Bio Integration

Before Accepting a Review

Before accepting an invitation to review, reviewers should ensure that they have appropriate expertise to assess the manuscript, are able to complete the review within the requested timeframe, and have no actual or potential conflicts of interest that could affect their ability to provide an objective assessment. If a reviewer is uncertain whether a conflict exists, they should contact the Editorial Office before accepting the invitation.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest that could affect, or reasonably be perceived to affect, the objectivity of their review. Reviewers who have a conflict of interest should decline the invitation to review and inform the journal. For further information, please see the journal’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

Research Integrity Concerns

If a reviewer identifies a potential research-integrity or publication-ethics concern, such as suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate image or data manipulation, or another potential breach of publication ethics, the concern should be reported confidentially to the journal. Reviewers should not contact the authors directly or attempt to investigate the matter themselves.

BIO Integration follows stringent peer review procedures for suitable manuscript submissions. The journal will follow a single-blind peer-review process.

External reviewers may be chosen from the suggestions provided by the author; however other reviewers may also be appointed as deemed appropriate. The assigned handling Editorial Board Member can select at least two reviewers for a particular manuscript depending on the knowledge and experience of the specified reviewers.

A review report provides the Editors with feedback on the quality of the manuscript under consideration. It also supplies authors with explicit insight on how to improve their papers to make them suitable for publication in the journal. Although confidential comments to the editors are not relayed to authors, any remarks that may help improve the quality of the manuscript will be forwarded to the authors for their consideration. Reviewers are expected to provide advice on the following points in their review reports:

Is the manuscript written comprehensively enough to be understandable? If not, how could it be improved?
Have adequate proofs been provided for the declarations?
Have the authors addressed the previous findings fairly?
Does the paper offer enough details of its methodology to reproduce the experiments?
The journal encourages authors to publish detailed protocols as supporting information online. Do any particular methods used in the manuscript warrant such a protocol?

The reviewers are expected to provide their reports in a timely fashion (within two weeks) since a prompt review leads to the timely publication of a manuscript which is beneficial not only for the authors but for the scientific community as well.

Reviewer Responsibilities

Reviewers are expected to provide timely, substantive, constructive and objective reports. Comments should be expressed clearly and professionally and, where appropriate, supported by relevant evidence or references. Reviewers should assess manuscripts in accordance with the criteria set out in the journal’s Peer Review Policy.

Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript and the peer-review process and must not use information obtained through peer review for personal or professional advantage. Reviewers must comply with the journal’s Conflict of Interest Policy and all other applicable Editorial Policies.

The reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation of one of the following actions to the assigned Editorial Board Member:

Accept Submission
Major/Minor Revisions Required
Decline Submission

Once the required external review reports have been received, the assigned Editorial Board Member completes the peer-review stage and refers the manuscript and reviewers’ reports to the Executive Editor. The Executive Editor considers the reviewers’ reports and makes an editorial recommendation to the assigned Co-Editor-in-Chief, who makes the final publication decision.

To become a reviewer

If you would like to be considered as a reviewer for BIO Integration please register here for ScholarOne, the journal online submission and peer review system. This process will automatically add your name, contact details and expertise to our database of reviewers.

Special Issues

Special Issues (SIs) are collections of papers centred around a subject of special interest and are organized and led by subject experts who serve as Guest Editors for the Special Issue.

Guest Editors are responsible for overseeing the editorial and peer-review process for submissions to their Special Issue. Their responsibilities include identifying suitable topics, inviting contributions, selecting at least two suitably qualified external reviewers, managing the peer-review process, and providing recommendations on manuscripts based on the reviewers’ reports.

All final publication decisions are made by the assigned Co-Editor-in-Chief in accordance with the journal’s editorial policies.

All Special Issue submissions follow the same rigorous peer-review process and ethical standards as regular submissions and must be submitted through the journal’s online submission system. Guest Editors and invited authors must comply with all journal Editorial Policies.

BIO Integration is indexed in EBSCO, EMBASE, Scopus, CAS, DOAJ, Research4Life, Ulrich’s web, OCLC, WorldCat, Primo Central (Ex Libris), Sherpa Romeo, CNKI Scholar (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure) and Summon Databases.