in the main text due to space constraints. Data should be well-organized, properly labeled, and accompanied by clear explanations of the data's context and significance.

5. Supplementary Figures and Tables: Authors may include supplementary figures or tables to complement the main article, which should be clear, readable (with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi), and accompanied by accurate legends. These materials must be referenced in the main text using the prefix "S" (e.g., Fig. S1, Eq. (S2), Table S1) and should be submitted without tracked changes, highlights, comments, or line numbers.

● Appendices

The appendix is an optional section that can contain details and data supplemental to the main text. Authors that need to include an Appendix section should place it before the References section. Multiple appendices should all have headings in the style used for above. They should be ordered as such: A, B, and C, etc.

Appendix sections must be referenced in the main text. Within the appendices, figures, tables, and other elements should be labeled starting with “A”—e.g., Figure A1, Figure A2, etc.

● References

All references should be cited in the main text sequentially (including citations in tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero, to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. Include the digital object identifier (DOI) for all references where available.

For citations of references, please use square brackets and consecutive numbers, e.g., [1], [2,3], [4–6]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10), or [6] (p. 101–105). When a cited reference is the subject of a sentence, use the author’s last name (e.g., Rhee [1]) or “Reference/Ref.” (e.g., Reference [1]). For multiple authors, use the first author followed by et al. (e.g., Al-Khshali et al. [2] or Refs. [4–6]). It is not recommended to cite more than 5 consecutive references. Please include the first 6 authors' names before using “et al.” in the references. Citations and references in the Supplementary Materials are permitted if they also appear in the reference list here.

The following are examples of the reference style (Vancouver style), which should be strictly adhered to (More details of style can refer to: Citing Medicine—NCBI Bookshelf):

● Journals

1. Author AA, Author BB. Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Name. Year;volume(issue):pagination.

2. Author AA Jr, Author BB 2nd, Author CC, Author DD, Author EE, Author FF, et al. Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Name. Year;volume(issue):pagination.

● Books

3. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the book. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Pagination (Optional).

4. Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of the book. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Pagination (Optional).

5. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the book. xth ed. (if not first) Vol. x (if any). Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Pagination (Optional).

6. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the book. xth ed. Translator AA, translator. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Pagination (Optional).

7. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the book. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Section/Table/Charts/… x; Pagination (Required).

8. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the chapter. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of the book. xth ed. (if not first) Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Pagination (Required).

9. Author AA, Author BB. English Title of the book. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Pagination (In Original Language).

● Conferences

10. Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Book title (Optional). Conference Title: (Proceedings of the) xth Name of Conference; Date of Conference; Location of the Conference (Optional). Publisher Location: Publisher; Year of publication. Pagination (Optional).

11. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the paper. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Book title (Optional). Conference Title: (Proceedings of the) xth Name of Conference; Date of Conference; Location of the Conference (Optional). Publisher Location: Publisher; Year of publication. Pagination (Required).

12. Author AA, Author BB. Title of the paper/Poster session. Paper/Poster session presented at: Name of the conference; Date of Conference; Location of the Conference (Optional).

● Dissertations and Theses

13. Author AA. Title of dissertation [dissertation/master’s thesis]. Location: Institution Name; Year of publication. Pagination (Optional).

● Web Sites

14. Author AA/Organization (Optional). Title of electronic publication/webpage [Internet/Video/…]. Location: Publisher (Optional); Date of publication (Optional) [cited 2024 Jan 1]. Available from: http://URL.

● Patents

15. Inventor AA, Inventor BB, inventors; Assignee AA, assignee. Title of the patent. Country of patent Patent number. Issue date/grant date.

Chemical Compounds

Chemical and Chemical Nomenclature and Abbreviations
Authors should provide the exact structure of the chemical compound, and if there are appeared as new chemical compounds, authors should submit the small-molecule crystallographic data to the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and deposit relevant information to PubChem. The final version of the manuscript should contain the accession codes. When possible, authors should use systematic nomenclature to identify chemical compounds, and biomolecules using IUPAC is preferred. Standard chemical and chemical abbreviations should be used. Chemical structures should be included as high-resolution files according to Cell Press Figure Guidelines. 

Combinatorial Compound Libraries

The authors should include standard characterization data for a diverse panel of library components when describing the preparation of combinatorial libraries in the manuscript.    

Chemical Structures for Organic and Organometallic Compounds

Chemical structures for organic and organometallic compounds should be established through spectroscopic analysis. The authors should provide standard peak listings for both 1H NMR and proton-decoupled 13C NMR for all new compounds. Other NMR data, when appropriate, such as 31P NMR, 19F NMR, etc. should be reported. For the identification of functional groups, both UV and IR spectral data should be reported when appropriate. For crystalline materials, melting-point ranges should be included. For the analysis of chiral compounds, specific rotations should be reported. For known compounds, authors should provide detailed references.

Spectral Data

Detailed spectral data for new compounds should be provided in the Materials and methods section. The authors should explain how specific, unambiguous NMR assignments were made in the Materials and methods section.      

Crystallographic Data for Small Molecules

For crystallographic data for small molecules, authors should provide a standard crystallographic information file (CIF) and a structural figure with probability ellipsoids. The authors should check the CIF using the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) checkCIF. For the structure, the structure factors must be included either in the main CIF or in a separate CIF. Crystallographic data for small molecules should be submitted to the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), and the accession number must be referenced in the manuscript.     

Biomolecular Materials

Manuscripts reporting new biomolecular structures should contain a table summarizing structural and refinement statistics. If suitable, high-field NMR or X-ray crystallography may also be used. For new biopolymeric materials (e.g., oligosaccharides, peptides, nucleic acids, etc.), if it is not possible for structural analysis by NMR spectroscopic methods. Authors must provide evidence of the identity based on sequence (when appropriate) and mass spectral characterization.      

Biological Constructs

Authors should provide sequencing or functional data that validates the identity of their biological constructs (plasmids, fusion proteins, site-directed mutants) upon request.  

Polymers

For new materials, as well as 1H NMR and 13C NMR, the mass spectral analysis should be used to support the identification of molecular weight. Ideally, high-resolution mass spectral (HRMS) data are preferred.  

Nanomaterials

The authors must provide a detailed characterization of both individual objects and bulk composition.

Data Sharing and Deposition

Data Availability Statement

At Tech Science Press, we value open scientific exchange and believe in promoting transparency and reproducibility in research. We encourage Authors to submit to TSP journals to include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscripts. This statement should provide information about the availability of the research data and any restrictions or conditions associated with accessing it.

1. Data sharing may be inappropriate when ethical, legal, or privacy considerations arise. In such cases, authors must clearly outline any limitations in the Data Availability Statement during manuscript submission. It is the author's responsibility to ensure that any shared data adhere to the consent obtained from participants regarding the use of confidential information.

2. Data Repositories

Authors are strongly encouraged to deposit their research data in reputable and discipline-specific data repositories. Preferred data repositories should be recognized and indexed by organizations like DataCite, re3data, or other relevant repositories in their respective fields.

3. Data Citation

Research data should be cited in the main article to give proper credit and acknowledge the efforts of data creators. Authors must properly reference the deposited data in their reference list, including the dataset's persistent identifier (DOI, accession number, etc.).

Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency

For work where novel computer code was developed, authors should release it either by depositing it in a recognized, public repository such as GitHub or uploading it as supplementary information to the publication. The name, version, corporation and location information for all software used should be clearly indicated. Please include all the parameters used to run software/program analyses.

1. Code Availability

Authors are strongly encouraged to share the computer code and software used to generate results presented in their articles. The availability of code enhances research reproducibility and allows other researchers to build upon the work.

2. Code Repositories

Authors should deposit their code and software in well-established and reputable code repositories such as GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or other relevant platforms. Providing a link to the code repository should be included in the Data Availability Statement.

3. Code Documentation

Authors must ensure that the deposited code is well-documented, readable, and easy to understand. Sufficient comments and explanations should be provided within the code to facilitate its usage by others.

4. Citation

Authors must provide a citation for the code in the article's reference list. Include the code's persistent identifier (e.g., DOI or URL) to facilitate proper acknowledgment and citation by other researchers.

Data Deposition and Suggested Repositories

Prior to manuscript submission, please choose the appropriate repository, below are recommended data repositories for your research:

Dataverse, Dryad, figshare, GigaScience, Mendeley Data, Zenodo

You may also visit DataCite, re3data to identify registered data repositories for your data sharing.

For journals with health research subjects, the deposition of sequence information to the community-endorsed, public repository is necessary. Accession numbers and other relevant, unique identifiers provided by the database should be included in the submitted manuscript. 

DNA and RNA Sequences: Genbank, European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), DDBJ, Protein DataBank, UniProt 

DNA Sequencing Data: GEO, ArrayExpress, NCBI Trace and Short-Read Archive, ENA's Sequence Read Archive

New microarray (Data must be MIAME compliant, as described at the MGED website specifying microarray standards): Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), ArrayExpress. Genetic polymorphisms: dbSNP, dbVAR

Linked genotype and phenotype data: dbGAP, European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA)

Protein sequences: UniProt (submission tool SPIN). Flow cytometry: FlowRepository

Chemical Compound Screening and Assay Data: PubChem

Suggesting Reviewers

Authors are welcome and encouraged to suggest reviewers when they submit their manuscripts by using the submission system. Authors should make sure they are totally independent and without conflicts of interest in any way. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer.

English Editing Service

Clear and concise language enables both the journal editors and reviewers to concentrate on the scientific content of your manuscript. In order to facilitate a proper peer review process and ensure that submissions are judged exclusively on academic merit, BIOCELL strongly encourages authors to prepare the language of their manuscripts with the utmost care. The use of the recommended language polishing service on your manuscript does not indicate the acceptance of your manuscript for publication in BIOCELL.

If you are an author whose native language is not English—or you have any concerns regarding the language quality of your manuscript—we recommend having your manuscript professionally edited by a qualified English-speaking researcher in your field prior to submission.

Tech Science Press offers paid language editing services, or you may choose to use an alternative service that provides a confirmation certificate.

Authorship and Contribution

Authorship

Tech Science Press follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines regarding authorship and contributions. Authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2. Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

When the work has to be conducted by a large multi-author group, it is advised that the list of authors be decided before the work starts and confirmed before the manuscript submission. All members of that group listed as authors should have met all the above four criteria for authorship with final approval of the manuscript, and should be able to take public responsibility for the work with full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of all group authors. As such, they will be required as individuals to complete conflict-of-interest disclosure forms.

Submissions by any individual other than one of the listed authors will strictly not be considered. All authors will take responsibility for the content of the manuscript they submitted, and ensure they are familiar with the other authors individual contribution.  

Non-author Contributor

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g. "Clinical Investigators" or "Participating Investigators"), and their contributions should be specified (e.g., "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," "provided and cared for study patients," "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript"). 

Alteration to Authorship

Requests made for an authorship change after submission must be made to the editorial office with an explanation for the change, include the signature of all authors, and be submitted by the corresponding author.

TSP places significant importance on maintaining the integrity and transparency of authorship contributions, and TSP journals do not accept any requests to change the first author or corresponding author during any stage of manuscript processing. Any insistence on altering the first author or corresponding author will result in the rejection of the manuscript without further review or consideration.

Please note that if you have changed affiliation during the course of the research, your new affiliation could be acknowledged in a note. TSP does not normally take requests for changes to affiliations after the acceptance of manuscripts.

Authorship issues found after publication may result in a correction. If and when the authors are unable to resolve among themselves an authorship-related dispute, TSP may raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its/their guidelines. 

Authorship Contribution Statement

The Author Contributions statement is mandatory for research articles, except for papers with a single author. It should represent all the authors and is to be included upon submission. All listed authors must have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contribution. We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:

“The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: Conceptualization, First-name Lastname1 and First-name Lastname2; methodology, First-name Lastname1; software, First-name Lastname1; validation, First-name Lastname1, First-name Lastname2 and First-name Lastname3; formal analysis, First-name Lastname1; investigation, First-name Lastname1; resources, First-name Lastname1; data curation, First-name Lastname1; writing—original draft preparation, First-name Lastname1; writing—review and editing, First-name Lastname1; visualization, First-name Lastname1; supervision, First-name Lastname1; project administration, First-name Lastname1; funding acquisition, First-name Lastname1. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript”.

Please turn to the CRediT role descriptors—CRediT for the term explanation.

Authorship and the Use of AI or AI-Assisted Technologies 

TSP follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement when it comes to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technology in manuscript preparation. Tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) do not meet authorship criteria and thus cannot be listed as authors on manuscripts.

In situations where AI or AI-assisted tools have been used in the preparation of a manuscript, this must be appropriately declared with sufficient details at submission via the cover letter. Furthermore, authors are required to be transparent about the use of these tools and disclose details of how the AI tool was used within the “Materials and Methods” section, in addition to providing the AI tool’ s product details within the “Acknowledgments” section.

Authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript and must ensure that this content complies with all of TSP’s Publication Ethics Policies. 

Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

In the circumstances where Editors or editorial staff of the journal submit their own studies to the journal, they shall not be involved in the reviewing process, and the review process must be made transparently and rigorously. Submissions authored by editors or editorial staff of the journal will be handled by another editor who has least COIs with the authors to minimize the bias.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also referred to as “competing interests”) may indicate the potential to influence the validity or objectivity of research. Editors, authors, and reviewers may be involved into COIs, and BIOCELL considers it essential to identify and seek to mitigate them so as to ensure the integrity of its role in the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. Failure to declare competing interests may result in decline of a manuscript.

Authors must declare all potential conflicts of interest; if they have none to declare, they should state plainly, “The author(s) declare(s) no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

In order to limit COIs, all roles involved in the peer-review process must identify and declare any personal circumstances or associations that may be perceived as having such influence and acknowledge all funding sources for the work. However, COI statements relating to public funding sources, such as government agencies and charitable or academic institutions, need not be supplied.

To be specific, BIOCELL defines a COI as any relationship that may have an impact on the authors, reviewers, or editors of a manuscript during the peer review process, on the making of editorial decisions, or generally on any stage in the path toward publication.

Thus, COIs may include (but not limited to): 

Financial COIs

• Stock or share ownership

• Patent applications

• Research grants

• Consultancies

• Royalties

Non-financial COIs

• Affiliation with the same institution;

• Personal relationships, e.g., between thesis advisers and their students, friends, family members, etc.;

• Academic relationships, e.g., among co-authors, collaborators, or competitors;

• Government employees;

• Members of BIOCELL editorial board of a TSP journal.

COIs are not considered permanent; such relationships that have ended more than two years prior to the submission of a manuscript need not be identified as sources of potential conflict.

Authors

BIOCELL requires a declaration from all authors of a manuscript regarding any potential COIs that could be relevant to the integrity or reliability of the scientific and professional judgment presented therein, as well as that of otherwise unassociated studies in the same journal. Potential conflict, unless already declared, will be held in confidence while the paper is under review. If the article is accepted for publication, the potential conflict of interest will be included in the acknowledgments. If there is, in fact, no conflict of interest, the authors should state plainly.

Reviewers

Reviewers should declare any COIs when they are assigned a manuscript and disclose this information to the editor, who will then assess whether they should proceed with the review process. 

Editors

Editors, including Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors and Guest Editors should be aware of their own potential COIs. If the Editors have authored or coauthored the manuscripts submitted to BIOCELL, Editors might be perceived to be influenced by the relationship. BIOCELL expects the Editor(s) to declare any COIs or potential COIs.

Research Data and Supplementary Materials

In addition to the data, computer code, and research materials transparency guidelines, TSP encourages authors to provide supplementary materials that complement their main articles and enhance the readers' understanding of the research. These supplementary materials may include additional data, figures, tables, multimedia content, or relevant information.

1. Supplementary Materials Submission: Authors should submit supplementary materials along with their main article during the manuscript submission process. These materials should be in a separate section and clearly labeled as "Supplementary Materials."

2. Content Relevance: All supplementary materials should be directly relevant to the main research article and provide valuable additional insights or data that support or expand upon the article's findings. Supplementary materials should not duplicate information already presented in the main text.

3. File Formats: Supplementary materials can be submitted in various formats, such as Word, PDF, Excel, CSV, images (JPEG or PNG), audio (MP3), video (MP4), or any other appropriate format for the content type.

4. Supplementary Data: Authors can provide raw data or additional data that support the article's findings but are not included in the main text due to space constraints. Data should be well-organized, properly labeled, and accompanied by clear explanations of the data's context and significance.

5. Supplementary Figures and Tables: Authors may include extra figures or tables that complement those in the main article. These should be numbered separately (e.g., Supplementary Figure S1, Supplementary Table S1) and referred to in the main text.

Copyright and Licensing

BIOCELL publishes all articles under an open-access license, which means that the articles remain accessible to all without charge and without technical or legal barriers and that they can be reused with proper acknowledgment and citation. Financial support for the open access publication is provided by the authors’ institutions or by research funding agencies in the way of article processing charge (APC) once manuscripts have been accepted. More specifically, BIOCELL publishes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License. BIOCELL is committed to open access publishing as a means to foster the exchange of research among scientists, especially across disciplines. 

The copyright and other proprietary rights related to papers published by BIOCELL are retained by the authors. If the authors reproduce any text, figures, tables, or illustrations from the papers published by BIOCELL in their own future research, they must cite the originally published version. They are further asked to inform BIOCELL’s editorial office of any exceptional circumstances in this regard at the time of submission, for which exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the publisher.

Articles published in BIOCELL are likely to contain material republished with permission under a more restrictive license. When this situation arises, it should be indicated; it is the responsibility of the authors to seek permission for reuse from the copyright holder.

Corrections & Retractions

TSP journals will issue corrections, and/or retraction statements, when deemed proper.

Corrections 

BIOCELL aims to publish every article online in its final form. Upon receiving the proofs of their accepted manuscripts, authors will have an opportunity to check for errors and oversights. Occasionally, a mistake is pointed out in a published article, necessitating the issuance of a correction statement. A correction is a statement rectifying an error or an omission, Authors or readers may submit such a statement either through the journal’s online manuscript submission system (https://www.techscience.com/biocell), or by sending an email, along with the submission ID, to the BIOCELL’s editorial office (biocell@techscience.com). A correction notice, published and linked to the corresponding article, is freely accessible to all readers.

When making corrections to the original articles, the original article both in PDF and XML versions are corrected and bi-directionally linked to and from the published amendment notice that details the original error. Any changes made to the original articles affect data in figures, tables or text, the amendment notice will reproduce the original data. If it is not possible to correct the original article in both PDF and XML versions, the article will remain unchanged but will contain links that direct to and from the published correction notice.

• Author’s Correction: An Author’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the author that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or the journal. The Managing Editor of that manuscript will be responsible for handling the correction process.

• Publisher’s Correction: A Publisher’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the journal that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or of the journal.

Retractions 

A retraction is a notice that a previously published paper should no longer be regarded as part of the published literature. The primary purpose of a retraction is to ensure the integrity and completeness of scholarly records by withdrawing any manuscript which is found to contain infringements of professional ethical codes, major errors, or where its main conclusion is seriously undermined as a result of new evidence coming to light.

Violations of professional ethical codes include multiple submissions without proper citations or permission, redundant publications, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, etc. Major errors cover any or all miscalculations or experimental errors, intentionally or due to honest mistakes.

The retraction will be referred to the Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and the Managing Editor who have handled the paper. Retracted articles will not be removed from the printed copies of the journal (e.g., from libraries) nor from the electronic archives. Their retracted status will be indicated as clearly as possible. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the permanence and integrity of the published scientific record. When an article is retracted, in most of the cases, the original manuscript is corrected and is bi-directionally linked (to and from) the published retraction notice which details the original error. For the purpose of transparency, when corrections made to the original article affect any data, figures, tables or texts, the retraction notice will display the original data alongside the corrected version. When a correction is not possible, all existing versions of the article will remain unchanged but will contain the bi-directional links, to and from, the published retraction notice.

The notice of retraction is permanently linked to its corresponding retracted article and is freely available and accessible by all readers.
Articles may be retracted by their Author(s), by the Journal Editors, or by the Publisher, i.e., Tech Science Press. In all instances, the retraction should indicate the reason for the action as well as the entity behind the decision. A retraction made without the unanimous agreement of the authors is feasible and indicated as such.

Article Withdrawal

Article Withdrawal is only used for articles in press, which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, an articles may contain infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, and fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles that include errors or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be “Withdrawn” by the article author or the journal editor.

Removal of Published Content

Under special circumstances, TSP reserves the right to remove an article, book or other content from TSP’s website and submission system. Such action may be taken when:

• There are evidence indicating that the published content is defamatory, infringes on intellectual property rights, privacy rights, other legal rights, or is plainly unlawful;

• A court or government order requires removal of such content;

• The content, if acted upon, would pose an immediate and serious risks to health. Removal may be temporary or permanent. A statement will be published explaining the decision behind the removal.

Addressing Post-publication Issues

TSP is fully committed to maintaining the integrity and completeness of the scientific record and recognizes its importance to researchers and the academic community at large. As such, TSP will thoroughly investigate concerns that are directly raised with us by authors and/or readers. Authors are strongly encouraged to address any raised issues. In the course of our investigation, we may request original raw data, and consult with experts and other scholars in the field. Depending on the seriousness of the issues, the following outcomes may ensue:

• A manuscript still under consideration may be rejected and returned to the author.

• A published online article, depending on the nature and severity of the issues, may result in a correction notice or a retraction notice.

• Issues deemed to be serious may prompt TSP to inform the authors’ institution and related affiliations.

Our actions are driven by our dedicated aim for transparent notification to our readers and unabated commitment to the integrity of the published record, and not by any motivation to sanction individuals or attribute responsibility to specific named individuals. We may refer readers to the institutional investigations’ reports if they are publicly available. While we are committed to addressing post-publications issues and correcting the record swiftly, investigations typically take some time to reach resolutions given the complexity of the discussions, the diligence in our process and the need to obtain original data and consult with experts. We will issue and regularly update relevant Editor’s Notes and/or Editor’s Expression of Concern as interim notifications to alert our readership of any of concerns with published material.

Appeals and Complaints

BIOCELL’s appeal and complaint procedures pertain to grievances against editorial decisions, discontent with procedural inaccuracies (such as tardiness in manuscript handling), and complaint regarding publishing ethics.

Queries of appeal and complaint must be accompanied by comprehensive justifications, and authors are requested to submit appeals and complaints in writing to TSP Feedback Center at https://ijs.tspsubmission.com/user/feedback. The editorial office will provide a prompt response upon receipt of a formal appeal or complaint, and endeavor to resolve the matter within a reasonable time frame.

Concerns regarding ethical misconducts may also be reported to TSP’s Editorial Integrity Team (editorial@techscience.com). The Editorial Integrity Team adheres to COPE Core Practices and Guidelines, and subsequently determines a suitable course of action, authorizing editorial offices to furnish the complainant with feedback.