Biotechnology Kiosk (BK) is an open access, peer-reviewed international publication in biotechnology (ISSN:  2689-0852; DOI:  10.37756)

Open Access Statement & Funding

BK is committed to support authors in making their research publicly and freely available. Open access practiced by this publication means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

BK does not charge any submission fees. In order to cover the costs of reviewing and editorial office, copy editing, design and layout, and online hosting and archiving, the journal charges a fee of US$1000 upon acceptance of submitted research articles. Authors will be exempt from payment, whose main funder is located either in group A or B countries of the Health Inter Network Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) or in a country with a low UNDP human development index. The country of origin of the majority of authors’ institutions will be taken as the source country for authors with no formal funding available. In case there is no majority country, the corresponding author’s country will be so designated. In exceptional circumstances, the journal may partially or fully waive the fee at the discretion of the publication office, if a suitable request is made by the corresponding author that shows the valid reason.    

Author Repository Policy

BK allows the authors to deposit their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice. The journal’s repository policy allows authors to deposit all versions of author’s work that include submitted version, accepted version (author accepted manuscript) and published version (version of record).

The Mission of BK

The mission of BK is to promote all basic, practical, rational, and progressive aspects of biotechnology (including theory and practice), and publish all topics in biotechnology that cover basic science, translational, preclinical, clinical, as well as commercial areas that are being researched around the world to move the field of biotechnology forward.

 

Article Types

Manuscripts on current developments and future trends in any field of biotechnology are welcome from the authors from academic, industry and other profit and non-profit organizations.

All manuscripts are peer-reviewed following strict editorial policies and guidelines for submission (please see ‘Editorial Policies’). Each published manuscript will be assigned a unique DOI for cross-referencing purposes. Submissions of appropriate manuscripts of the following types are considered for publication in Biotechnology Kiosk –

 

• Full-length Research Articles

Research articles should be 5000 words long including body text and figure legends and no more than 50-60 references should be cited. There are no min/max limits on figures in research articles. The only requirement is that they are of good quality (at least 300 dpi, jpeg, png, or TIFF).

 

• Scholarly Reviews

Typical sections in the reviews are Abstract, Keywords, Purpose and Rationale, Summary of relevant literature, Discussion, Conclusions, and References. Reviews should not exceed 10,000 words and 300 references. Review articles will be published with a short biography and photo of all contributors.

• Perspectives and Opinion

“Perspective” articles correspond to looking forward in the field, while Opinions are reflective of the personal views of the contributor of a present area. Length of these types of articles typically 3,000 words. Typical sections are Abstract, Keywords, Purpose and Rationale, Introduction and Discussion, and Conclusions.

• Case Study

Case studies are reports of actual clinical events based on a single patient or a small group of individuals, related to use of biomaterials and biomedical technologies, and biomedicines in a real-life context. Length of case studies is usually limited to 3,500 words and 25 references.

Typical sections of case studies are Abstract, Purpose and Rationale, Introduction, Experimental, Discussion, and Conclusions.

• Rapid Communication

Rapid communications are quick and novel/innovative, interesting observations that may be of general interest for readers in a diverse area of science and engineering. Rapid communications should not exceed 2,500 words and the article should have no more than 5 figures and 25 references. Typical sections are Graphical Abstract (optional), Abstract, Keywords, Purpose and Rationale, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Experiments, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions.

• Letters to the Editor

Letters are to comment on research published in the journal including criticism or important additions. Letters should not exceed 1000 words with less than 10 references. The handling editor of BK will send the letters to the Corresponding Author of the previously published article for a response before publishing the letters. Letters and Responses to Letters are published together.

Typical sections of the letters include Purpose and Rationale, Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusions.

BK also publishes special issues on emerging topics in partnerships with other publishers. Please check out the latest call for papers for special edition.

 

Human Subjects

All authors must confirm in writing that they have complied with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/ regarding ethical conduct of research involving human subjects. When applicable, the manuscript should contain a statement that the study has been approved by the Ethical Committee of the institution where the study was performed, and that the study subjects, or their legal guardians gave informed consent for participation in the study.

 

Animal use

If preclinical studies performed with animals are described, authors must confirm in writing that institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed (please consult the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare (http://www.veteditors.org/consensus-author-guidelines-on-animal-ethics-and-welfare-for-editors) for further guidance).

 

Conflict of Interest

Authors are fully responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and/or other conflicts of interest that might bias their work and/or could inappropriately influence his/her judgment. Upon submission, the author(s) will be required to complete a form to declare any conflicts of interest, funding, employment, or leadership and honoraria. This information must also be included within the manuscript before the References section.

  

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts should be written in clear and concise English. Both, US or UK English are acceptable, but avoid mixing them. Have your text proof read by an English native speaker before you submit it for consideration. This will highly accelerate processing and will not annoy reviewers.

For submission, either MSWord or pdf files are accepted in any commonly used structure that contain all information necessary to evaluate the manuscript, including supplementary information. Please, follow the structure (section names) described in this guide, wherever applicable. The reason for applying the structure described below is that researchers read papers for 5-6 hours weekly (on average) but computers and bots are scanning the web 24/7 looking for certain words (section names) in documents. Giving them what they want helps both the authors and the journal by generating higher ranking in searches. However, authors are free to apply any sub-structure they see fit.

If you use a reference managing program you may apply any style as long as it is consistent (ACS is preferred). In MSWord/references simply apply the common ACS style to your manuscript. Authors also feel free to use the NLM reference style (we suggest to join the free CITINGMED LISTSERV for alerts to additions and changes). The names of journals should be abbreviated according to the World List of Scientific Periodicals. Visit the following page for samples of formatted  references: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.

The journal complies with 140C standards for open citations. Therefore, the cited references are structured, separable, and open.

Please note that if any of the figures you used are copyrighted, you need to obtain permission from the copyright owners to reproduce these figures in BK. You also need to document the copyright permission in the respective figure legend. The same holds true for copyrighted tables you use.

Each manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter explaining briefly what authors try to achieve with their manuscript. In the first cover letter, authors should provide a paragraph explaining how the work differs from the knowledge available in the literature and describe how it improves or has the potential to improve medicine.

For nomenclature, authors are asked to follow the recommendations of the Système International d’Unités (SI).

All article types may submit a Graphical Abstract (recommended for Communications and mandatory for Research Articles, but optional for others).

Graphical Abstract:   A Graphical Abstract is an eye-catching graphic for the article and for the Table of Contents. The authors should think of it as a single PowerPoint slide that captures the reader’s attention and gives a quick visual impression of the essence of the manuscript. An image of 4×4 inches, 300 dpi, JPEG or TIFF is required along with a text of approx. 30 words summarizing the essence of the work. Don’t forget that your readers are visual, and a good Graphical Abstract highly increases the chances of your article to be read and cited.

Abstract:   The abstract should be one continuous paragraph (100-250 words), which summarizes the purpose, methods, results and conclusions of the paper to help the reader quickly understand the problem, what has been done and how this is useful for others. Abstracts allow other scientists to decide whether they want to read the article in depth. Remember, abstracts are published separately in bibliographical sources, so it must be less technical than the body. It should stand alone without any citations, footnotes, and non-trivial abbreviations.

Rationale and Purpose:   The authors should state the motivation, purpose and goal of the study in only a few sentences describing what is the unmet need, what the paper is aiming to achieve, and why this knowledge will be useful to others.

Introduction:   Summarize the relevant literature and tell the reader what is known about the topic. What was known before this research? What was the plan what would be the impact of their study?

Experimental design:   Describe your hypothesis and your model. Justify your model and methods – why have you chosen these? If in-vivo experiments, justify animal use; how were they selected and why? Animal care? IRB? Human subjects? What was your plan to reach your goal?

Materials and Methods:   List materials, identify methods and describe experimental conditions. Mention ethical considerations. What did you use and how?

Results:   Present your data. Describe observations, measurements and other experimental information using graphs and tables and also summarize main findings in the text. Tell us what was done and what was found.

Discussion:   Discussion converts your data to information. Analyze your data and highlight the most significant ones. Interpret data and point out relations. Draw conclusions and explain them briefly, apply statistics if needed. Explain, how do your results relate to each other and to the original question. Emphasize new knowledge, its significance and limitations. Do the data support your hypothesis? What does your data indicate? DO NOT overstate, be specific. Please also include discussions on reproducibility, reliability, patterns, and relations, if any.

Conclusions:   Brief summary of the new knowledge. What have you learned? And a future perspective.

Acknowledgements:   Thank those who either helped with the experiments, or made other important contributions, such as discussing the protocol, commenting on the manuscript. Don’t forget to thank for funding!

Bibliography:   A list of items each referring to the source of piece of information in another publication.

Supporting information:   Supporting Information is used to describe the work in such detail that someone trained in the art could reproduce the experiment(s). There are no limits in length, number of figures, and references in the Supporting Information, so provide all necessary experimental details to repeat your experiments. Someone, who is trying to reproduce your work is a potential collaborator!

 

Manuscript Submission  

Manuscripts may be submitted in a single PDF and also Word file including all figures, tables and references directly by email to the chief editors (Dr. Agrawal (meghaagra@gmail.com) and/or Dr. Biswas (shyabiswas@gmail.com)).

All manuscripts need to accompany a covering letter to the executive editor briefly stating the following (a) the significance of the research being reported (b) name and contact of the corresponding author and (c) three names of suggested reviewers including their emails.

 

Contact Us

If you require any further information or help, please contact the Chief Editors of BK.

 

Dr. Megha Agrawal, PhD, Chief Editor

E-mail:  megha@biotechkiosk.com ; meghaagra@gmail.com

Areas of Expertise:  Neuroscience, Stroke, Pharmacology, Toxicology & Microbiology, Diagnostics.

Dr. Shyamasri Biswas, PhD, Chief Editor

E-mail:  shyabiswas@biotechkiosk.com ; shyabiswas@gmail.com

Areas of Expertise:  Structural Biology, Protein Crystallography, Enzyme Technology, Molecular Biology, Mass Spectrometry.