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 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 PDF: Sample.pdf.

Template in MS Word: Sample.doc.

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.

1 General Format of Articles

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

Arrange sections of the MANUSCRIPT FILE in the following order:

• Title page

• Abstract (Abstract should not contain sections or references and should be limited to a maximum of 300 words)

• Main text

• References

• Tables (Tables should be included in the MANUSCRIPT FILE and numbered using Arabic numerals)

• Figures (Figures should be inserted into the MANUSCRIPT FILE)

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.

The Title Page should Contain the Following:

• Main title (in bold letters, not exceeding 200 characters and spaces). The following example will help: ‘The testis and spermatogenesis in Thais c[1] lavigera…’ .

• Full names of all authors, with the family name in capital letters (do not include authors’ academic degrees). The following example will help: Nicholas FISHER, John MILLER, Anthony BAKER.

• Running title (not exceeding 50 characters including spaces).

• Key words: between three to five; do not use words which are already in the main title.

• Title of the corresponding author (e.g., Professor, Dr., Mr., Mrs., Ms.), full name and email address. The title is only intended for correspondence and it will not be used in the printed article.

Main Text

The text should be written in clear, concise English, and it should be easily understandable to a broad readership. Sentences should not begin with abbreviations or numerals. Main headings should be Introduction, Material and Methods, Results (or Systematic Description), Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, Funding Statement, Author Contributions, Availability of Data and Materials, Ethics Approval, and Conflicts of Interest, and they should be centered and in capital letters. Do not number headings. Combining Results and Discussion is not allowed.

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.

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.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses the first time they appear in the abstract, main text, and in figure or table caption and used consistently thereafter. 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.

Units 

Units of measurement should be used concisely according to the International System of Units (SI). All units should be converted to SI units whenever possible.

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.

References

Manuscripts are prepared according to the Vancouver reference style. The in-text citation is placed immediately after the text which refers to the source being cited:

Using square brackets: as one author has put it “the darkest days were still ahead” [1].

All references should be listed at the end of the manuscript. When the number of authors is six or fewer, please include all their names. If there are more than six authors, list the first six authors' names and use et al. to denote the remaining authors. The journal title should be an abbreviation. After the journal abbreviation, include the publication year, volume number (issue number), and page number. For example: N Engl J Med. 2002;347(4):284-7

Reference Examples:

Reference of a book:

Author AA. Title. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year.

1. Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.

Reference of a book (works in non-English languages):

Author AA. English Title. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year (In original language).

1. Zhou CH, Luo JC. Geo. Computing of high resolution satellite remote sensing images. China: Science Press; 2009. p. 1–3 (In Chinese).

Reference of a book chapter:

Author AA. Chapter title. In: Authors. Title. Publisher Location: Publisher; Year. Page.

1. Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.

Reference of a journal article:

Author AA. Title. Journal Name(abbreviation). Year Published; volume number(issue number):page number.

When the number of authors is six or fewer, please include all their names. If there are more than six authors, list the first six authors' names and use et al. to denote the remaining authors. (See example 2).

1. Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347(4):284-7.

2. Hallal AH, Amortegui JD, Jeroukhimov IM, Casillas J, Schulman CI, Manning RJ, et al. Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography accurately detects common bile duct stones in resolving gallstone pancreatitis. J Am Coll Surg. 2005;200(6):869-75.

3. Kanneganti P, Harris JD, Brophy RH, Carey JL, Lattermann C, Flanigan DC. The effect of smoking on ligament and cartilage surgery in the knee: a systematic review. Am J Sports Med. 2012;40(12):2872-8. Available from: http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/40/12/2872 doi: 10.1177/03635465124582236.

Reference of an online source:

Author AA. Title. URL. [Year Published].

1. Atluri SN. The meshless method (MLPG) for domain & BIE discretizations. Available from: http://www.techscience.com/info/mlpg_atluri. [Accessed 2004].

Reference of a thesis:

Author AA.  Title (Level). Institution Name: Location; Year Published.

1. Darius H. Savant syndrome-theories and empirical findings (Ph.D. Thesis). University of Turku: Finland; 2014.

Reference of conference:

Author AA. Title. In: Conference Name, Year Published; Location.

1. Howe B, Lee P, Grechkin M, Yang ST, West JD. Deep mapping of the visual literature.  In: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion; 2017 Apr 3-7; Perth, Australia. Geneva; International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee; 2017 [cited 2021 Aug 12]; p. 1273–7. Available from: ACM Digital Library doi:10.1145/3041021.3053065

Reference of Government government Reportsreports:

Author AA, Author BB. Title of report. Place of publication: Publisher; Date of publication. Total number of pages. Report No.:

1. Rowe IL, Carson NE. Medical manpower in Victoria. East Bentleigh (AU): Monash University, Department of Community Practice; 1981. 35 p. Report No.: 4.

Tables

Tables should be typed within the manuscript, and they should be numbered in Arabic numerals, and cited as such in the Text. Units and the statistics employed should be clearly explained either in the table's body or in the footnotes to the table. Tables should be editable by the editorial office and not appear in a picture format.

Figures

Figures should be centered, and should have a figure caption placed underneath. The size of the figures is measured in centimeters and inches. Please prepare your figures at a size within 17 cm (6.70 in) in width and 20 cm (7.87 in) in height. Figures should be placed in the text immediately after the point where they are referenced. In the main text, where referencing the figures, use Fig. followed by a space and the figure number, e.g., Fig. 1. The digital format JPEG, PNG, TIFF are acceptable, with >300 dpi resolution.

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.

Copyright of Figures

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.

Figure Legends

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.

Figure Citation

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.

Scale Bar

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.

Figure Labels

The size of labels should be no smaller than 8-point and no larger than the font size of the main text. Figure labels must be sized in proportion to the image, sharp, and legible. Labels must be saved using standard fonts (Arial, Helvetica or Symbol font) and should be of the same font and size in all figures in one paper. All labels should be in black, and should not be overlapped, faded, broken or distorted. The first letter of each phrase, NOT each word, must be capitalized.

Figures Layout

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”).

2 Declarations

Submitted manuscripts should, where appropriate, contain the following parts right before the list of references:

Acknowledgement: TSP suggests to list all non-author contributors in the acknowledgement section at the end of the paper, with details on their respective activity. Contributors include individuals in the planning, conducting, editing and/or reporting the work, and all the patients or members of the public who have kindly assisted as research volunteers. This is a good place of acknowledging their support, list their names and recognize their individual roles. TSP strongly encourages authors to fully acknowledge contributions of patients and the public towards their research, if and where appropriate. In the event that the authors have no acknowledgments to make, kindly include the term "None" in this section to indicate its absence.

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. 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. It should represent all the authors and is to be included upon submission. It can be up to several sentences long and should briefly describe the tasks of individual authors. All listed authors should 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 (Please provide the full names of authors when listing their contributions): 

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: Firstname Lastname1 and Firstname Lastname2; data collection: Firstname Lastname1; analysis and interpretation of results: Firstname Lastname1, Firstname Lastname2 and Firstname Lastname3; draft manuscript preparation: Firstname Lastname2 and Firstname Lastname3. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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.

You can take one of the following forms:

a. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].

b. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

c. All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).

d. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to [REASON(S) WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

e. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

f. The data that support the findings of this study are available from [THIRD PARTY NAME] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [THIRD PARTY NAME].

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 lD/reference number if applicable.

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval and for experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also include a statement on informed consent from the client or owner. If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

Conflicts of Interest: Authors must declare all conflicts of interest. If there is no conflicts of interest, it should also be declared as in ex, please write “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

Supplementary Materials: Supplementary Materials should be uploaded separately on submission. The supplementary files will also be available to the referees as part of the peer-review process. Any file format is acceptable; however, we recommend that common, non-proprietary formats are used where possible.

Supplementary materials should be clean, without tracked changes, highlights, comments or line numbers.

Supplementary figures must be clear and readable, and we recommend a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, figure legends must be clear and accurate.

Supplementary materials must be mentioned in the main text. The citation format of Supplementary Figure, Table, Equation, etc., should start with a prefix S (i.e., Fig. S1, Eq. (S2), Table S1, etc.).

3 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.




4 Data Sharing and Deposition

4.1 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.




4.1.1 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.

4.1.2 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.

4.1.3 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.).

 

4.2 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.




4.2.1 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.

4.2.2 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.

4.2.3 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.

4.2.4 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.

 

4.3 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

5 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.

6 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.

7 Authorship and Contribution

7.1 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:

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

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

• Final approval of the version to be published; AND

• 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. 

7.2 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").

7.3 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. 

7.4 Authorship Contribution Statement

All listed authors should 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 contributorship.

We suggest the following format for the contribution statement (Please provide the full names of authors when listing their contributions): 

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: Firstname Lastname1 and Firstname Lastname2; data collection: Firstname Lastname1; analysis and interpretation of results: Firstname Lastname1, Firstname Lastname2 and Firstname Lastname3; draft manuscript preparation: Firstname Lastname2 and Firstname Lastname3. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

7.5 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. 

8 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 authors declare 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.

9. Research 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.

9.1 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."

9.2 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.

9.3 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.

9.4 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.

9.5 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.

10 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.

11 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.

12 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.

13 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.