- Informations for authors
All contributions of manuscripts (research articles and review articles) to be considered for publication in BioCrystals Journal are to be submitted online, using the Submit Item feature, by selecting “Submit a manuscript“. More instructions regarding using the submissions software are given below. Articles must be written in English. Major forms of standard written English (e.g. U.S., British, and Australian) may be used, as long as one is consistent. Authors must know that submitted articles must be previously unpublished material, with the exception that material appearing in the preprints to a conference, etc., can be republished, with the permission of the copyright owner and there must be an Aknowledgments section stating the first appearance of the material, as well as describing the permissions under which the material is being published again.
Author’s certification: By submitting an article to BioCrystals Journal, the authors are certifying that the following statements all are true:
- The article and its contents are original. The material was written by the author(s), and it has not been published elsewhere, except in the case of (a) a thesis by one of the authors, (b) an abstract having less than 1500 words, or (c) material accompanying a conference presentation, with the stipulation that the copyright owner has given permission for publication in BioCrystals Journal and a statement describing the initial publication and permission statement appears in an Acknowledgements section of the submitted article.
2. No other journal is currently considering the submitted article for publication.
3. Nothing in the article violates the personal or property rights of other individuals, including plagiarism or libel.
4. Permission has been obtained for use of any previously copyrighted material that appears in the article, and such permissions are disclosed in an Acknowledgements section of the submitted article.
5. All new findings and conclusions in the submission have been generated as a result of controlled experimental or modeling designs and have been reached with acceptable levels of precision and/or accuracy commensurate with what is expected in a professional journal.
6. The authors know about and agree with the need for the journal to collect voluntary donations from authors corresponding to the number of published pages so that the journal will be able to sustain itself and strive for a high quality of service.
Preparation of research article: Authors are needed to use a template, so that the format matches the example. For instance, the font styles, sizes, and margins need to match that of the template example for each item in the article.
Please be aware that submitted files larger than 2 MB will be rejected by the automated submission system. If the editable file for your submitted article is longer than this, please e-mail it directly to the editors.
Authors can ease the burden on the process of editing and reviewing by avoiding the use of excessively high resolution graphics. When incorporating images into an article to be submitted to ALAJ, it is recommended that the image files be modified, as necessary, so that no one of them has a file size larger than about 250 kBytes. Most image processing software provides ways to descrease file size, often by reducing the nominal size of a JPEG image, etc. Due to the default settings that are used during the creation of PDF files, the resolution of the published version usually is not affected by moderate reductions in the resolution of the original image files that become inserted into a document. We also encourage authors to use color graphics. There is no additional cost for color.
Peer-reviewed articles: In the case of original research articles, prospective authors are required to use the exact format as exhibited in the downloadable MS WORD (Ver. 2003), MS WORD (Ver. 2010), or a template document. Just replace the title and other contents of the downloaded template document with your own title and other contents. When pasting, please use a “paste special / unformatted” sequence so that your copying does not introduce unintended changes in fonts, margins, or various auto-format settings of the software. Don’t worry about making changes to the footer that comes from the template; the editors will take care of those details. Within the text of the template you will find further author instructions. The following is a summary. A more detailed “Style Guide” for articles in general appears at the bottom of this page.
Abstract length: Target 150 words; maximum 200 words
Article length: Typically 4 to 20 pages, following the required format
Scope: Science and engineering of biomass from lignocellulosic sources for new end uses and new capabilities; examples include advances in wood science, new uses of crop residues, biofuels, biocomposites, papermaking, and chemical production that is based on plant material that contains substantial amounts of cellulose or lignin. Audience: Please bear in mind that the likely audience will be multi-disciplinary; your work needs to be understood by scientists and specialists who may have very different backgrounds from your own.
Review articles: The editors may either invite review articles or consider articles that are submitted without request. Review articles that appear to generally fall within the scope and other requirements of the journal will be subject to the same peer-review process that was discussed in the case of research articles. Authors who are planning major review articles are encouraged to contact the editors at an early stage to confirm that the topic is within the scope and interest of the journal.
Format: The required format is similar to that used for research articles, with the exception those headings such as “Experimental,” “Results and Discussion,” and “Conclusions” should be replaced with more appropriate headings, consistent with the contents of the article. Please use a downloadable review article template as an MS WORD or Open Office Writer file. You also can look at a PDF version, but you won’t be able to use it as a template.
Length: The length of review articles generally should be within 4 to 20 pages, but the literature references are not included in the page count. The editors reserve the right to waive the 20 page limit in case of reviews of unusual quality and importance. However, it is well appreciated that many articles can be improved in quality by shortening them.
Writing Style Suggestions for New Authors
Though ALAJ welcomes a variety of writing styles, including various regional differences in spelling, we are proposing a set of style preferences to encourage uniformity in the journal. When in doubt, we would encourage authors to employ the following guidelines:
- Generally avoid the use of personal pronouns. Use passive voice to describe actions done by the authors (e.g., “The tests were completed,” “The central hypothesis of this work was tested in a level 5 cleanroom.”). The reason behind this is to emphasize and encourage objectivity of scientific work to be published in the journal.
- Generally use past tense when describing experimental methods and results (e.g., “All absorbance spectra were collected on a Model XXX HP diode array spectrophotomer.”). The reason for this is that we want the reader to be able to know very clearly what parts of the article represent work by the authors.
- Favor the use of present tense in the “Introduction” and in discussions that describe the state of the art of scientific knowledge in a given field. For example, if there is a consensus among researchers, the following conjectural statement is possible: “Cellulose solubility in water is higher after treatment with compound X than with compound Y (Smith 1997; Chu et al. 1999).” You can make an exception if something clearly was done in the past, e.g. , “Jones and El-Akhbar (1992) earlier reported contradictory findings.”
- New authors frequently pay inadequate attention to discussing their results. In particular, it is usually a good idea to compare and contrast your new results relative to past theoretical and empirical work by others. Depending on author preference, authors submitting to BioResources may either combine “Results and Discussion” or use separate “Results” and “Discussion” sections. In either case, the greatest value of scientific publications involves efforts to analyze, interpret, or prove your results relative to one or more hypotheses.
- When writing your “Experimental” section, the main criterion to follow is that other researchers in the future should be able to repeat your work. It is perfectly satisfactory to just cite published procedures that you followed. However, you will need to carefully explain any procedures that were unique to your own study. In some cases, it may make sense to be more comprehensive in this section, depending on the novelty of the work or other considerations.
- When writing the “Introduction,” new authors should focus on providing sufficient context, based on the literature, so that readers somewhat unfamiliar with the field will be able to judge the relative importance of their new findings. Key articles, upon which the current work depends, should be emphasized. In a research article (as opposed to a review article) it is not necessary to include extensive explanations of concepts or facts that already are explained in other publications.
- New authors are encouraged to write their Abstract after they have completed the rest of the writing. A good starting strategy is to use one or two sentences, each, to summarize the main thrust of each of the major sections of the article, e.g. Introduction, Experimental, Results, and Conclusions. Aim for the target word count, not the maximum permitted word count.
- Knowing that the title of your article will be the part that is read by the greatest number of people, it is a good idea to go back and scrutinize it again, after the rest of your writing it mostly done. Can the words be misinterpreted? Is the title readily understood by your intended audience? Does it capture people’s attention? Does it adequately describe your topic?
- Choose key words that adequately and succinctly represent the crux of your research article. Do they fairly cover the overall concepts, strategies, and methods used in the work? These words are very important, since they are among various pointers that are used to direct attention to your article.
- Finally, choose your figures and tables carefully to make the most impact to our readers. Can you put in a graph or plot what you would have put in a table (or vice versa) that facilitates comprehension of the research? Can you overlay spectra instead of having separate spectra? Are the figures easily read or do our readers need a magnifying glass to see the data?
- Authors are requested to use a consistent system of journal name abbreviations in the REFERENCES CITED section. It is OK to use full journal names, if this is done throughout the list. If it is decided to use abbreviations of journal names (which is preferred by many authors), please take your guidance from the following list (in PDF form) provided by the CASSI database system. For journals not on the list, please use an abbreviated form that is consistent with how the CASSI editors have abbreviated other journals.