Recommended guidelines for authors
JoLS, Journal of Life Sciences - a Postdoc community initiative, accepts original research papers, reviews, methodologies, perspectives, progress articles, commentaries, and research highlights. All submissions are peer-reviewed to ensure scientific accuracy, appropriate citations and scholarly balance. The following guidelines represent some broad criteria to be considered before submission:
Article Types
All articles must provide a glossary of key words for lay readers, and papers in Life Sciences are encouraged.
Original Research:
Authors are advised to present their manuscript in an easy to understand, succinct and coherent way. The acceptable word limit is less than 6000 words, may include up to 6 display items (figures, tables, boxes, etc.) and citations not to exceed 150.
Shorter Research Articles with fewer figures will also be considered and may be published as Reports at the discretion of the editors.
Review:
Article length is within 3000 to 4000 words and 3 descriptive figures. Reviews should cover a given topic more broadly; it should discuss a comprehensive overview of the literature with a section or two on the author’s opinion on the subject. The authors can indicate if they prefer to showcase a given figure on the home page of the journal.
Progress articles:
Progress articles focus on authors' own research, as opposed to review papers, and should not exceed 2,000 words, 5 display items, and 50 citations.
Research highlights:
Research highlights should be within 300 to 500 words, summarizing a recent research paper (published in any journal within the last 60-90 days) that has an impact on the ongoing research in the specific field. Highlights should specifically discuss the positive and negative impact of the published data.
Editorial:
Editorials are short, invited opinion pieces that discuss an issue of immediate importance to the(postdoctoral) research community. Article length is less than 3000 words, less than 2 figures and citations not to exceed 25. Please contact the editorial board for editorial topic suggestions.
References:
References and notes are numbered in the order in which they are cited, first through the text, then through the table and figure legends. In-text citations should be presented using the superscript number format.
Submission:
- Authors must provide a statement clearly disclosing all authors of their affiliations, funding sources, or financial holdings that might raise questions about conflicts of interest and possible sources of bias.
- For multiple authors, a statement must be provided to indicate that the manuscript has been read and approved by all authors.
- Authors may be requested to suggest 3-5 potential referees.
- Authors must follow and acknowledge the ethics statement as stated below.
- Authors must provide a statement regarding human and animal rights and this should be included in the article when appropriate.
Ethics statement
All work submitted to the Journal of life Sciences must be original and not a previously published or under consideration for publication elsewhere. In addition, JOLS does not accept any form of plagiarism, data or image manipulation, copyright infringement, or any other attempt to defraud the journal or its readers. All potential conflicts of interest should be declared during submission, and all authors should meet the ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals:
1. Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
3. Final approval of the version to be published.
Any manuscripts found to be in breach of these guidelines may be retracted by the journal, and in extreme cases, individuals may be reported to their institutions.
Statement of human and animal rights
For human studies
When reporting research involving human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were assessed by the responsible review committee (institutional and national), or if no formal ethics committee is available, these were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013.If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body (IRB) explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. Approval by a responsible review committee does not preclude editors from forming their own judgment whether the conduct of the research was appropriate.
For animal studies
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Manuscript selection
JoLS is committed to thorough and efficient evaluation of submitted manuscripts. Papers are assigned to a staff editor who has knowledge of the field discussed in the manuscript. Most submitted papers are rated for suitability by members of JoLS’ Editorial Board. Authors of papers that are not selected are notified promptly, within about 1 week.
Research papers that are selected for in-depth review are evaluated by at least two referees. The submission-to-acceptance time for well-written articles has generally been less than 6 weeks, with a much smaller time for research highlights.
JoLS treats all submitted manuscripts as confidential documents.
For any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at Info@JournalofLifeSciences.Org.
The process for handling cases requiring corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern
Data sharing policy: JoLS follows ICMJE recommendations on data sharing.