Instructions for Authors
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BIOLOGIA PLANTARUM is an international journal for experimental botany. It publishes original scientific papers and brief communications, reviews on specialized topics, and book reviews in plant physiology, plant biochemistry and biophysics, physiological anatomy, ecophysiology, genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, evolution, and pathophysiology. All papers should contribute substantially to the current level of plant science and combine originality with a potential general interest. The journal focuses on model and crop plants, as well as on under-investigated species.
It has become a great advantage that the journal is completely an open access one since 2019, which enables significant widening published information. Hence, after the acceptance of a manuscript, the authors will have to pay 750 EUR as a publication fee.
IMPORTANT: All original files (text, figures, tables) have to be combined in one PDF file. Submit, please, both original files and the PDF file! Without adding all the files the manuscript cannot be reviewed.
Article types:
- Original research articles should provide a novel insight in biological processes or functions. They may be up to 8 000 words including references and up to 7 figures or 4 tables. Less important tables or figures can be published only as the Supplement.
- Brief Communication are papers not exceeding 4 000 words and including one table and one figure, or two figures, or two tables. They are published without headings. Papers should not present preliminary research results, novelty and originality is accented.
- Review articles should be brief but comprehensive with full bibliography. They should be submitted after preliminary discussion of the intended topics with the editors. Reviews must not exceed 12 000 words including references.
Manuscript submission:
The manuscripts have to be submitted on-line on the manuscript submission page.
Papers have to be written in English; non-native English speakers are obliged to have their texts checked by a native speaker. Text files should be submitted in MS Word for Windows, figures and photographs separately as JPG or TIFF files. The same holds for Supplement. The whole paper should be submitted also as a pdf file.
Submitted manuscripts must not be published or under consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission. All authors have to approve the submission. If the paper is published on any preprint server, the author is obliged to announce that fact to the editorial office and assign it on the title page below the title of the paper. The author is responsible for the correct assignment of a paper state on the preprint server (e.g. the paper must not be under review in any other journal, book, etc.). Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work in whole or in part without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work of others, such as omission of qualified authors or of information regarding financial support, are not acceptable. Manuscripts may be checked for originality using an anti-plagiarism software.
Submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial screening for compatibility with the scope of the journal, non-triviality, and adherence to the guidelines presented here. Manuscripts passed this screen are designed by the editor-in-chief to a member of the editorial board, a specialist in a particular field, and then reviewed by at least two independent reviewers familiar with the relevant field of research (one of them can be the member of the editorial board). Novelty and a broad impact rank among the highest criteria. Manuscripts extending the description of a gene, process, or function from known to so far non-investigated species only and confirming previous knowledge are not acceptable.
Authors can follow a state of paper evaluation by the online system. A final decision is done by the editor-in-chief, usually based on recommendation of the member of the editorial board and reviewers. When accepted, papers are prepared for proofs and then launched as soon as possible in their on-line version accessible at the Biologia Plantarum website.
Manuscript structure:
Title page
Original papers should be arranged as follows: title page, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, references, tables with headings and figures with respective legends. The results and discussion might be joined together.
Title must fittingly describe the paper and it should be as brief as possible. It is written in lower case letters. Names of authors must be in capitals (e.g., J. MARAS1, K.G. XUE2, and W.-C. CHEN1*). Addresses must be in italics and followed by respective numbers.
All authors should provide their ORCID numbers (https://orcid.org/).
The abstract (about 200 - 300 words) should briefly describe the aim and all important results. It seems crucial to make the abstract reliable and as informative as possible. Please, avoid of introduction, discussion, speculations, and references.
Highlights are three to five bullet points that help increase the discoverability of your article via search engines. These bullet points should be maximum of 85 characters or fewer, including spaces.
Keywords (other than in the title) best characterizing the content of the article follow the abstract.
The list of abbreviations in alphabetical order is quite necessary. An abbreviation may be defined if the abbreviated word appears in the text more than twice. After that, the acknowledgements should be presented. Finally, the corresponding author (marked by an asterisk) should be indicated together with his/her e-mail.
Conflict of interest: During a submission procedure, authors have to state if there is any conflict of interest.
Introduction
The introduction should briefly review the topic of the paper, including relevant literature references, and state the goal of the research. After the first use of a term with its abbreviation, e.g., net photosynthetic rate (PN), use only the abbreviation, i.e., PN, in the following text. Units, dimensions, terms, symbols, abbreviations, etc., recommended by the Système International d'Unités (SI) and by nomenclature conventions of the relevant field of research should be used.
Materials and methods
Materials, methods, and experimental conditions including growth conditions and the ontogenetic stage of plants have to be described in sufficient detail to allow reliable repetition of the experiments. The species names should be given in full when appearing for the first time in the manuscript (e.g., Picea abies [L.] Karst., Hordeum vulgare L. cv. Dvoran) and in a shorter version in the following text (e.g., P. abies). When presenting instruments or specific materials (chemicals), supplier information should be provided (e.g., Portable Photosynthesis System LI-6400, LI-COR, Lincoln, NE, USA). For common experimental methods, only a very short description together with a respective reference may be sufficient.
Statistical treatment should be described in detail. Means and SDs (standard deviations) or SEs (standard errors) from a sufficient number of replicates (at least three) have to be provided if reporting any measured quantitative values. Significance of quantitative differences among experimental variants must be evaluated using appropriate statistical tests described in enough detail (information about the software is useful). In the case of a series of experiments, a note on reproducibility of the trends or dependences should be given.
Results
All results should be clearly described and logically arranged. Avoid discussion in Results unless combining the Results and Discussion sections. References to respective tables or figures should be in brackets after statement, e.g., (Table 1) or (Fig. 3A). Use subheadings only when the text is too long and complicated.
Discussion
A reasonable compromise between length and depth of discussion has to be found to prevent futile words or mere speculations. However, appropriate comparisons of results obtained with those found previously should be presented, interpretation and inter-linking the results is expected here. Also, if some unusual results appear, they should be explained. Stimulating and well based hypotheses are welcome.
References
References in the text should contain the authors' names followed by the year of publication, e.g., Amesz (1989) or (Lüttge et al. 1989, Herbert and Nilson 1991). References at the end of the paper should be arranged alphabetically (basically by the first author's name) and edited as exemplified below:
Zhao, Z.J., Song, Y.G., Liu, Y.L, Qiao, M., Zhai X. L., Xiang, F. N.: The effect of elicitors on oleanolic acid accumulation and expression of triterpenoid synthesis genes in Gentiana straminea. - Biol. Plant. 157: 139-143, 2013.
Koch, G.W., Mooney, A.A. (ed.): Carbon Dioxide and Terrestrial Ecosystems. - Academic Press, San Diego - New York - Boston - London - Sydney - Tokyo - Toronto 1996.
Scherer, G.F.E.: Phospholipase A in plant signal transduction. - In: Munnik, T. (ed.): Lipid Signalling in Plants. Vol. 16. Pp. 3-22. Springer-Verlag, Berlin - Heidelberg 2010.
Rodrigues, A.C., Machado, L.B., Diniz, A.C., Fachinello, J.C., Fortes, G.R.L.: [Evaluation of the graft compatibility in Prunus sp.] - Rev. Bras Frut. 23: 359-364, 2001.[In Port.]
Titles of articles written in languages other than English are given only in English translation (see the above example). However, book titles should be given also in the original language.
For the journals published only in the non-English version, the DOI Name of the cited article must be added. The correctness of DOI can be checked on https://www.doi.org/.
Tables
Tables should always be cited in the text in a consecutive numerical order. Table captions should be self-explanatory without abbreviations and references to the text. Use only the MS Word tables. A single table should not exceed one printed page. Do not use landscape orientation. Large tables should be presented only in a Supplement.
Figures
Legends to figures should also be self-explanatory and should contain the description of statistical evaluation, i.e., means ± SEs, n = 10, *,** – significant differences between treatments at P ≤ 0.05 and 0.01, respectively.
The lettering should be in capitals, in Arial or a similar sans-serif type. The lettering for labels and inside legends should be of a consistent size. If possible, figures should be combined together and signed as A, B, C, etc.
Figure style should be consistent throughout the paper. Line drawings should be surrounded by a frame formed by their axes (grid marks should point inwards). As far as possible, different curves should be individually labelled. Alongside the scale of the ordinate and abscissa, the quantity measured should be given, followed by appropriate dimension in SI units in brackets, e.g., TRANSPIRATION RATE [mg(H2O) m-2 s-1].
Photographs must be of the press quality with a full range of tones and of a good contrast. All photographs should be arranged on one or two plates. Use the resolution of at least 200 dpi for gray scale and colour photographs and 600 dpi for line drawings. Please, check your figure style with recent issue of the journal.
Large or less important figures should be presented in a Supplement. Its style should be the same as in the main paper.
We expect the images submitted for publication in Biologia Plantarum follow, as a minimum, the following requirements.
Specific recommendations for papers concerning gene or cDNA cloning and sequencing or phylogenetic analyses:
No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or colour balance are acceptable only if they are applied to the whole image and as long as they do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent any information present in the original. The grouping of images from different parts of the same gel or from different gels, fields, or exposures must be made explicit by the arrangement of the figure (e.g., dividing lines) and/or in the text of the figure legend. If the original data cannot be provided by the authors, the manuscript cannot be accepted or its acceptance may be revoked.
All new sequences have to be deposited in one of the participating databases of the INSDC (i.e., ENA, GenBank, orDDBJ), and accession numbers must be provided. When reporting a new gene or cDNA sequence, routine results of automated bioinformatic analyses, such as theoretical computations of protein molecular mass, pI, amino acid composition, etc., may only be reported if contributing to the interpretation of experimental data (e.g., pI calculations only in the context of actual 2D electrophoresis experiments). Figures presenting only a DNA sequence and its protein translation without additional information are not admissible.
Database accession numbers must be provided for all sequences included in a phylogenetic tree construction. Methods used to construct a sequence alignment for phylogenetic tree calculation has to be described as well as those employed in the actual phylogenetic tree computation. In the case of large or problematic alignments, inclusion of alignment data as supplementary information is recommended. Significance of tree topology should be reported using an appropriate method such as bootstrap values or Bayesian posterior probability.
It is necessary to clearly distinguish between real time qPCR and reverse transcription qPCR. Therefore, use the abbreviation RT only for reverse transcription. In all cases, high-quality RNA should be harvested from at least three biological replicates, appropriate reference gene(s) showing invariant transcript levels under current experimental conditions have to be employed, and formulas incorporating PCR efficiencies for both the target gene and the reference gene have to be adopted for the calculations.