How to proceed with Biology Direct's system of peer review

Biology Direct aims to provide authors and readers with a novel system of peer review. This will include making the author responsible for obtaining reviewers' reports, via the journal's Editorial Board; making the peer-review process open rather than anonymous; and making the reviewers' reports public, thus increasing the responsibility of the referees and eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing process.

Please make sure that you have read the specific information regarding the journal and its peer-review policies the general Instructions for Authors and the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement before proceeding.

1. Scope: currently, Biology Direct can consider original research articles, hypotheses discovery notes and reviews that lie within the fields of Genomics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Immunology, and Mathematical Biology - please check that your article is broadly within this scope (further subject areas will be launched from time to time until the full spectrum of biology is covered).
   
   
2. Manuscripts under consideration: any manuscript undergoing peer review for Biology Direct at the instigation of the author(s) is deemed to be under consideration and must not already have been published or be under consideration in another journal, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Please see the Editorial policies in the Biology Direct Instructions for Authors for Authors section for further details.
   
   
3. Article-processing charge: if, after you have carried out the peer-review process, you wish to publish in Biology Direct, you, the submitting author, will be required to arrange payment of a processing charge of £800.00 (approximately US$1,670/€1,150) before your article can be uploaded for publication. This fee helps to cover the cost of data conversion and permanent online hosting (see more information about BioMed Central's processing charges). If your institution is a BioMed Central member, it may cover the cost of all or part of the article-processing charge. In the case of genuine inability to pay, you will be able to request a waiver of the processing charge. If in doubt, you should contact us to ascertain if you are eligible for a waiver before you begin the peer-review process.
   
   

You will find details below on the simple steps required to carry out the peer review of your manuscript, together with a set of downloadable template emails that you can use to assist you in communicating with your chosen reviewers.

If you have any queries, please contact the Biology Direct Editorial Team.

1. Instructions for peer-review process
   1. Research Articles
   2. Discovery Notes
2. A set of email templates
3. What to do when peer review completed
4. Next steps

1. Instructions for peer-review process

Please follow the steps below to carry out the peer review of your manuscript. Some of the steps suggest you use one of the email templates supplied; of course, these are only suggestions aiming to facilitate the process to the submitter, so you may choose to use other language to the same effect. Where no template is suggested, please create your own, using the level of formality that you think appropriate.

A. Research articles

Step 1. Identify three members of the Editorial Board who are expected to be qualified and potentially willing to review the work.

If you consider that your manuscript to be within the current scope of Biology Direct but you cannot identify three Editorial Board members who are experts in your specific field, you may consider approaching an Editorial Board member and ask them to nominate a suitable colleague of their choice (potentially from a list of your own recommendations, if you have supplied one). The Editorial Board member will invite the reviewer on your behalf. If the reviewer agrees, the Editorial Board member will let you know and you can then liaise directly with this reviewer. Upon receipt of the review, you should send a copy to the Editorial Board member so that s/he is aware of its completion and can add his/her comments if s/he wishes to do so.

The main requirement of Biology Direct is that three Editorial Board members assume responsibility for each published article, either directly or through a reviewer nomination. An Editorial Board member may solicit more than one review if s/he so wishes, but these will count only as the contribution of one Editorial Board member. Only reviewers directly nominated by the Editorial Board member are eligible for review.

In the exceptional circumstances that you consider no Editorial Board members to have reasonably close interests, you may approach one of the Section Editors who can take responsibility for inviting all three reviewers. A Section Editor will handle manuscripts only in cases when s/he accepts the submitter’s contention that there are generally no experts in the field of the manuscript on the Editorial Board, even though the work is within the scope of the journal.

Step 2. Invite the reviewers using email template A: 'Invitation to peer review', filling in the fields indicated in red. Send each potential reviewer (a) your manuscript and all associated files, preferably in PDF format, (or direct them to a URL on your server where the files can be found), and (b) a cover letter where you might want to offer relevant comments on your manuscript and should declare any potential competing interests. Please be sure to cc all communications with reviewers (or a summary thereof) to the Biology Direct Editorial team, so that the progress of manuscripts can be followed.

Step 3. If the reviewer does not reply within 3 business days or declines to review, invite an alternative.

Step 4. Continue until three reviewers have agreed to handle the submission.

Step 5. When a reviewer accepts, send them the peer-review instructions using email template B: 'Instructions on peer review'. We recommend setting a deadline of 3-weeks for review.

Step 6 (optional). One week before the deadline, remind each reviewer that their review is due using email template C: 'Reminder of peer review deadline'.

Step 7 (optional). If the review deadline is exceeded, chase the reviewer using email template D: 'Chasing late peer review', reminding the reviewer that his/her name will be published without comments if they are not returned.

Step 8 (optional). If you choose to revise your manuscript in the light of the reviews and/or write a rebuttal, email these to the reviewer so that s/he can modify their review or write a new one. We suggest a deadline of 14 days for re-review.

B. Discovery notes

The peer review process for discovery notes is similar to the process for research articles.
There are, however, some key differences:

• Only 2 Editorial Board members are required for review of the manuscript.
• Referees should be selected from the Editorial Board that is specifically set up for discovery notes.
• Reviewers should assess the validity of the article, and have the right to veto publication. The reviewers do not have to provide full comments/details of revisions but are welcome to do so. If reviewers provide no additional comments, their report should read:"I support publication of this manuscript"
• If either or both referees veto publication, the author should consider their manuscript rejected.
• We recommend setting a deadline of 2-weeks for review.

All other aspects of the peer review process remain the same as for research articles.

2. Email templates for peer-review process

To download the email templates in Word format, please use the following links:

• Research articles
• Discovery Notes

To download the email templates in Plain Text format, please use the following links:

• Research articles
• Discovery Notes

The following templates are provided for your convenience. Please feel free to amend them for a more personal touch if you wish, but please do not reword any technical instructions or change any links.

1. Invitation to peer review
2. Instructions on peer review
3. Reminder of peer review deadline
4. Chasing late peer review

3. What to do when the peer-review process is complete

Intend to publish
When you have received the appropriate number of reviews, have made any of the recommended revisions that you wish to make and have decided you wish to proceed with publication, please submit the final version of the manuscript via the Biology Direct online submission system. Please include the 'Reviewers' names' section at the end of the abstract*, the ‘Open peer review’ section after the abstract**, and the 'Reviewers' comments' in the main body of the text***.. Please refer to the instructions for authors for further details on formatting your article.

N.B. You may publish your manuscript even if the review(s) are negative, but remember that the reviewers' comments will be published alongside your article.

*Please insert this as a new paragraph at the end of the abstract:

Reviewers: This article was reviewed by XX, YY and ZZ. (NB please state if a reviewer was nominated by an Editorial Board member thus: XX (nominated by AA)).

**Please start a new page after the abstract and add in this section just before the Introduction/Background (this will aid navigation in the final published version):

Open peer review
Reviewed by XX, YY and ZZ. (NB please state if a reviewer was nominated by an Editorial Board member thus: XX (nominated by AA)). For the full reviews, please go to the Reviewers’ comments section.

***Please insert the reviewers' comments, together with each reviewer's name, under the heading Reviewers' comments in the following style:

Reviewers' comments
Reviewer's report 1
Name, Affiliation (nominated by Name, Affiliation if applicable)
Reviewer comments.

[Note: if you want to add your replies to any comment, please insert them preceded by Author's response: ]
[Note: If the reviewer has not returned their comments, please state "This reviewer provided no comments for publication."]

Insert the Reviewers' comments section in the following position:

• Abstract
• Open peer review
• Background
• Results and discussion
• Conclusions
• Materials and methods
• Additional data files
• Reviewers' comments
• Acknowledgements
• References

Intend to withdraw
Please inform the Biology Direct Editorial Team if you wish to withdraw from the peer-review process. In the event that you decide to pursue publication elsewhere, you must withdraw the manuscript from Biology Direct first, so as to avoid having it under consideration at two journals simultaneously.

4. Next steps

If you decide to proceed with publication, Biology Direct will confirm authorship of the reviewers' reports, gain your final consent to publish, confirm payment details for the article-processing charge, and proceed to the pre-accept production stage with any further author liaison that is necessary. If you do not hear from us within one week of submission please feel free to contact us.

It is normal to contact reviewers when a final decision has been made. Let them know the outcome of the peer-review process and the publication details/electronic citation. We will provide you with a standard email if your manuscript is to be published in Biology Direct, but if in the light of the reviews you elect not to go ahead with publication we will suggest you send a suitably amended version of the email.