Aims and scope

Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology is an international scientific electronic journal which publishes papers from all areas related to biotechnology, genomics, food research, health and nutrition, biosensors, food safety and waste bioconversion.

Short communications and mini-reviews are also welcomed. All contributions should be concise and written in English. Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology has no page charges. Authors must assure that no part of the article has been published nor submitted for publication elsewhere.

Editors’ Ethics Code

Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology adheres to a Code of Ethics:

· All manuscripts are received by the editor and are considered as a confidential document.

· All manuscripts, including those of the editor or members of the Editorial Board, will be subjected to the same review process. All of them will be handled anonymously and submitted to peer review omitting authors’ names and affiliations.

· The editor or members of the editorial board are not to be involved in their own manuscript evaluation or in the evaluation of manuscripts emanating from their own department.

· Under no circumstances the editor should contact the authors to discuss matters related with the manuscript.

· Under no circumstances the editor and the referees must refer, in conversation or in print, to the work that the manuscript describes before it has been published. Neither should the information it contains be used for advancement of the own work.

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article by the journal, authors will be asked to transfer the copyright to Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology, which is committed to maintain the electronic access to the journal and ensure the widest possible dissemination of the information. The author can use the article for academic purposes, stating clearly the following: "Published in Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology at http://www.bioaliment.ugal.ro/rev_auth_info.html# “

The Copyright Transfer Agreement can be send by regular mail to Editor en Chief, Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati, Faculty of Food Science and Engineering, Department of Bioengineering, 111 Domneasca Street, 800201, Galati, Romania or to the Fax number +40-236-466116 in attention to Editor in Chief Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology. Also the signed Copyright Transfer Agreement can be scanned and send as an attached file by email at edirfb@ugal.ro .

Evaluation Process

Receipt of each article is acknowledged by e-mail to the contacting author within three working days. The manuscript is read and examined for conformity to the Instructions for Authors by the editor. Failure to meet the criteria outlined may result in return of the manuscript for correction before evaluation.

The editor selects two or three referees who are invited, in confidence, to evaluate the manuscript according to the following aspects:

- Originality of the work.

- Relevance to scientific knowledge in Biotechnology.

- Background: adequate theoretical background. Hypothesis, objectives and clear contribution to Biotechnology. Updated and quality references (75% or more references from the last decade).

- Methodology: appropriate and adequately described materials and methods. Sound experimental design.

- Results: concise and sufficient data. Statistics analysis when appropiate. Efficiency measurements. Clear and correct figures; only essential data should be included in figures. Elimination of figures, graphs and tables which add little or could be replaced by a few sentences or a statement of numerical values is recommended.

- Discussion: In-depth discussion, correct interpretation.

- Formal Aspects: correct language, references properly cited. High quality figures. Adherence to usual and consistent nomenclature. Title and summary sufficiently informative.

- All the above items will be evaluated as outstanding, good, fair, mediocre or poor by an assessment form given to evaluators.

The article could be: accepted with no further revision; accepted after minor revision (no further review required); accepted only after major revisions, inappropriate for the journal; rejected.

If the paper is accepted after major revisions, it must be sent again for peer review to the same evaluators.

Final digital test (galley proof). The authors are requested to do the galley proof before the article is available for public. They must check the HTML versions. After receiving the authors’ final approval for the HTML, the PDF version is generated, according to authors’ corrections.

Once all formats (HTML and PDF) are ready, the article is announced and becomes available for all audiences.

Fair Policies in a Digital Media

Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology pretends to define a policy that permits the widest possible distribution of information and use, without profit and free of charge by the scientific and academic community.

I. The author has to transfer the copyright to the editor upon acceptance for publication.

II. No part of the publication may be reproduced for sale, translated or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the Editor. In this case the article must be cited completely as well as the journal. Reproduction occurs when an article is duplicated more than three times in a digital, electronic, mechanical or other reproduction means and by one user. Also reproduction occurs when data published in Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology is included in a second publication.

III. It is permitted to photocopy and print items for personal use and for educational purposes, particularly: Every institution can create links found in the server of the journal to make packages of information for courses, seminars or instructional materials, but they cannot use the digital version or parts of it and put it in its public on line servers without the permission of the Editor. Non profit institutions of higher education can photocopy articles for instructional purposes. In this case they have to inform the Editor the name of the course in which it will be used, the reproduction must be complete, and with copyright information and that if any payment is involved it has to be only the reproduction costs. Digital version or parts of it cannot be put on the public on line server without expressed permission of the Editor.

IV. The author can place a copy of the final version in his server, although it is recommended that a link is made to the server of the journal where the original article is and include a note dealing with usage policies.

V. The breaking of the copyright law is the responsibility of the user and not of the Institution which provides access to the contents, either for its condition of information transfer (i.e. Internet providers) or because it offers public access to servers.

Instructions for Authors

All manuscripts should be prepared with Microsoft Word and sent to the Editor by e-mail as "attachment" to the electronic address edirfb@ugal.ro . For tables, figures, photographs, abbreviations and videos, see instructions below.

A galley proof is provided to author(s) before the article is available for all audiences.

Cover letter. All submissions should be accompanied by a cover letter that includes a brief overview of the manuscript and the corresponding and contacting author contact information including full name, e-mail address, phone number, and mailing address (corresponding author and contacting author). It should also specify the number of display items (figures and tables), the number of attachments (manuscript, figures, supplementary information if any), and their formats.

The cover letter must include a statement indicating that the article has not been published in another publication and is not being submitted simultaneously to another journal.

FORMAT OF RESEARCH ARTICLES

All parts of the contributions should be type-written, double-spaced, on one side of white bond paper with a 2,5 cm margin on all sides with TNR12.

Title page. It should contain the following information:

a) The full title of the paper without abbreviations. The title should be as brief and informative as possible, specifying clearly the content of the article.

b) If the title is long (more than 80 characters and spaces), a shortened running title having no more than 50 characters and spaces should be provided.

c) Full names of all authors indicating the corresponding authors.

d) Affiliation, telephone, fax, electronic addresses and URL's of personal and institutional WEB pages.

Financial support. Authors must include the financial support received for their research.

Keywords. Authors must provide three to six keywords, which must not be part of the title of the paper. Phrases and general or broad words such as "pH" or "growth" are not allowed.

Present address. Authors should provide their present address in case it is different than the affiliation described at the Title page. It should include address, phone and fax.

Abbreviations. They should be indicated as in example:

Abbreviations: PCR: polymerase chain reaction; AFLP: amplified fragment length polymorphism; Cy5: CyTM5 amidite (5'-cyamine-d[seq]) fluorochrome technology.

Abstract. An abstract not exceeding 200 words containing the principal ideas, methodology, results and important conclusions is required. Foot notes and abbreviations should be avoided in the abstract. A reference might be included only if necessary, and mentioning the complete citation. Considering that the abstract is published separately by the analysis information services, it should contain enough basic information so that the paper could be fully understood by those who do not have access to the full text.

Introduction. It should be brief and limited to the definition of the problem, the aims and purposes of the research and its relation with other studies in the field. Also the working hypothesis must be clearly stated.

Materials and methods. It should include relevant details on the experimental design and techniques so that the experiments can be repeated.

Results and discussion. Results should be clearly presented. Tables and figures should only be included if required to fully understand the data.

The aim of this section is the interpretation of the results and their relation to the existing knowledge. The contribution to Biotechnology must be clearly stated. The information given in any part of the text may be cited but not repeated.

Acknowledgments. The acknowledgments of the contributions of colleagues can be stated in this section. Acknowledgments for financial support must be cited on the corresponding section.

References. For original articles (research, short communications, mini-reviews, issues in biotechnology teaching), at least 50% of the references must be from ISI indexed journals from the last decade. This exigency is not applied to patents. Citations from thesis, personal communications, and unpublished data are not allowed.

For mini-review articles at least 50% of the references must be from ISI indexed journals.

Research articles should have at least 15 references.

Review articles should have at least 50 references.

a) In the text:

References must be cited in the text mentioning the last name of the author and year between parentheses. In case of two authors, both should be mentioned. When there are three or more authors, mention only the first author followed by et al. When two or more references are cited in the same parenthesis, the authors should be in chronological order. And if they have the same year, they should be in alphabetical order. Moreover, if there is more than one reference of the same author and the same year, they should be indicated with letters. See examples:

1 author: (Gardner, 1999).

2 authors: (Larvol and Wilkerson, 1998).

2 or more authors: (Frishman et al. 1998). 2 or more references in the same parenthesis: (Benton, 1996; Frishman et al. 1998; Larvol and Wilkerson, 1998; Pennisi, 1999).

2 or more references with the same year: (Klevecz, 1999; Wedin, 1999; Persidis, 2000).

2 or more references with the same author and the same year: (Benton, 1996a; Benton 1996b; Benton 1996c).

b) In the References section:

At the end of the paper, in the References section the literature should be arranged in alphabetical order. If they have the same author, they should be in chronological order. They must be presented according to the following examples: (based on ISO 690 and ISO 690-2).

Journal Article

Papenfuss G.F., Mshigeni K.E., Chiang Y.M. (1982) Revision of the red algal genus Galaxaura with special reference to the species occurring in the Western Indian Ocean., Journal of Food Science, 25, 401-444.

Book

Muller P. (1991) Arealsysteme und Biogeographie, Ulmer, Stuttgart.

Book Chapter

Magdefrau K. (1992) Life-forms of bryophytes. In: Smith A.I.E. (ed.): Bryophyte ecology, 45-58. Chapman & Hall, London.

Paper in Conference Proceedings

Acevedo F., Gentina J.C. (1988) Comparative performance of stirred and Pachuca tanks in the bioleaching of a copper concentrate. In: Biohydrometallurgy: Proceedings of the International Biohydrometallurgy Symposium. (12th-16th July, 1988, Warwick, UK). Science and Technology Letters, Kew Surrey, UK. NORRIS, P.R. and KELLY, D.P. eds., 385-394.

Bosticco A. (2000) Scarcity and surplus of the animal production: possible strategies for a better worldly balance. In: International Congress: Food production and the quality of life. (4th-8th September, 2000, Sassari, Italy). Abstracts, 16.

Nienow A.W. A status review of mixing in bioreactors. In: International Conference on Biochemical Engineering. (10º, 18th-23rd May, 1997, Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada). Available from Internet: http://hugroup.cems.umn.edu/Archive.htm

Journal Article In Press

Temenoff J.S., Mikos A.G. (2000) Injectable biodegradable materials for orthopaedic tissue engineering. Biomaterials. In press.

Tables. Tables must be numbered with Arabic numerals in the order in which they are cited in the text. They should have a brief descriptive title placed at the top. A short description is also accepted. Footnotes can be included below the table. Tables cannot duplicate data contained in the text. Tables must be sent in Microsoft Word and have no links to the main document or other archives. Provide files at approximately the correct size they are to be printed (letter size).

Figures. The figures must be numbered with Arabic numerals and have a brief descriptive title at the bottom. If needed a short description is also accepted. Footnotes can be included below the figure. Figures must be sent in Microsoft Word and with no links to the main document or other archives.

Photographs. Black and white and colour photographs of 20 x 25 cm in smooth and brilliant paper can be submitted.

Digitalized photographs must be sent using a TIFF format, with a minimum of 300 dpi. Also GIF and JPG formats can be used. Special care on the maximum definition of the photographs is required.

Drawing and graphs. For line art, the following software can be used: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and Canvas.

Photographs, drawings, graphs and tables. Provide files at 90 mm width (single column) or 185 mm (double column) considering the actual size of the printed PDF version (letter size paper).

Videos. We accept digitized videos using Avi format. Also, a tape with the video in VHS can be sent.

Nucleotide and aminoacid sequences. New sequence data referred to in a manuscript should also be reported with their accession number assigned in the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank sequence data libraries. A manuscript can be submitted while sequence data is being entered into the data libraries with the intent of including accession numbers once the manuscript is approved for publication.

Accession numbers are best presented in a separate paragraph at the end of the Materials and Methods section.

SHORT COMMUNICATIONS

A Short Communication (less than four letter printed pages) is for a concise, but independent report representing a significant contribution to Biotechnology.

Short Communication is not intended to publish preliminary results. Only if these results are of exceptional interest and are particularly topical and relevant will be considered for publication.

The required format is that of the standard scientific research paper, consisting of a title page, abstract, keywords, introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, acknowledgments and references.

It should be no more than 1500 words, and could include two figures or tables. It should not have more than 10 references. Short Communications are also sending to peer review.

Publication charges

Innovative Romanian Food Biotechnology is an Open Access Journal and the submission of manuscripts is free.