Submissions

Author Guidelines

S U B M I T T I N G     A     P A P E R

A submission must include ITEMS I, II, III as required, IV and V

ITEM I          Manuscript
The Manuscript Template Microsoft WORD document with step-by-step guidelines for presenting a manuscript for the Archives of Biological Sciences must be implemented fully. The Template can be downloaded HERE: Arch.Biol.Sci_Manuscript Template

ITEM II         Data available in a Publicly Accessible Repository / Raw Dataset
The Serbian Biological Society is committed to supporting open scientific exchange and enabling authors to achieve best practices in sharing and archiving research data. The Society expects authors of articles published in the Archives of Biological Sciences to share their research data. Data sharing policy concerns the minimal dataset that supports the central findings of a published study.
Generated data should be publicly available and referred to upon submission in the Data Availability Statement with details where data supporting the reported results can be found, such as links to publicly archived datasets analyzed or generated during the study, or to raw data provided with the submission. 

Suggested data availability statements:

> For data available in a publicly accessible repository:
"The data presented in this study are openly available in [repository name e.g., FigShare] at [doi], [reference number]."

> For data available in a publicly accessible repository that does not issue DOIs:
"Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: [link/accession number]."

>For an archived raw dataset accessed via a link provided by the journal in the published article:
"Data underlying the reported findings have been provided with the submitted article and are available here: [link in the published article]"

The RAW DATASET contains individual items of numerical data supporting the findings presented in definitive tables and figures. The dataset is not a semi-organized collection of numerical data and images. It contains a compilation of multiple, uniformly formatted, clearly labeled and described tables and images, starting with Raw Table S1 and Raw Image S1, with every raw table / image associated in accompanying legends with definitive tables and figures. Images for membranes of western blotting with size markers and staining must be labeled to identify the loading order and identity of experimental samples.

> For data available on request due to restrictions for studies involving human participants (privacy or ethical issues):
"The data are not publicly available due to [insert reason here (privacy or ethical)]. The data are available on request from the corresponding author."
Data should not be shared where ethical, legal, or privacy issues are present, authors should make any limitations clear and ensure that data are shared with the consent of participants on the use of confidential data.

ITEM III         TIFF files
Required only if a figure is an image or when a composite figure contains an image.

ITEM IV         License Agreement
The corresponding author must complete and upload the Archives of Biological Sciences License Agreement

ITEM V          COVER LETTER
A cover letter should be provided as a separate document. It should summarize the study’s contribution to the scientific literature and relate the study to previously published work.
Note that parts of the cover letter may be used for the published paper's Facebook page.
Authors may include information regarding potential reviewers with their e-mail addresses and affiliations, links to recently published articles, and a brief explanation of why the scientists would be good referees.

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              INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS as given in the manuscript TEMPLATE

The Manuscript Template WORD document with step-by-step guidelines for presenting a manuscript for the Archives of Biological Sciences must be used. The Template can be downloaded HERE: Arch.Biol.Sci_Manuscript Template

• PAPER DESCRIPTION - HIGHLIGHTS
  The FIRST PAGE of the manuscript is the PAPER DESCRIPTION in not more than 100 words.

The purpose of the paper description is to provide an overview of your work: to introduce it, to show your interest in it, to present it to a reading audience, to draw attention to it, and to motivate readers to engage with it. The paper description is the first contact you have with a potential reader. The paper description of your article, when published, will also be used by the Archives of Biological Sciences on Facebook.
The paper description must be written as bullet points ( FOUR ) rather than a single paragraph and presented as brief focused answers to the questions below.
Do not use unexplained terms, abbreviations, or acronyms.

• What is already known about the topic of your submission?
  Avoid statements about how a process is not well understood. Provide the rationale for the research.
• Explain the design, methods, and experimental model employed in the research.
• Describe specific results. What is new in your work that has not already been reported?
• Indicate the work's broader significance. What does it add to the existing body of knowledge?

• COVER PAGE

Title:  must not exceed 200 characters with spaces. Abbreviations should be avoided. The title must be straightforward; avoid a title that is too general, avoid a title that is phrased as a question.
Authors must be listed in the following order: first name, middle name initials (if applicable), and family name.
Author affiliations: Each author must list an associated department, university, organizational affiliation, address, city, and country. Do not provide the ORCiD here but in the "Contributors" section.
Corresponding author: One author, designated as the corresponding author must provide an email address that will be published if the article is accepted.
The submitting author is automatically designated as the corresponding author in the submission system. A submission must be uploaded by the corresponding author as the primary contact – a paper that has not been submitted by the corresponding author will be rejected before the review stage.

• ABSTRACT

The abstract is one paragraph, without headings, and must not exceed 200 words. The abstract should state the hypothesis and avoid statements that a process is not well understood. Do not use words that do not make sense and are difficult to test (novelty claims). Set out the aims of the study, the experimental approach, the main results, and the conclusion. The last sentence of the abstract should include a meaningful summary of the study. Unclear abbreviations must be avoided.

Keywords: Five keywords for indexing should be provided after the abstract that will be used for indexing purposes. Keywords that are too general and have multiple concepts should be avoided.

Abbreviations: Do not use uncommon abbreviations and acronyms in the manuscript title, abstract, or paper description.
The full name must be given on first use and only once in full, with the abbreviation or acronym in parentheses; the acronym should be used consistently thereafter.

• INTRODUCTION

The introduction should provide a clear and balanced, concise but sufficiently informative review of selected recent literature relevant to the manuscript topic, a description of the problem addressed in the manuscript and its significance, and controversial and divergent hypotheses if any. State what the contribution is intended to be, and conclude with the goal of the paper and whether that goal has been achieved.
Note that references are numbered in the order in which they appear and are identified by a number or numbers in square brackets: [1] or [2,3], or [4-6].

• MATERIALS AND METHODS

The section must be divided into appropriate subheadings.
Experimental groups must not be presented as a bulleted list but in one paragraph.
Ethics statement
The ethics statement must be declared under the first subheading of the Materials and Methods section. Any manuscript submitted without a suitable ethics statement will not be considered until an appropriate and explicit statement is presented.
STUDIES INVOLVING ANIMALS (LIVE VERTEBRATES) must be performed in strict accordance with internationally accepted standards and regulations. Authors must refer to the approval obtained from their Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee or equivalent Institutional Ethics Committee.
STUDIES INVOLVING HUMAN PARTICIPANTS. The authors should confirm that the research was conducted per the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki and by local statutory requirements. Authors must present an Institutional Review Board (IRB) statement. Authors must identify the committee approving the experiments and include with their submission a statement confirming that Informed Consent was obtained from all subjects.
Formatting
Scientific notation must be strictly applied.
- Nomenclature
Scientific names of plant and animal species: a species name is written in italics. It consists of two words, the first being the genus name, which is always capitalized, and the second being the species epithet, which is never capitalized. Once a full scientific name has been used, the genus name may be abbreviated by its first letter. Names of families, orders, classes, phyla, and kingdoms are capitalized but not italicized. For more information, see http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/frank/kiss/kiss6.htm. Gene symbols should be italicized, gene names that are written out in full are not italicized, and protein products of loci are not italicized.
- Units of measurement format
The International System of Units (SI) rules and style conventions and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) rules for naming organic and inorganic compounds should be followed. The parts-per notation (e.g. parts-per-million (ppm, 10⁻⁶)) is a set of pseudo-units used to describe small values of various dimensionless quantities such as mole fraction or mass fraction that is not part of the SI system and its meaning is not unique. The SI-compliant expression must be used as an alternative.
The SI prescribes inserting a space between a number and a unit of measurement and between units in compound units, but never between a prefix and a base unit (5.0 cm, not 5.0cm or 5.0 c m. However, temperatures should be written without a space (e.g., 20°C), as should the percent symbol % which is written without a space (10% not 10 %) because % is not an SI unit. The liter (liter) should be written using an uppercase “L”. Seconds are written as “s” not “sec”, hours are written as “h” not “hrs”, and days are written as “days” not “d”. Centrifugation: express the acceleration applied to the sample in units of gravity or “×g”, not in rpm. Apply scientific rules for the use of space. The decimal mark is a dot (.), not a decimal comma. Numbers between −1 and +1 require a leading zero (0.01, not .01). The probability value or P is uppercase and not italicized, and there is no hyphen between “P” and “value”. All numbers should be given as numerals (e.g. “In 2 previous studies…”, “...4th group”, etc.).

Information related to the Materials and Methods section, such as a list of primers, specialized methods, calculations, sites, and localities, must be either incorporated in the appropriate section in the text - not as an inserted table - or presented in the Supplementary Material section (see below).

• RESULTS

Results should not be combined with discussion in a results and discussion section.
The results section should be divided into subheadings that convey information about the results. We suggest that the subheadings of the results section be reused in the figure legends to provide context.
The results section should begin with a reiteration of the research purpose to help readers focus on the article.
A section should end with a short paragraph summarizing the main findings.
Each table and illustration must be considered and analyzed appropriately.
Related results must be presented in a figure consisting of multiple sub-figures labeled A, B, C, etc., and described under a figure legend.

• DISCUSSION

The discussion should provide an interpretation of the results. It should not be overloaded with excessive citations and lengthy reinterpretations of related literature and data or conclusions for which sufficient experimental evidence is not provided, but focus on the presented findings. Numbered tables or figures mentioned in the results should not be referred to.

• CONCLUSION

This section is optional. The conclusion should include a summary of the presented results and the limitations of the study, it must not be perfunctory and repetitive. 

• Funding: All funding sources must be fully acknowledged and grant support details must be provided. If funding was not received, it should be stated that “the author(s) received no specific funding for this work.”
  
  
• Acknowledgments: In this section, you can acknowledge any support given not covered by the author’s contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).
  
  
• Author contributions: This must include a statement of the different responsibilities that specify the contribution of every author. For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “Conceptualization, XX, and YY; methodology, XX; software, XX; validation, XX, YY, and ZZ; formal analysis, XX; investigation, XX; resources, XX; data curation, XX; writing - original draft preparation, XX; writing - review and editing, XX; visualization, XX; supervision, XX; project administration, XX; funding acquisition, YY. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.
  
  
• Conflict of interest: If necessary, authors should describe any potential conflicts of interest.
  
  
• Data availability statement: see above 
  
  

• REFERENCES

The inclusion of more than 60 references must be avoided.
The ABS uses the Vancouver Citation Style as outlined in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) sample references. References must be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text.
Formatting
In the text, citations must be indicated by the reference number in square brackets [...]. The numbers corresponding to references listed in the REFERENCES section must not be in brackets. More than two references in the numerical sequence should not be written one after another in sequence but as [1-3], etc. Use an En Dash between page numbers, “120-130” not an Em Dash, “120—130." Avoid writing the name(s) of the author(s) followed by the reference number. Style the sentence so that only the reference number is stated. Journal name abbreviations must be those found in NCBI databases [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals]. References with more than three authors must not be shortened to “et al.” – all authors must be listed.
Authors must not cite MSc theses, posters presented at scientific meetings, abstracts, unavailable and unpublished data, personal communications, or manuscripts that have been submitted but have not yet been accepted. Avoid the use of expressions such as “manuscript submitted”, “unpublished work", as well as “data not shown”. If an article is submitted to a journal and also publicly available as a pre-print, the pre-print may be cited. References for accepted articles may be included as “in the press”, with the authors, the title of the work, the journal, and DOI provided in the reference list.
The complete guide to the Vancouver Style is available in this online book: Citing Medicine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=citmed.TOC&depth=2
We suggest the use of Mendeley, a free reference manager (www.mendeley.com), or a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager, or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. Include the digital object identifier (DOI) for all references where available. If Mendeley is used, copy this URL: https://csl.mendeley.com/styles/90452301/ABS and paste it into your reference manager to use it.

• TABLES and FIGURES

The results presented in tables and figures (and figure legends) are the focal point of a submission and they play a critical role in defining its quality. A manuscript in which the tables and figures are deficient or poorly organized will be rejected immediately.

TABLES AND FIGURES MUST ONLY CONTAIN NOVEL RESEARCH FINDINGS OBTAINED IN THE STUDY – new and original discoveries or insights that have been made through your scientific research – the essential contribution of your research.
Information that is auxiliary to the main content of the article, such as supplementary information to the Materials and Methods and Results sections, including maps of sites, a list of primers, details of methods, explanations of experimental details, a flowchart of the experimental setup, calculations, as well as the RAW DATA SET (or a link to it) must be presented under the optional section designated SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL. Every supplemental table and figure must be properly labeled and referenced in the manuscript as needed, starting with Supplementary Table S1 and Supplementary Fig. S1.

Tables and figures should have a clear, self-explanatory title and a short description (legend) that should make the table and figure comprehensible without reference to the text.
The paper should not contain more than a combination of EIGHT DEFINITIVE tables and/or complete figures.

Tables
Authors must provide editable tables written in WORD. Use the table feature of Microsoft Word to create tables. Format tables using Word's table feature. Do not use tabs or spaces to create a table. Tables should be in black and white; rows and columns should not be shaded. Table fonts are in Unicode Times New Roman, font size 10 pt, single line spacing. Consistency must be maintained between the text and the information in the tables (abbreviations, group names, treatment names, units of measure, etc.). THE DECIMAL MARK IS A DOT (.), NOT A DECIMAL COMMA.
Tables should have a clear, self-explanatory TITLE and a brief description that explains the table without reference to the text. The table title and description must be above the table. Below the table is the table CAPTION, which should include (i) definitions of abbreviations and (ii) information on the statistical procedures used.

Figures
Results must be presented concisely. Avoid multiple redundant figure legends. Combine diagrams that share a common legend into a single figure. Presenting the same result in different ways and similar, related findings in separate figures explained by redundant figure legends does not increase the quantity of the results nor does it improve the quality of the paper.
If a composite figure consists of several panels labeled A, B, C, etc. (diagrams, line drawings, micrographs, electropherograms, images of electrophoretic gels, Western blots, etc.), it must be presented as ONE COMPLETE FIGURE, which contains several panels, rather than as one figure consisting of several smaller independent panels. The number of the figure should be referred to in the Word document as "Fig. ..." and numbered in the order in which it is mentioned in the Results section.

Figures when they are LINE DRAWINGS
Authors may provide charts as Excel graphics copied into the manuscript or as Word charts. These charts should not be supplied as TIFF files.
The data presented in the charts must include error bars. The chart should be 2D in black and white with bars striped horizontally or diagonally. Ensure that the labeling of variables on the X and Y axes in the graphs conforms to the unit format described above. Ensure that the font used for the text in the graphs is consistent. All labels in all graphs must be legible and displayed consistently in the same font and size, depending on their position in the graph. Ensure consistency between the text and details in the figures (abbreviations, group names, treatment names, units of measurement). Figure fonts are in Unicode Times New Roman, font size 10 pts, single-spaced. The decimal separator is a period (.), not a decimal point. Do not use faint lines and/or fonts and check that all lines and fonts in the figures are legible. A chart is not complete without a short title that summarizes what it represents. The title can be placed in the center above the diagram (font size 12 points).

Figures when they are IMAGES or contain images IN COMPOSITE FIGURES
Figure illustrations must be embedded in the manuscript according to the list of figure legends and must also be uploaded as TIFF.
If a composite figure consists of different panels labeled A, B, etc. (consisting of micrographs, line drawings, and diagrams), it must be uploaded as a ONE TIFF file. Do not supply a figure(s) without any labels, or 'empty' photographs. Every figure must contain clear labels, from size information to labels pointing to major structural compartments, and Mw (kDa), bp, etc. Figure labels should be large enough to allow for the size reduction. Do not include the figure number, title, or caption in the file TIFF.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Definitive tables and figures must contain novel research findings obtained in the study while information that supplements the main content of the article should be presented in this optional section.