Editorial Policy

What happens next to your manuscript submission

In-House Quality-Check

When a manuscript is submitted in TABCJ, it has to go-through initial editorial screening by the Chief Editor and apposite members of the Editorial Board so as to determine whether the manuscript fits the scope of TABCJ or not. Initially, all the new submissions are checked by our editorial staff for content related criteria such as

  • Declaration of any potential competing interests
  • Plagiarism-check
  • Appropriate suitability of the article to the mentioned article type
  • Determining whether the topic is within the scope of the journal
  • Evaluating adherence of manuscript to word limits
  • Supplementary material
  • Ethical considerations
  • Appropriate references, side headings, keywords, figures and figure legends, tables wherever mentioned
  • Quality of images
  • Proper understanding of language etc.

Manuscripts that are found unsuitable for publication in TABCJ or unlikely to be good enough for publication are rejected during editorial screening.

If the Editorial Board found that the manuscript meets TABCJ’s minimum standards for publication, then the manuscripts would go through a peer-review process with at least three referees. The author may also suggest at least three potential referees for peer-reviewing their manuscripts. The institutional email addresses (where possible), or ORCiD, or Scopus ID of the referee should be provided. Intentional falsification of information, for example, suggesting referees with a false name or email address, will lead to rejection of the manuscript and the institution of the author will be notified about the same to take necessary action against this misconduct. TABCJ holds the sole right to decide whether to involve the referees suggested by the author for the peer-reviewing process or not. The author may also suggest the names and information of referees who they would prefer not to review the manuscript.

Peer-Review of the Manuscript

The Applied Biology & Chemistry Journal (TABCJ) aims at speedy publication of high-value articles while upholding a rigorous and systematic double-blind peer-review system. In the double-blind peer-review process, the referees’ identities are kept discrete from authors and vice-versa. Our rigorous peer review not only evaluates the content but also roots out errors of fact or concept and provokes discussion that will lead to new research activity. Our step-by-step process of Peer-Review is detailed below:

Step 1:

Reviewers are asked to read the manuscript very carefully and provide constructive feedback. Reviewers evaluate manuscripts based on their originality, novelty, accuracy, importance, interdisciplinary interest, and evidence-based conclusions. After a thorough review of the manuscript, referees make one of the decisions listed below:

  • Accept without any changes: The journal will publish the paper in its original form.
  • Accept with minor revisions: The journal will publish the paper after making minor corrections suggested by reviewers.
  • Accept with major revisions/ Revise and resubmit: The journal will publish the paper provided the authors make the changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors.
  • Reject and resubmit (Authors need to rework): The journal is willing to reconsider the paper in another round of decision-making after the authors make major changes.
  • Reject: The journal will not publish the paper or reconsider it even if the authors make major revisions.

Reviewers write suggestions for revision and give their helpful advice to the authors about how to improve the manuscript. On the other hand, reviewers send their summary evaluations to the editors and advise them to publish them or not. Referees recommendations are then analyzed and decided and the decision is intimated to the corresponding author(s).

Step 2:

After review, in accord with suggestions made by the reviewers, reviewers’ comments will be e-mailed to the author.

Step 3:

Authors must make specific changes in response to each reviewer comment and must submit the revised manuscript. The changes made must be highlighted in the revised manuscript. A cover letter/response letter must accompany the revised manuscript with point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments. If the author does not respond to the reviewer comments within six weeks, the paper is considered to be withdrawn.

Step 4:

Revised manuscripts are usually sent for re-review. The journal does not give any guarantee on acceptance of revised manuscripts as in a few cases, if the improvements are not sufficient or if new issues arise, revised articles are rejected.

Step 5:

Authors are notified by e-mail when a manuscript has or has not been accepted for publication.

Copyediting of Accepted Papers

Finally, once the paper is accepted, it undergoes an in-house evaluation for quality, entirety, and format. The manuscript is copy-edited by the journal's sub-editors, to ensure maximum clarity and reach. The role of sub-editors is to edit the language for maximum clarity and ensure that the length of the paper, terminology, and notation conform to the Vancouvar Manual style. They also ensure that the figures and tables are clear and will fit in the space available.

Once the article passes all the above steps, it is published Online. Manuscripts with significant outcomes are typically reviewed and published at the highest priority.