Journal's Ethics and Policies
The IJBI follows COPE's guidelines (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and the manuscripts are published under Open Access Article licensed under a Creative Commons License: Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY). The IJBI allows unrestricted use of articles in any medium, reproduction and distribution by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.
Section A: Author's Responsibilities
- Corresponding author is the main owner of the article but all authors make sure that their manuscript is their original work.
- Author (s) must ensure that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been reviewed in another journal.
- All authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. Level of their contribution however varies.
- All submitted articles are subject to a strict peer-review process by at least two well reputed reviewers that are experts in the area specified. Reviewers are being selected by Editors/ Editor in Chief. Author also can propose reviewers for his/her article/paper.
- Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, language and so on.
- Authors make sure that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
- Authors must identify and cite all the relevant sources used in the preparation of the manuscript.
- The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revision, major revision or rejection. If author (s) is encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted. The authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
- Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed and re-examined under any circumstances.
- Authors cannot withdraw their articles within the review process or after submission, or they must pay the penalty defined by the publisher. However, he/she can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).
- Funding source, if any and conflict of interest must be mentioned in the manuscript.
- Copyright is vested in author (s). The author (s) is fully responsible for copyright or plagiarism related matters, if any.
- Submission of an article/paper means the author (s) agrees to obey all the points mentioned above.
- The corresponding author must return the corrected galley proof within 72 hours. All the authors are equally responsible for the contents published.
Section B: Reviewers' Responsibilities
- Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
- Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author (s) must affect their comments and decision.
- Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
- Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
- Reviewers should also call to the Editor in Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
- Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Section C: Editors' Responsibilities
- Editors (Editors or Editor in Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
- Editors should have a clear picture of overall research and are responsible for overall quality of the publication.
- Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
- Galley proofs would be sent to the corresponding author in time.
Section D: Publisher's Responsibilities and Retractions of Articles
- Authors, Reviewers, Editors and Publisher should obey the rules as mentioned.
- The publisher should publish errata pages or corrections, when needed.
- If plagiarism or any other misconduct regarding the submitted/published article comes to the attention of the publisher, an investigation would be initiated and the journal will inform the author's institute for such misconduct. The IJBI will not accept any article in future from such an author.
- Retractions are considered by journal editors in case of evidence of unreliable data or findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, and unethical research. The IJBI may consider an expression of concern notice, if an article is under such investigation. All retraction notices will explain why the article was retracted. The retraction procedure depends on the publication stage of the article.
- The publisher can impose a penalty to the author when he/she seeks withdrawal/retraction of an article without any solid, logical and appropriate reasons.
Section E: Research Ethics for using Animals
- Authors performing experiments on animals are required to provide a statement in the Materials and Methods section that their study organisms were cared for in accordance with the Guidelines approved by the appropriate Ethical Committee at the institution (s) where the experiments were carried out.
- Manuscripts dealing with unwarranted numbers of rare or endangered species and human subjects may not be accepted. Authors must obtain written informed consent when working with vulnerable populations.
