Introduction
Annals of the Institute of Biology - University of Sarajevo is open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes contributions to basic biology and applied biological sciences. Articles within the scope of the journal will be evaluated by at least two referees. Authors will be notified of acceptance, need for revision, or rejection within due time. Editors reserve the right to make minor adjustments. We welcome manuscripts of four types: Original Article (~3500 words), Review (~9000 words), Short Communication (~2000 words) and Letter to the Editor. Publishing of the manuscript in the Annals of the Institute of Biology - University of Sarajevo is free of charge.
Organisers of conferences, symposia and workshops on basic biology and applied biological sciences, are encouraged to apply to the Editor at aibus@pmf.unsa.ba to publish the papers (online) as a Special Issue.
Submission
All manuscripts are submitted and reviewed via e-mail: aibus@pmf.unsa.ba. Questions about submitting to the journal should be sent to the Technical Editors at: aibus@pmf.unsa.ba.
Peer review process
All submissions to the journal are initially reviewed by the Editor. Manuscripts may be rejected by Editor without peer review if it is felt that they are not of high enough priority or within scope of the journal and authors do not need to wait for the review process. The authors of the submitted manuscript will be informed about the status of the paper within 10 days. Manuscripts approved by Editor will be sent out for peer review, usually to two independent reviewers. Based on the feedback from these reviewers, Editor will make decision regarding the acceptance of the manuscript. If a paper is not acceptable in its present form, suggestions for revisions will be passed to the authors. The review of the submitted paper lasts a maximum of two months, after which the author receives the reviewed papers.
Plagiarism and Ethics
Manuscripts submitted to Annals of the Institute of Biology - University of Sarajevo may be screened with anti-plagiarism software in an attempt to detect and prevent plagiarism. Any manuscript may be screened, especially if there is reason to suppose part or all of the text has been previously published. Prior to final acceptance, any manuscript that has not already been screened may be put through plagiarism software.
Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics (details of which can be found on the website of the Committee on Publication Ethics-COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work are all unacceptable practices. Manuscripts published or accepted for publication elsewhere must not be submitted to Annals of the Institute of Biology - University of Sarajevo.
If experiments involving human or animal subjects or tissues have been carried out, then a statement about ethical approval must be included in the Material and Methods section (name of the designated competent authority, number and date of the ethical committee approval).
Animal research
Experiments with animals should be performed in accordance with the legal requirements of the relevant local or national authority. Procedures should be such that experimental animals do not suffer unnecessarily. The text of the paper should include experimental details of the procedure and of anaesthetics used. Work that involves animal behaviour should follow ASAB's Guidelines for the treatment of animals in behavioural research and teaching. The ARRIVE guidelines must be followed when preparing manuscripts for Annals of the Institute of Biology - University of Sarajevo.
Preparation of manuscript
Manuscript format
Submitted manuscripts must be written in English; contributors with a native language other than English are strongly requested to linguistically revise manuscripts prior submission. Papers in languages other than English are not accepted unless invited. Manuscripts should be prepared in an editable format such as .doc, .docx, prepared on A4, paginated, sungle spaced throughout (i.e. including references and quotations), 2.5 cm each margine, text should be written in 12 point Calibri (Body). Use text line numbering to make the work easier for reviewers. Manuscripts for review should be submitted at: aibus@pmf.unsa.ba. Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line. No more than 3 levels of headings should be used. All headings must be in 10pt. Level-1 Heading: 1. level-1 heading must be capitalized bold in left-justified and numbered. Level-2 Heading: 1.1. level-2 heading must be bold and italic, left-justified and numbered using an number followed by a period. Level-3 Heading: 1.1.1. level-3 heading must be in Italic left-justified and numbered using an number followed by a period. All paragraphs must be justified.
Article types
- Original Article,
- Review,
- Short Communication,
- Letter to the Editor.
Title page
The title page should include article type, title, authors, authors' affiliations, corresponding author informations, short running title. The title should be concise but informative. Where appropriate, title should include mention of family or higher taxon, for example: rat, Rattus norvegicus (Rodentia: Muridae). The short running title should not exceed 50 characters without spaces. Order of the authors denotes their contribution to the study, but senior author responsible for the entire project is listed last. Comma should be placed between the author’s surname and first name. Affiliations corresponding to the author names are denoted using superscript numbers. List the affiliations of the authors below the author names. Title must be in 20 pt bold, author name must be in 12 pt italic, authors’ affiliations and e-mails must be in 10 pt italic. All title and author names must be in single-column format and must be centered. Every word in a title must be capitalized except for short minor words such as: “a”, “an”, “and”, “as”, “at”, “by”, “for”, “from”, “if”, “in”, “into”, “on”, “or”, “of”, “the”, “to”, “with”.
Abstract
Structured abstract including Background, Methodology, Findings and Implications must be on a separate page (maximum 250 words). It should not include references. The abstract is of great importance as it may be reproduced elsewhere, and is all that many may see of your work. The abstract should be followed by up to seven keywords additional to those in the title identifying the subject matter for retrieval systems.
Manuscript structure
Introduction
The Introduction section should provide the background information needed to understand the study, and the reasons why experiments were conducted. If possible, references that are not more than 10 years old should be cited; however, be sure to cite the first discovery or mention in the literature even if it is older than 10 years. The studies you cite should be strongly related to your research question.
Material and Methods
It is recommended to use Past Tense for Material and Methods section. Describe used methodology briefly and cite the source; however, if authors introduce new method, describe procedure in detail. Subhedings within MM section should separate different methodologies. All statistical tests and parameters should be stated in this manuscript section.
Results
Results should be presented in a logical order and use Past Tense to describe your results. Subheadings should be used to separate the results of different experiments, as in the MM section. Do not duplicate data among text, figures, and tables. Use the text to point out what the reader will find in the table/figure, or mention one or two of the most important data points. Include the results of statistical analyses in the text, and provide p values wherever statistically significant differences are found.
Discussion
This section should be interpretation of the obtained results. Compare your results with results from the other studies in order to find consistence; if results are not similar, discuss possible reasons for the difference. Inconclusive or preliminary results should be mentioned and explained; possibly suggest additional experiments to clarify results. Also, limitations of the conducted study can be briefly discussed.
Conclusions
Emphasize major findings and answer the question what your results mean; in this section you should point out whether the conclusions confirm or refute the initial hypothesis.
References
The use of a tool such as EndNote or Reference Manager is recommended for reference management and formatting. Where possible, you should cite the primary literature in which observations are first reported rather than reviews. There are no strict requirements on the number of references. Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list and vice versa. Unpublished results and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. References should be in alphabetical order.
Give foreign language references in ordinary English alphabetic form (but copy accents in original language), if necessary transliterating in accordance with a recognized scheme. For the Cyrillic alphabet use British Standard BS 2979 (1958). If only a published translation has been consulted, cite the translation, not the original.
Please style in-text citations and the reference list according to the APA citation format: https://www.mendeley.com/guides/apa-citation-guide/
- Poddar, H., Heyes, D.J., Schirò, G., Weik, M., Leys, D., & Scrutton, N.S. (2022). A guide to time-resolved structural analysis of light-activated proteins. FEBS Journal, 289(3), 576-595. doi:10.1111/febs.15880
- Blois, M.S. (1958). Antioxidant determinations by the use of a stable free radical. Nature, 181, 1199–1200.doi:10.1038/1811199a0
- Domagalska, M.A., Sarnowska, E., Nagy, F., & Davis, S.J. (2010). Genetic Analyses of Interactions among Gibberellin, Abscisic Acid, and Brassinosteroids in the Control of Flowering Time in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLoS ONE, 5, e14012.
- Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts, K., & Walter, P. (Ed.). (2002). Molecular Biology of the Cell (4th ed). New York, NY: Garland Science.
- Langer, T., & Neupert, W. (1994). Chaperoning mitochondrial biogenesis. In RI Morimoto, A Tissières, C Georgopoulos (Eds.). The Biology of Heat Shock Proteins and Molecular Chaperones, pp. 53–83. New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
Acknowledgement
Funding sources should also be mentioned in the Acknowledgment section. It should be detailed whether the funding was partial or full, relevant grant numbers, and the author(s) who received the funding, if applicable. Also, writing assistance, language editing, technical editing, and proofreading should be stated in Acknowledgement. Direct technical assistance, including help with reagenst, samples, patients, animals, cells, equipment, patients, procedures, or techniques should be acknowledged.
Author contribution
List here the specific contributions of each author (regarding e.g. conceiving and designing the project, acquiring the data, analysing and interpreted the data, writing the paper, editing the paper).
Conflict of Interest Statement
All authors are requested to include a statement disclosing any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations that could influence their work. If there is no conflict of interest, this should be stated.
Nomenclature
The Botanical and Zoological Codes must be strictly followed. Nomenclature must follow the current ICZN/ICBN rules. Names of genera and species should be printed in italic or underlined to indicate italic; do not underline suprageneric taxon names. Taxonomic affiliation and authority (unabbreviated, followed by the year of description), of all specific and lower taxa (optional for the genus-group taxa) should be given at least once in the main text. Cite the author of species on first mention.
Specimens label data should not be blindly quoted (except in case of primary types), but the information transcribed into an unambiguous sequence of geographic terms, given in their present spelling (in English), if necessary with the original spelling in parentheses. For the newly described species-group taxa, the depository of the type material must be quoted. Use SI units, and the appropriate symbols.
Tables
Authors are encouraged to submit produced tables, each in a separate page at the end of the document (not in the main text). Maximum seven tables are allowed; however, if manuscript contains more than recommended number of tables, other tables should be listed as Supplemental Tables, and sent in the separate Word document. Keep tabels as simple as possible, with few horizontal and, preferably, no vertical rules. When assembling complex tables and data matrices, bear in mind the dimensions of the printed page (168 x 225 mm). Tables must be numbered, table captions must be centered in 8 pt italic with small caps. Captions with table numbers must be placed before their associated tables.
Figures
These normally include 1) diagrams, 2) black and white figures reproduced from drawings, 3) half-tones reproduced from photographs, and 4) maps. Use one consecutive set of Arabic numbers for all illustrations. Figures should be numbered in the order in which they are cited in the text. Use upper case letters for subdivisions (e.g. Figure 1A-D) of figures; all other lettering should be lower case.
Figures should be prepared about twice their printed size, labelled with pre-printed lettering large enough to allow the necessary reduction (due consideration should be paid to the format of a printed page – 140 x 190 mm). Diagrams, photographs, figures and maps should be supplied as pictures in TIFF format; the file resolution should be at least 600 dpi. All the text file(s) should be written with UNICODE font and one size type throughout. In any case of paragraph and table formatting, the use of multiple spaces must be avoided. Figures must be numbered, figure captions must be centered in 8 pt italic with small caps. Captions with figure numbers must be placed after their associated figures.
Template for authors in MS Word.
