Instructions for authors in PDF format file.
BIOPHYSICS (ON-LINE JOURNAL)
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS
BIOPHYSICS is the official on-line journal (e-journal) of The Biophysical Society of Japan (BSJ). We aim to make the journal a leading international journal for original research in the field of theoretical and experimental biophysics. We especially intend to provide the opportunity to publish original research articles to the biophysicists in the Asia-Pacific area. Scientists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India and Australia, as well as Japan, have been invited to serve as Associate Editors. To help make the Asia-Pacific region a world's leading center of biophysical research, the submission of papers is encouraged not only from the Asia-Pacific region, but also from all over the world.
The articles that BIOPHYSICS publishes are categorized into regular articles, review articles and notes. Regular articles are the main category of this journal and must be prepared according to the directions provided below. Review articles summarize an overview of biophysical research. Most reviews are invited, but contributed reviews will also be welcomed (please send inquiries with an outline to the Editor-in-Chief before sending the manuscript). Notes are short articles that are not necessarily categorized into regular articles because of the content, containing important information on new devices and/or new ideas (comments) that are useful for researchers working in the field of biophysics.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-Chief
| Shin´ichi Ishiwata (Waseda Univ.) |
Editorial Board
| Takayuki Ariga (Univ. Tokyo) | Mikio Kataoka (NAIST) | Satoru Kawamura (Osaka Univ.) |
| Taku Mizukami (JAIST) | Midori Murakami (Nagoya Univ.) | Shigetoshi Oiki (Univ. Fukui) |
| Takuo Yasunaga (KIT) |
Associate Editors
| Hideo Akutsu (Osaka Univ.) | Paul Matsudaira (Nat. Univ. Singapore) |
| Donald C. Chang (Hong Kong Univ. Sci. Tech.) | Shigeki Mitaku (Nagoya Univ.) |
| Cristobal G. dos Remedios (Univ.Sydney) | Kuniaki Nagayama (NINS) |
| Yoshinori Fujiyoshi (Kyoto Univ.) | Haruki Nakamura (Osaka Univ.) |
| Yuji Goto (Osaka Univ.) | Keiichi Namba (Osaka Univ.) |
| Yuzuru Husimi (Saitama Univ.) | Raymond S. Norton (Walter Eliza Hall Inst. Med. Res.) |
| Atsushi Ikai (Tokyo Inst .Tech.) | Yuko Okamoto (Nagoya Univ.) |
| Toshiaki Kakitani (Meijo Univ.) | Frances Separovic (Univ. Melbourne) |
| Kunihiko Kaneko (Univ. Tokyo) | Jun-Xian Shen (Chinese Acad. Sci.) |
| Naoki Kamo (Matsuyama Univ.) | Yoshinori Shichida (Kyoto Univ.) |
| Sa-Ouk Kang (Seoul Natl. Univ.) | Masahiro Sokabe (Nagoya Univ.) |
| Suguru Kawato (Univ. Tokyo) | Jeremy R.H. Tame (Yokohama City Univ.) |
| Kazuhiko Kinosita, Jr. (Waseda Univ.) | Yoko Toyoshima (Univ. Tokyo) |
| Kazue Kurihara (Tohoku Univ.) | Andrew H.J. Wang (Natl. Taiwan Univ.) |
| Akihiro Kusumi (Kyoto Univ.) | Masasuke Yoshida (Kyoto Sangyo Univ.) |
| Kunihiro Kuwajima (NINS) | Kenichi Yoshikawa (Kyoto Univ.) |
| Rabi Majumdar (Univ. Culcutta) |
Advisory Board
| Mitiko Go (ROIS) | Nobuhiro Go (RIKEN) | Hirokazu Hotani (Nagoya Univ.) |
| Michiki Kasai (Osaka Univ.) | Motoyuki Tsuda (Tokushima Bunri Univ.) | Toshio Yanagida (Osaka Univ.) |
Initial Submission
The journal is published only in on-line form. Everyone in the world can read it (http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/biophysics). We welcome contributions from all over the world, from both BSJ society members and non-members. Submitted papers must be based on original research, and not published or under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submitted papers must conform in style to the instructions outlined below. Authors who are not native speakers of English should have their manuscripts checked by scientists whose native language is English. Before acceptance, manuscripts judged to be poorly written may be forwarded to a professional English proofreader upon consulting the corresponding author, who must pay the costs of this service, but this does not diminish the responsibility of the author to pay attention to the linguistic accuracy of the manuscript. If a submitted manuscript does not conform to the journal style, or other inadequacies are apparent, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject it without review. Manuscripts are handled through the peer review process and edited by one of the Associate Editors, the Advisory Board members, the Editorial Board members or the Editor-in-Chief. Manuscripts are sent out for peer review to two or more reviewers.
How to submit a manuscript
Manuscripts should be submitted using the on-line submission system (http://ess.jstage.jst.go.jp/contrib/BIOPHYSICS/initialsubmission/). It is expected that the on-line submission process will be carried out by the corresponding author, and therefore all correspondence, including an initial acknowledgement and the decision will be sent to the corresponding author by E-mail.
Please note the following points when using the on-line submission system:
- Use a conventional homepage browser to access the on-line submission system. During the submission process, do not use the "Back" button on your browser to return to the previous page. Use the "Back" button provided next to the "Next" button at the end of each page instead. This will ensure that correctly updated information will be displayed.
- Do not use the enter key on your keyboard for jumping to the next input field, use the tab key or click on the field instead. The enter key is recognized as a jump to the next page.
- If you leave the submission page for more than 30 minutes without any action, the system will timeout. This is for security reasons, and you will need to start again from the beginning.
- A password should be created to re-enter the submission page. The length of the password should be between four and eight characters.
The following materials are required for initial submission:
- Corresponding author's information (affiliation, address, E-mail address),
- The title and the abstract of the manuscript. Special type settings and characters should be expressed in HTML format.
- For the manuscript file;
- Make a single PDF file including all the text, the reference list, tables, and figures.
- The resolution of the figures should be high enough for reviewing process.
- Do not include spaces and Japanese characters in the file name or file path: use alphanumeric characters.
- The size of the file should be no more than 5 Mb.
- Be sure that file name ends with the extension .pdf.
- For supplementary materials (such as movie files);
- Image files should be in JPEG, TIFF, EPS, PNG or PDF format, and movie files in MPEG or AVI format.
- The filename extension should be one of the following as appropriate; jpg, jpeg, tif, tiff, eps, png, pdf, mpeg or avi.
- Do not include spaces and Japanese characters in the file name or file path; use alphanumeric characters.
- Each file to be saved, regardless of format, should have a total size .less than 30Mb.
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After Acceptance
Upon acceptance of the paper, the corresponding author is required to submit the final accepted version of the manuscript. Submit the following materials (using the on-line submission web site at http://ess.jstage.jst.go.jp/contrib/BIOPHYSICS/main/ ).
- The title, abstract, text, references, figure legends and tables in Microsoft Word,
- Figures of resolution high enough for printing. Electronic files of photographs and illustrations in 300 dpi resolution in gray scale or color at the size be printed, and similarly in 1200 dpi in black and white for line drawings. We accept only TIF, EPS and JPEG formats for figures within the paper itself.
- Supplementary materials (such as videos) not already submitted if there are any. Follow the format described in "How to submit manuscripts 4.",
- Copy-editing adjustments will be made to the accepted manuscripts. During proof reading, the corresponding author is required to check for any undesired changes that may have inadvertently occurred during copy-editing.
If there is any problem with on-line submission, please contact the editorial office below.
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Manuscript Style
- Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout, formatted for A4 (297 AE210 mm) size paper, and using approximately 25 mm (one inch) margins on all sides. Page 1 should contain the article title, author name(s), affiliation(s) and address(es), and suggested running title (not exceeding 50 characters including spaces). The complete mail address, telephone number and E-mail address of the corresponding author should be indicated. Page 2 should contain a short abstract of no more than 250 words. A list of up to five keywords (not used in the title) should be provided below the abstract. From Page 3 onwards, the Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Methods), Results, Discussion (or Results and Discussion), Conclusion, Acknowledgement, References, Figure Legends, Tables, and Figures should be arranged in this order.
- Use only 1-byte and/or ASCII-code fonts for alphanumeric characters. Use Symbol fonts for Greek letters and special characters. Do not use 2-byte/multi-byte or country-specific codes such as ■ and ○.
- Text footnotes are not allowed.
- Tables: All tables must be cited in the text. Number the tables consecutively with Arabic numerals, such as Table 3, in the order of appearance in the text. Supply a short explanatory title above the body of the table, and table footnotes lettered a, b, c, etc., below the body of the table. Do not use vertical rules.
- Figures: All figures must be cited in the text. Number the figures consecutively with Arabic numerals, such as Figure 3, in the order of appearance in the text. The dimensions of each illustration, photograph, or composite imagery should be no larger than the size of the manuscript page. Figure legends should not be included on the same page as the figures themselves.
- Electronic supplementary materials (such as videos) are permitted. Acceptable file formats are those listed in How to submit manuscript.
- References: References are each numbered, sequentially as they appear in the text, tables and figure legends. When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript,
not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number. References to "unpublished data" and "personal communications" should appear
parenthetically in the text following the name(s) of the source of information [(Yamada, T., personal communication), (Suzuki, M. and Yoshida, M., unpublished data) etc.].
Be sure to verify the wording of any personal communication with the person who supplied the information and obtain his approval for the use of his name in
connection with the quoted information. All references should be listed in numerical order, starting on a fresh page, under the heading REFERENCES.
Please note the following examples.
- For a journal article:
7. Harada, Y., Funatsu, T., Murakami, K., Nonoyama, Y., Ishihama, A. & Yanagida, T. Single-molecule imaging of RNA polymerase-DNA interactions in real time. Biophys. J. 76, 709-715 (1999). - For a chapter in an edited book:
12. Go, M. Protein structures and split genes. in Adv. Biophys. (Kotani, M. ed.) vol. 19, pp. 91-131 (Japan Sci. Soc. Press and Elsevier Sci. Pub., Tokyo and Limerick, 1985). - For a book by one or more authors:
15. Oosawa, F. & Asakura, S. Thermodynamics of the Polymerization of Proteins (Academic Press, New York, 1975).
Text citations to references written by more than two authors should be styled for example as, Smith et al. In the reference list, however, the names of all authors (with initials) must be given. If an article has been accepted for publication by a journal but has not yet appeared in print, the reference should be styled as follows:
29. Itoh, H., Takahashi, A., Adachi, K., Noji, H., Yasuda, R., Yoshida, M. & Kinosita, Jr., K. Mechanically driven ATP synthesis by F1-ATPase. Nature (in press).
The use of "in preparation" and "submitted for publication" is not allowed in the reference list. - For a journal article:
- For original research manuscripts reporting experiments on live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates, authors must include in the methods section, a brief statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments. For experiments involving human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments, and include with their submission a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.
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Limit of Revision Period
Authors who have been requested to revise their manuscript should send the revision to the handling editor within 90 days of reception of the editorial decision. Otherwise the submitted manuscript will be regarded as withdrawn.
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Proofs
Proofs are sent to the corresponding author by e-mail as a PDF. These should be corrected and returned to the office within three business days of receipt.
Charges
Publication charge: \15,000 for members of the Society / \30,000 for non-member authors per accepted manuscript.
Page charge: \5,000 per printed page.
Publication charges may be reduced provided a written explanation giving the reason for the request is made to the Editor-in-Chief. Authors may be charged for any costs incurred by use of a professional English proofreader to correct unclear text, or for redrawing figures of low quality before acceptance of the manuscript. There are also charges for excessive changes in proof after the acceptance of the manuscript.
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Reprints
Reprints may be ordered at cost by returning the order forms provided with the proofs. Costs for color pages will be charged to the author.
Copyright
Papers published in BIOPHYSICS become the permanent property of the BSJ. No part of this journal may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission from BSJ. Authors, however, do not need to obtain permission to make copies of their own papers, or to use their original photographs and figures in their own future work.
Revised January 2011.
Instructions for authors in PDF format file.