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Instructions For Authors

Approved and accepted presentations of the DRUG DISCOVERY & THERAPY WORLD CONGRESS 2019 will be published by Bentham Science Publishers, an STM publisher of journals of international repute, in either Current Medicinal Chemistry (IF 3.249), Current Alzheimer Research (IF 2.952) or The Open Conference Proceedings Journal, subject to the decision of the Advisory Committee.

Please find below the Instructions to be followed in the preparation of manuscripts to be submitted for publication as Conference proceedings.

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION: All manuscripts must be sent to cmc@benthamscience.org via email.

Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The principal/corresponding author will be required to submit a Copyright Letter along with the manuscript, on behalf of all the co-authors (if any). The author(s) will confirm that the manuscript (or any part of it) has not been published previously or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Furthermore, any illustration, structure or table that has been published elsewhere must be reported, and copyright permission for reproduction must be obtained.

For all online submissions, please provide soft copies of all the materials (main text in MS Word or Tex/LaTeX), figures / illustrations in TIFF, PDF or JPEG, and chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (CDX)/ISISDraw (TGF) as separate files, while a PDF version of the entire manuscript must also be included, embedded with all the figures / illustrations / tables / chemical structures etc. It is advisable that the document files related to a manuscript submission should always have the name of the corresponding author as part of the file name, i.e., “Cilli MS text.doc”, “Cilli MS Figure 1”, etc.

It is imperative that before submission, authors should carefully proofread the files for special characters, mathematical symbols, Greek letters, equations, tables, references and images, to ensure that they appear in proper format.

References, figures, tables, chemical structures etc. should be referred to in the text at the appropriate place where they have been first discussed. Figure legends/captions should also be provided.

A successful electronic submission of a manuscript will be followed by a system-generated acknowledgement to the principal/corresponding author. Any queries therein should be addressed to info@benthamscience.org or info@ddtwc.com.

Editorial Policies: The editorial policies of Bentham Science Publishers on publication ethics, peer-review, plagiarism, copyrights/ licenses, errata/corrections, and article retraction/ withdrawal can be viewed at http://www.benthamscience.com/editorial-policies-main.php

MANUSCRIPTS PUBLISHED: The Journal accepts full length reviews written in English. Thematic issues may also be considered for publication.

Thematic Issues: These special issues are peer-reviewed and may contain invited or uninvited review/mini-review articles. A Thematic Issue Editor will offer a short perspective and co-ordinate the solicitation of manuscripts between 3-5 (for a mini- thematic issue) to 6-10 (for full-length thematic issue) from leading scientists. Authors interested in editing a thematic issue in an emerging topic of outstanding developments in medicinal chemistry and rational drug design may submit their proposal to the Editor-in-Chief at cmc@benthamscience.org for consideration. Thematic issues should only contain review papers.

Conference Proceedings: For proposals to publish conference proceedings in this journal, please contact us at email: proceedings@benthamscience.org

MANUSCRIPT LENGTH:

Review Articles: Review articles should be 8000 to 40000 words and mini-review articles should be 3000 to 6000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Patent Reviews: The total number of words for a published comprehensive patent review is from 8000 to 40000 words.

Book Reviews: The journal publishes book reviews on recently published books (both print and electronic) relevant to the journal. Proposals for publishing book reviews should first contact the editor at cmc@benthamscience.org stating the title of the book, publisher, year of publication and book summary. No books must be sent to Bentham Science prior to their confirmation to the publisher concerned.

There is no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files e.g. video clips, animation and datasets, that can be included with each article online. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article (Refer to Supplementary Material section).

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION: The manuscript should be written in English in a clear, direct and active style. All pages must be numbered sequentially, facilitating in the reviewing and editing of the manuscript.

MICROSOFT WORD TEMPLATE: It is advisable that authors prepare their manuscript using the template available on the web, which will assist in preparation of the manuscript according to Journal’s Format.

Our contracted service provider Eureka Science can, if needed, provide professional assistance to authors for the improvement of English language and figures in manuscripts.

MANUSCRIPT SECTIONS FOR PAPERS:

Manuscripts may be divided into the following sections:

  • Copyright Letter
  • Title
  • Title Page
  • Abstract
  • Graphical Abstract
  • Keywords
  • Text Organization
  • List of Abbreviations (if any)
  • Conflict of Interest
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendices
  • Figures/Illustrations (if any)
  • Chemical Structures (if any)
  • Tables (if any)
  • Supportive/Supplementary Material (if any)

Copyright Letter: It is mandatory that a signed Copyright Letter should also be submitted along with the manuscript by the author to whom correspondence is to be addressed, delineating the scope of the submitted article declaring the potential competing interests, acknowledging contributions from authors and funding agencies, and certifying that the paper is prepared according to the 'Instructions for Authors'. All inconsistencies in the text and in the reference section and any typographical errors must be carefully checked and corrected before the submission of the manuscript. The article should not contain any such material or information that may be unlawful, defamatory, fabricated, plagiarized, or which would, if published, in any way whatsoever, violate the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement. The authors must acknowledge that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors for any such violation of the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement.

Title: The title of the article should be precise and brief and must not be more than 120 characters. Authors should avoid the use of non-standard abbreviations. The title must be written in title case except for articles, conjunctions and prepositions.

Authors should also provide a short ‘running title’. Title, running title, byline, correspondent footnote and keywords should be written as presented in original manuscripts.

Title Page: Title page should include paper title, author(s) full name and affiliation, corresponding author(s) names complete affiliation/address, along with phone, fax and email.

Abstract: The abstract should not exceed 250 words summarizing the essential features of the article.

Graphical Abstract: A graphical abstract should be included when possible with each manuscript for use in the Table of Contents (TOC). This must be submitted separately as an electronic file (preferred file types are EPS, PDF, TIFF, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and CDX etc.). A graphical abstract, not exceeding 30 words along with the illustration, helps to summarize the contents of the manuscript in a concise pictorial form. It is meant as an aid for the rapid viewing of the journals' contents and to help capture the readers’ attention. The graphical abstract may feature a key structure, reaction, equation, etc. that the manuscript elucidates upon. It will be listed along with the manuscript title, authors’ names and affiliations in the contents page, typeset within an area of 5 cm by 17 cm, but it will not appear in the article PDF file or in print. Graphical Abstracts should be submitted as a separate file (must clearly mention graphical abstract within the file) online via Bentham's Content Management System by selecting the option “supplementary material”.

Keywords: 6 to 8 keywords must be provided.

Text Organization: The main text should begin on a separate page and should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the List of Abbreviations, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgements and Reference section. For Review, the manuscript should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgements and Reference section. The review article should mention any previous important reviews in the field and contain a comprehensive discussion starting with the general background of the field. It should then go on to discuss the salient features of recent developments. The authors should avoid presenting material which has already been published in a previous review. The authors are advised to present and discuss their observations in brief. The manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text and 10 pt Times New Roman fonts should be used. The full term for an abbreviation should precede its first appearance in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement. The reference numbers should be given in square brackets in the text. Italics should be used for Binomial names of organisms (Genus and Species), for emphasis and for unfamiliar words or phrases. Non-assimilated words from Latin or other languages should also be italicized e.g. in vivo, in vitro, per se, et al. etc.

Authentication of Cell Lines: The NIH acknowledges the misidentification and/or cross-contamination of cell cultures e.g. HeLa cells being used in a research study as a serious problem. In order to ensure the validation of the work and proper utilization of resources, it is a prerequisite that correct reagents be used in studies dealing with established human (tumor) cell lines that have been cultured for more than 4 years up to the date of submission of the manuscript. Cell lines such as short-term cultures of human tumors, murine cell lines (as a catalog of DNA profiles is not yet available) and tumor cell lines established in the course of the study that is being submitted, are presently exempt from this rule. To minimize the risk of working with misidentified and/or contaminated cell lines, tests such as isoenzyme analysis, karyotyping/cytogenetic analysis and, more recently, molecular techniques of DNA profiling may be carried out to authenticate cell cultures. These tests may help confirm or establish the identify profile for a cell line. Bentham Science recommends that all cell lines be authenticated prior to submitting a paper for review. Authors are therefore required to provide authentication of the origin and identity of the cells by performing cell profiling either in their own laboratory or by outsourcing an approved laboratory or cell bank. Authentication is required when a new line is established or acquired, before freezing a cell line, if the performance of the line is not consistent or results are unexpected, if using more than one cell line, and before publication of the study.

The cell lines profile should be cross-checked with the profile of the donor tissue of other continuous cell lines such as provided by the authentic data bank such as www.dsmz.de/fp/cgi-bin/str.html, ATCC® etc.

Greek Symbols and Special Characters: Greek symbols and special characters often undergo formatting changes and get corrupted or lost during preparation of manuscript for publication. To ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, these special characters should be inserted as a symbol but should not be a result of any format styling (Symbol font face) otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF/XML.

Authors are encouraged to consult reporting guidelines. These guidelines provide a set of recommendations comprising a list of items relevant to their specific research design. Chemical equations, chemical names, mathematical usage, unit of measurements, chemical and physical quantity & units must conform to SI and Chemical Abstracts or IUPAC.

All kinds of measurements should be reported only in International System of Units (SI).

List of Abbreviations: If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided.

Conflict of Interest: Financial contributions and any potential conflict of interest must be clearly acknowledged under the heading ‘Conflict of Interest’. Authors must list the source(s) of funding for the study. This should be done for each author.

Acknowledgements: All individuals listed as authors must have contributed substantially to the design, performance, analysis, or reporting of the work and are required to indicate their specific contribution. Anyone (individual/company/institution) who has substantially contributed to the study for important intellectual content, or who was involved in the article’s drafting the manuscript or revising must also be acknowledged. Guest or honorary authorship based solely on position (e.g. research supervisor, departmental head) is discouraged.

References: References must be listed in the ACS Style only. All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. The reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.

See below few examples of references listed in the ACS Style:

Journal Reference:

  • [1] Bard, M.; Woods, R.A.; Bartón, D.H.; Corrie, J.E.; Widdowson, D.A. Sterol mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae: chromatographic analyses. Lipids, 1977,12(8), 645-654.
  • [2] Zhang, W.; Brombosz, S.M.; Mendoza, J.L.; Moore, J.S. A high-yield, one-step synthesis of o-phenyleneethynylene cyclic trimer via precipitation-driven alkyne metathesis. J. Org. Chem., 2005, 70, 10198-10201.

Book Reference:

  • [3] Crabtree, R.H. The Organometallic Chemistry of the Transition Metals, 3rd ed.; Wiley & Sons: New York, 2001.

Book Chapter Reference:

  • [4] Wheeler, D.M.S.; Wheeler, M.M. In: Studies in Natural Products Chemistry; Atta-ur-Rahman, Ed.; Elsevier Science B. V: Amsterdam, 1994; Vol. 14, pp. 3-46.

Conference Proceedings:

  • [5] Jakeman, D.L.; Withers, S.G.E. In: Carbohydrate Bioengineering: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Proceedings of the 4th Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting, Stockholm, Sweden, June 10-13, 2001; Teeri, T.T.; Svensson, B.; Gilbert, H.J.; Feizi, T., Eds.; Royal Society of Chemistry: Cambridge, UK, 2002; pp. 3-8.

URL(WebPage):

  • [6] National Library of Medicine. Specialized Information Services: Toxicology and Environmental Health. sis.nlm.nih.gov/Tox/ToxMain.html (Accessed May 23, 2004).

Patent:

  • [7] Hoch, J.A.; Huang, S. Screening methods for the identification of novel antibiotics. U.S. Patent 6,043,045, March 28, 2000.

Thesis:

  • [8] Mackel, H. Capturing the Spectra of Silicon Solar Cells. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University: Canberra, December 2004.

E-citations:

  • [9] Citations for articles/material published exclusively online or in open access (free-to-view), must contain the accurate Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s), except those posted on an author’s Web site (unless editorially essential), e.g. ‘Reference: Available from: URL’.

Some important points to remember:

  • All references must be complete and accurate.
  • All authors must be cited and there should be no use of the phrase et al.
  • Date of access should be provided for online citations.
  • Journal names should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
  • Punctuation should be properly applied as mentioned in the examples given above.
  • Superscript in the in-text citations and reference section should be avoided
  • Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications (which can only be included if prior permission has been obtained) should not be given in the references section. The details may however appear in the footnotes.
  • The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

Appendices: In case there is a need to present lengthy, but essential methodological details, appendices must be used, which can be a part of the article. An appendix must not exceed three pages (Times New Roman, 12 point fonts, 900 max. words per page). The information should be provided in a condensed form, ruling out the need of full sentences. A single appendix should be titled APPENDIX, while more than one can be titled APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, and so on.

Figures/Illustrations: All authors must strictly follow the guidelines below for preparing illustrations for publication in Current Medicinal Chemistry. If the figures are found to be sub-standard, then the manuscripts will be rejected and the authors offered the option of figure improvement professionally by Eureka Science. The costs for such improvement will be charged to the authors.
Illustrations should be provided as separate files, embedded in the text file, and must be numbered consecutively in the order of their appearance. Each figure should include only a single illustration which should be cropped to minimize the amount of space occupied by the illustration.

If a figure is in separate parts, all parts of the figure must be provided in a single composite illustration file.
Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate, as well as high-resolution component files.
Scaling/Resolution: Line Art image type is normally an image based on lines and text. It does not contain tonal or shaded areas. The preferred file format should be TIFF or EPS, with the color mode being Monochrome 1-bit or RGB, in a resolution of 900-1200 dpi.
Halftone image type is a continuous tone photograph containing no text. It should have the preferred file format TIFF, with color mode being RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 300 dpi.
Combination image type is an image containing halftone, text or line art elements. It should have the preferred file format TIFF, with color mode being RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 500-900 dpi.

Formats:
Illustrations may be submitted in the following file formats:

  • Illustrator
  • EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
  • PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
  • PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
  • Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)

  • PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)
  • TIFF
  • JPEG (conversion should be done using the original file)
  • BMP
  • CDX (ChemDraw)
  • TGF (ISISDraw)

Bentham Science does not process figures submitted in GIF format.

For TIFF or EPS figures with considerably large file size restricting the file size in online submissions is advisable. Authors may therefore convert to JPEG format before submission as this results in significantly reduced file size and upload time, while retaining acceptable quality. JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format. However, in order to maintain acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files are saved at High or Maximum quality. Zipit or Stuffit tools should not be used to compress files prior to submission as the resulting compression through these tools is always negligible.

Please refrain from supplying:

  1. Graphics embedded in word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document.
  2. Optimized files optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG) because of the low resolution.
  3. Files with too low resolution.
  4. Graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Image Conversion Tools: There are many software packages, many of them freeware or shareware, capable of converting to and from different graphics formats, including PNG.

General tools for image conversion include Graphic Converter on the Macintosh, Paint Shop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick, available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.

Bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be converted to EPS as they result in a much larger file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP, and poor quality. EPS should only be used for images produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can be saved in, or exported as, EPS format. If the images were originally prepared in an Office application, such as Word or PowerPoint, original Office files should be directly uploaded to the site, instead of being converted to JPEG or another format of low quality.

Color Figures/Illustrations:

  • The cost for each individual page of color figures/plates/illustrations is US$ 997.
  • Color figures should be supplied in CMYK and not in RGB colors.

Chemical Structures:
Chemical structures MUST be prepared in ChemDraw/CDX and provided as separate file.

Structure Drawing Preferences:
[As according to the ACS style sheet]

Drawing Settings:  
Chain angle 120°
Bond spacing 18% of width
Fixed length 14.4 pt (0.500cm, 0.2in)
Bold width 2.0 pt (0.071cm, 0.0278in)
Line width 0.6 pt (0.021cm, 0.0084in)
Margin width 1.6 pt (0.096cm)
Hash spacing 2.5 pt (0.088cm, 0.0347in)
Text settings:
Font Times New Roman
Size 8 pt
Under the Preference Choose:
Units points
Tolerances 3 pixels
Under Page Setup Use:
Paper US letter
Scale 100%

Tables:

  • Data Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word table format.
  • Each table should include a title/caption being explanatory in itself with respect to the details discussed in the table. Detailed legends may then follow.
  • Table number in bold font i.e. Table 1, should follow a title. The title should be in small case with the first letter in caps. A full stop should be placed at the end of the title.
  • Tables should be embedded in the text exactly according to their appropriate placement in the submitted manuscript.
  • Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell are displayed as black lines.
  • Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals sequentially in order of their citation in the body of the text.
  • If a reference is cited in both the table and text, please insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the numbered reference in the text.
  • Tabular data provided as additional files can be submitted as an Excel spreadsheet.

Supportive/Supplementary Material: We do encourage to append supportive material, for example a PowerPoint file containing a talk about the study, a PowerPoint file containing additional screenshots, a Word, RTF, or PDF document showing the original instrument(s) used, a video, or the original data (SAS/SPSS files, Excel files, Access Db files etc.) provided it is inevitable or endorsed by the journal's Editor.

Published/reproduced material should not be included unless you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder, which must be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of your article for publication.

Supportive/Supplementary material intended for publication must be numbered and referred to in the manuscript but should not be a part of the submitted paper. In-text citations as well as a section with the heading "Supportive/Supplementary Material" before the "References" section should be provided. Here, list all Supportive/Supplementary Material and include a brief caption line for each file describing its contents.

Any additional files will be linked to the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the paper. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided only on our Web site. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet). Supportive/ Supplementary material must be provided in a single zipped file not larger than 4 MB.

Authors must clearly indicate if these files are not for publication but meant for the reviewers'/editors' perusal only.

PERMISSION FOR REPRODUCTION: Bentham Science has collaborated with the Copyright Clearance Center to meet our customer’s licensing, rights & permission needs.

The Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® service makes it faster and easier to secure permission from Bentham Science journal titles. Simply visit Journals by Title and locate the desired content. Then go to the article’s abstract and click on “Rights and Permissions” to open the RightsLink’s page. If you are unable to locate the content you wish to use or are unable to secure the rights you are seeking, please e-mail us at permissions@benthamscience.org

Published/reproduced material should not be included unless written permission has been obtained from the copyright holder, which should be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of the article for publication.

AUTHORS AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS: The author will be required to provide their full names, the institutional affiliations and the location, with an asterisk in front of the name of the principal/corresponding author. The corresponding author(s) should be designated and their complete address, business telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address must be stated to receive correspondence and galley proofs.

PAGE CHARGES: No page charges will be levied to authors for the publication of their review articles.

LANGUAGE AND EDITING: Manuscripts submitted containing many English typographical errors will not be published. Manuscripts which are accepted for publication on condition that the written English submitted is corrected, will be sent a quote by Eureka Science, a professional language editing company. Authors from non-English language countries, who have poor English language written skills, are advised to contact the language editing company prior to submitting their manuscript to the journal. Please contact Eureka Science for a language editing quote at e-mail: info@eureka-science.com stating the total number of words of the article to be edited.

언어및편집:

영문오타가많은원고는출판되지않을것입니다.영문오타를없애겠다는조건으로받은원고는영어편집전문회사인유럽공동기술개발기구로부터가격견적서가보내질것입니다.영어작문에어려움이있는비영어권국가의저자들은원고를학술지에제출하기전에영어편집회사와접촉할것을권합니다.영어편집견적서를받기위해서교정될원고의단어수를적은메일을유럽공동기술개발기구메일인info@eureka-science.com로보내시기바랍니다.

语言和编辑:
含有很多英文印刷错误的提交稿将不予发表。接受发表的稿件其英文写作应是正确的;专业的语言编辑公司(尤里卡科学),可对稿件的英文润色提供报价。建议非英语国家、且英文写作欠佳的作者在投稿前先与语言编辑公司联系。请与尤里卡科学联系info@eureka-science.com.

EDITION ET LANGUE: Les manuscritssoumis avec plusieurserreurstypographiques en Anglais ne seront pas publiés en l’état. Les manuscritssontacceptés pour publication à la condition quel’anglaisutilisésoitcorrigé après la soumissionetserontenvoyés pour examen à Eureka Science, unesociétéd'édition de langue professionnelle. Les auteurs en provenance de pays où la langue estdifférente de l'anglaiset qui ont de médiocrescompétences en anglaisécrit, sontpriés de contacter la sociétéd'édition de langue avant de soumettreleurmanuscrit à la revue. Merci de contacterEureka Science à info@eureka-science.com pour undevis en indiquant le nombre total de mot de l’article à éditer.

PROOF CORRECTIONS: Authors will receive page proofs of their accepted paper before publications. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned within 48 hours. Major changes are not acceptable at the proof stage. If unable to send corrections within 48 hours due to some reason, the author(s) must at least send an acknowledgement on receiving the galley proofs or the article will be published exactly as received and the publishers will not be responsible for any error occurring in the published manuscript in this regard.

The corresponding author will be solely responsible for ensuring that the revised version of the manuscript incorporating all the submitted corrections receives the approval of all the co-authors of the manuscript.

REPRINTS: Printed reprints and e-prints may be ordered from the Publisher prior to publication of the article. First named authors may also order a personal online subscription of the journal at 50% off the normal subscription rate by contacting the subscription department at e-mail: subscriptions@benthamscience.org.

OPEN ACCESS PLUS: Accepted articles can be published online for free open access for all to view. Open access publishing provides the maximum dissemination of the article to the largest audience. Authors must pay for this service. All authors will be asked to indicate whether or not they wish to pay to have their paper made freely available on publication. If authors do not select the “Open Access Plus” option, then their article will be published with standard subscription-based access at no charge, subject always to the applicable Standard Terms & Conditions and Copyright Letter signed by the author.

Bentham Science offers authors the choice of “Open Access Plus” publication of their articles at a fee of US$ 2,900 per published article. Authors who select the “Quick Track” publication option (see below) and also wish to have their article made available on an “Open Access Plus” basis will be entitled to a 50% discount on the “Open Access Plus” publication fee.

All editors, board members and those authors who have contributed more than two articles in Bentham Science publications are entitled to a 40% discount on “Open Access Plus” fees.

For more information please contact us at e-mail: openaccess@benthamscience.org

FEATURED ARTICLE: Authors may opt to publicize their article(s) published with Bentham Science by highlighting their title(s) both at the journal's Homepage and the issue Contents page at a cost of US$ 600.

REVIEWING AND PROMPTNESS OF PUBLICATION: All papers submitted for publication are immediately subjected to editorial scrutiny, usually in consultation with members of the journal Editorial Advisory Board and outside independent reviewers. Every effort will be made to peer review submitted papers quickly. Papers which are delayed by authors in revision for more than 30 days will have to be re-submitted as a new submission. Papers accepted for publication are typeset and proofs are dispatched to authors for any corrections prior to final publication.

QUICK TRACK PUBLICATION: For this journal an optional fast publication fee-based service called QUICK TRACK is available to authors for their submitted manuscripts. Authors who opt for this fee-based service do not have to pay any additional charges for the improvement of figures (if required).

QUICK TRACK allows online publication within 2 weeks of receipt of the final approved galley proofs from the authors. Similarly the manuscript can be published in the next forthcoming PRINT issue of the journal. The total publication time, from date of first receipt of manuscript to its online publication is 10 weeks, subject to its acceptance by the referees and modification (if any) by the authors within one week.

Corresponding authors who opt for QUICK TRACK will receive 25 free e-prints tokens for their manuscripts.

Authors who have availed Quick Track service in a BSP journal will be entitled for an exclusive 30% discount if they again wish to avail the same service in any BSP journal.

For more information please contact the Editorial Office by e-mail at cmc@benthamscience.org.

COPYRIGHT: Authors who publish in Bentham Science print & online journals will transfer copyright to their work to Bentham Science Publishers. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Copyright Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree that the copyright of their article is transferred to the publishers if and when the article is accepted for publication. Once submitted to the journal, the author will not withdraw their manuscript at any stage prior to publication.

SELF-ARCHIVING: By signing the Copyright Letter the authors retain the rights of self-archiving. Following are the important features of self-archiving policy of Bentham Science journals:

  1. Authors can deposit the first draft of a submitted article on their personal websites, their institution’s repositories or any non-commercial repository for personal use, internal institutional use or for permitted scholarly posting only.
  2. Authors may deposit the ACCEPTED VERSION of the peer-reviewed article on their personal websites, their institution’s repository or any non-commercial repository such as PMC, arXiv after 12 MONTHS of publication on the journal website. In addition, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source of publication and a link should be inserted to the published article on the journal's/publisher’s website.
  3. If the research is funded by NIH, Wellcome Trust or any other Open Access Mandate, authors are allowed the archiving of published version of manuscripts in an institutional repository after the mandatory embargo period. Authors should first contact the Editorial Office of the journal for information about depositing a copy of the manuscript to a repository. Consistent with the copyright agreement, Bentham Science does not allow archiving of FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION of manuscripts unless under an open access mandate as above.
  4. The link to the original source of publication should be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The published manuscript is available at EurekaSelect via “http://www.eurekaselect.com/openurl/content.php?genre=article&doi= [insert DOI].”
  5. There is no embargo on the archiving of articles published under the OPEN ACCESS PLUS category. Authors are allowed deposition of such articles on institutional, non-commercial repositories and personal websites immediately after publication on the journal website.

PLAGIARISM PREVENTION: Bentham Science Publishers uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage overlap between the uploaded article and the published material. Any instance of content overlap is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher’s Editorial Policies. Bentham Science allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication. The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view:

Low Text Similarity: The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. The Content Tracking mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but which may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. If the similarity level is above 5%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.

It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material.

High Text Similarity: There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15 % similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are the advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.

TYPES OF PLAGIARISM: We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

  • Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.
  • Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.
  • Paraphrasing poorly: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
  • Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
  • Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
  • Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

PLAGIARISM IN PUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS: Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the journal concerned.

E-PUB AHEAD OF SCHEDULE: Bentham Science Publishers are pleased to offer electronic publication of accepted papers prior to scheduled publication. These peer-reviewed papers can be cited using the date of access and the unique DOI number. Any final changes in manuscripts will be made at the time of print publication and will be reflected in the final electronic version of the issue. Articles ahead of schedule may be ordered by pay-per-view at the relevant links by each article stated via the E-Pub Ahead of Schedule

Disclaimer: Articles appearing in E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule sections have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in this journal and posted online before scheduled publication. Articles appearing here may contain statements, opinions, and information that have errors in facts, figures, or interpretation. Accordingly, Bentham Science Publishers, the editors and authors and their respective employees are not responsible or liable for the use of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or information contained of articles in the E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule.