Authors are requested to electronically submit their papers to this journal for evaluation and submission
at https://bentham.manuscriptpoint.com/journals/cnf/
Through the submission process, this website will guide authors through each stage of the submission process. The text, tables, and artwork should be uploaded at (https://bentham.manuscriptpoint.com/journals/cnf) in electronic format by the authors. However, the authors who are unable to provide an electronic version or who are facing other difficulties must contact the editorial office by emailing at [email protected] to discuss any alternatives. Submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will unfortunately not be taken into consideration.
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.
The author's time is valuable and should not be wasted on research formatting. Free Format Submission makes it easier and faster to prepare text for submission.
When submitting to any Bentham journal, authors are not required to follow any formatting guidelines. When an article is accepted for publication, authors can submit it in the format of their choice, and Bentham will convert it into a journal-specific format for them.
If the submission is accepted for publication, Bentham will format it in accordance with the style and format of the journal.
For all online submissions, please provide soft copies ofall 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
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 a proper format.
References, figures, tables, structure
Successful electronic submission of a manuscript will be followed by a system-generated acknowledgements to the principal/corresponding author. Any queries therein should be addressed to [email protected]
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.
It is mandatory that a signed copyright letter also be submitted along with the manuscript by the author to whom correspondence is to be addressed. 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. Copyright letter can be downloaded from the journal's Web site. Download the Copyright letter.
Permission to Reuse Bentham Content
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The Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® service makes it faster and easier to secure permission from Bentham Science’s journal titles. 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 authors can't find the content they are looking for or can't get the rights they need, please contact us at [email protected]
Third-Party Permissions
Authors are responsible for managing the inclusion of third-party content as an author/editor of a work. We refer to 'third party content' as any work that authors haven't developed themselves and have copied or adapted from other sources. Text, figures, photographs, tables, screenshots, and other items may be included.
Unless the figure is in the public domain (copyright-free) or permitted for use under Creative Commons or other open licences, the author must get permission from the copyright holder(s).
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.
Articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted distribution and reproduction in any medium, as long as the work is properly credited/attributed. For more details, please visit Open Access Policy
By signing the Copyright Letter, the authors retain the rights of self-archiving (subject to certain restrictions).
Following are the important features of the self-archiving policy of Bentham Science journals:
Authors can deposit the first draft of a submitted article on their personal websites or their institution's repositories for personal use, internal institutional use, or for permitted scholarly posting only.
Authors may deposit the ACCEPTED VERSION of the peer-reviewed article on their personal websites, their institution's repository or the non-commercial repositories, PMC and arXiv, after 12 MONTHS of publication on the journal website. For personal use, internal institutional use, or for permitted scholarly posting only.
In case of (b) above, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source of
publication and a link must be inserted to the published article on the
journal's/publisher's website. 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
https://www.eurekaselect.com/openurl/content.php?genre=article&doi=
If the research is funded by NIH, Wellcome Trust or any other Open Access Mandate, authors are allowed the archiving of published versions of manuscripts in the nominated institutional repositories, 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. Archiving, under any of the above mentioned Open Access mandates, is done under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
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. This is done under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License CC-BY 4.0.
In case of any form of archiving, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source
of publication and a link must be inserted to the published article on the
journal's/publisher's website. 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
https://www.eurekaselect.com/openurl/content.php?genre=article&doi=
To ensure permanent access to our publications, Bentham Science has an agreement with Portico to have a long-term preservation of the content published in its journals.
The Journal publishes peer-reviewed full-length/mini-review articles and research articles written in English. Single topic/thematic issues may also be considered for publication
These special issues are peer-reviewed and may contain invited or uninvited review/mini-review articles. A Single Topic 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 single topic issue in an emerging topic of nutrition and food science may submit their proposal to the Editor-in-Chief a [email protected] for consideration.
For proposals to publish conference proceedings in this journal, please contact us at email: [email protected]
The length of a published comprehensive review article is from 6000-10000 words with 100 or
more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables,
Mini-reviews should be 3000- 6000 words with 75 or more references excluding figures, structures,
photographs, schemes, tables
Systematic Reviews include systematic updates on review protocols, methods, research and results
from all relevant fields for any studies and updates on already published issues. The total
number of words for a published systematic review is from 4000 to 6000 words with 100 or more
references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables
Bentham Science Publishers supports retrospective registration of systematic reviews, in a suitable registry (such as PROSPERO). The registered systematic review must include the registration number as the last line of the manuscript abstract.
Research articles should be of 4000-6000 words with 75 or more references excluding figures,
structures, photographs, schemes, tables,
Case reports should describe new observations of findings or novel/unique outcomes relevant to
the field. The total number of words for a published case report is 1500 to 2500 words with 40
or more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables
Editorials are short papers on important topics related to the journal. The total number of words in an editorial should not exceed 1000 to 1500, and it should contain only 10-15 references. An abstract is not required.
Commentaries present an analysis by scientists on different important issues related to the publications in the journal. Commentaries should contain less than 3000 words, including the abstract, main text, references, and figure legends. However, an abstract is not necessary.
A perspective provides a short overview of a research topic relevant to the field. The length of
a published perspective ranges from 1500 to 1800 words, with 20 or more references, excluding
figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables,
Industry News should provide important developments in industries related to the scope of the Journal, that could be of interest to the readers. The length of the submission should be about 1000 words, and it should ideally have 10 or more references (abstract is not required).
Patent News may present important information about recent important patents that have been granted, relevant to the scope of this journal. The length should be about 1000 words, and it should ideally have 10 or more references (abstract is not required).
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
Position papers are based on thorough research and analysis and aim to influence policy decisions, guide future research directions, or provide guidance to practitioners or stakeholders.
They are short papers on important topics related to the journal. The length of a position paper article is from 3000-4000 words with 40 or more references excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables, etc.
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.
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. Download the Template.
Manuscripts submitted for research and review articles in the journal should be divided into the following sections:
Title
Title Page
Structured Abstract
Graphical Abstract
Keywords
Text Organization
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations (if any)
Consent for Publication
Conflict of Interest
Acknowledgements
References
Appendices
Figures/Illustrations (if any)
Chemical Structures (if any)
Tables (if any)
Supportive/Supplementary Material (if any)
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 and question marks in titles. The first letter of each word should be in capital letters 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 should include paper title, author(s) full name and affiliation, corresponding author(s) names complete affiliation/address, along with phone, fax and email.
The abstract of an article should be a clear, concise and accurate summary, having no more than 250 words, and including the explicit sub-headings (as in-line or run-in headings in bold). Use of abbreviations should be avoided and the references should not be cited in the abstract.
All the original research articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses must be accompanied by a structured abstract. Ideally, each abstract should include the following sub-headings, but these may vary according to the requirements of the article.
Introduction/Objective: Summarize the objective or purpose of the research in a few sentences.
Methods: Give a brief description of the research design, methodology, and other relevant details about the conduct of the study.
Results: Outline the main conclusions or findings of the study, often with statistical data or significant findings.
Conclusion: Provide an overview of the study's key findings and any implications.
The headings can vary, but must state the purpose of the study, details of the participants, measurements, methods, main findings and conclusion.
A graphic must be included 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
Graphical Abstracts should be submitted as a separate file (must clearly mention graphical
abstract within the file) online
You can view a few examples of the Graphical Abstracts on our website.
6 to 8 keywords must be provided. Choose important and relevant keywords that researchers in your field will be searching for so that your paper will appear in a database search. The keywords should be contained in the title and they should appear several times in the article. In biomedical fields, MeSH terms are a good ‘common vocabulary’ source to draw keywords from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html.
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 Acknowledgements and Reference sections. The Review Article should mention any previous important recent & old 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.
For Research Articles the manuscript should begin with the title page and abstract followed by
the main text, which must be structured into separate sections as
For case reports, the authors should follow the CARE guidelines. The CARE checklist should be submitted as a separate file.
Meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology must be reported according to MOOSE or PRISMA guidelines.
The manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text and 10 pt Times New Roman font 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
Section headings should be numbered sequentially, left aligned and have the first letter
capitalized, starting with the introduction. Sub-section headings however, should be in
lower-case and italicized with their initials capitalized. They should be numbered as 1.1,
1.2,
The Introduction section should include the background and aims of the research in a comprehensive manner.
This section provides details of the methodology used along with information on any previous efforts with corresponding references. Any details for further modifications and research should be included. Sufficient details should be provided to the reader about the original data source in order to enable the analysis, appropriateness and verification of the results reported in the study.
It is important for the Methods Section should be sufficiently detailed in respect of the data presented, and the results produced from it. This section should include all the information and protocol gathered for the study at the time when it was being written. If the study is funded or financially supported by an organization to conduct the research, then it should be mentioned in the Methods Section. Methods must be result-oriented. The statement regarding the approval by an independent local, regional or national review committee (e.g. name of ethic committee and institutional review board) should be part of the Methods Section.
Authors who use AI tools for the production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must disclose the use of such tools in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper, stating how the AI tool was used and which tool was used.
Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including parts produced with the assistance of an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.
Bentham Science Publishers will assess whether the manner AI was used and declared is reasonable and compliant with its published principles and practices. After publication, content may be rejected or changed due to inadequate declaration or the specific circumstances of its use.
Repeated information should not be reported in the text of an article. A calculation section must include experimental data, facts and practical development from a theoretical perspective.
The important and main findings of the study should come first in the Results Section. The tables, figures and references should be given in sequence to emphasize the important information or observations related to the research. The repetition of data in tables and figures should be avoided. Results should be precise.
This should explore the significance of the results of the work, present a reproducible procedure and emphasis the importance of the article in the light of recent developments in the field. Extensive citations and discussion of published literature should be avoided.
This section of research articles should discuss the implications of the findings in the context of existing research and highlight the study's limitations. The authors should justify the sample size according to the study purpose and methods.
The Results and Discussion may be presented together under one heading of “Results and Discussion”. Alternatively, they may be presented under two separate sections (“Results” section and “Discussion” Sections). Short sub-headings may be added in each section if required.
A small paragraph summarizing the contents of the article, presenting the final outcome of the research or proposing further study on the subject, may be given at the end of the article under the Conclusion section.
The authors need to declare the funding sources of their manuscripts clearly by providing the name of the funding agency or financial support along with allotted grant/award number in round brackets (if applied), for instance, "This work was financially supported by [Name of the funding agency] (Grant number XXX)".
Similarly, if a paper does not have any specific funding source, and is part of the employment of the authors, then the name of the employer will be required. Authors will have to clearly state that the funder was involved in writing, editing, approval, or decision to publish the article.
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).
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, 10 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.
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
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.
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.
All potential conflicts of interest (competing interests) that could have a direct or indirect influence on the work must be disclosed by the authors. Even if an author does not have a conflict, disclosing affiliations and interests allows for a more comprehensive and open approach, which leads to a more accurate and objective evaluation of the work. Conflicts of interest, whether genuine or imagined, are a perspective to which the readers are entitled.
The publication of a conflict statement in the article itself, as well as the submission of the conflict disclosure form, is required for all types of papers. It is not necessarily the case that a monetary relationship with examination support or funding for counseling work is inappropriate. Even if the authors do not have any conflict of interest, they still need to provide a confirmation statement in their manuscripts, i.e., “The author(s) confirm(s) that there is no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.”
The following are some examples of potential conflicts of interest that are directly or indirectly related to the research:
Type of support/grant number
Institutional Conflicts of Interest
Funds received by the author
Funds received by the institution
Travel allowances for the research
Funds received for article preparation and reviewing
Funds for conducting review activities
Support provided for article writing assistance, for drugs, equipment, etc
Paid lectures
Pending fund or grant
Financial conflicts of interest can be personal as well as institutional. Personal conflict of interest occurs when a contributor involved in the publication process either receives an amount of money or expects to receive some financial help (including any other financial benefits such as patents or stocks, gifts or services) that may impact the work related to a specific publication. More importantly, in academic research, such financial relationships can lead to institutional conflicts of interest (COIs) because the economic interests of the institution or institutional representatives may unsuitably affect the decision-making process.
An institutional conflict of interest arises in a situation when financial interests of an institution or any institutional official (e.g., investments held by the university in a company) have the potential to unduly influence the research conducted by its employees or students, or pose an unacceptable risk to human subjects. Such conflicts usually arise in a state of affairs where a research project directly offers assistance or a benefit to an external entity via evaluation, validation, trial or test of an invention, product, drug, service or technology, and the institution holds a financial interest with the external entity. Such financial interests incorporate, but are not limited to, receipt of licensing payments or royalties from the external entity, or ownership interest with the external entity. When human subjects are involved in any research project, and the institution supports such a financial interest, the conflict of interest is speculated to be unreasonable.
In addition, interests other than monetary and any funding (non-financial interests) should be declared if they are relevant to readers. Personal relationships or conflicting interests directly or indirectly related to research, as well as professional interests or personal opinions that may impact your research, are examples of these.
Intellectual property, in basic terms, refers to any intangible property that is the result of creativity, such as patents, copyrights, etc. Similarly, this section seeks to know about copyright and patent (licensed patent, pending or issued) and any payment received for intellectual property, such as:
Patent
Licensed Patent
Issued Patent
Pending Patent
Royalties
Licensee
Remarks
All conflict of interest disclosure forms are collected by the corresponding author. It is sufficient for the corresponding author to sign the disclosure form on behalf of all authors in author collaborations when legal agreements for representation allow it. The templates of the form can be found here.
Before the reference list, the corresponding author will include a summary statement in the text of the article that reflects what is reported in the potential conflict of interest disclosure form (s). Author(s) may declare(s) names of reviewers who they think might have a potential conflict of interest; therefore, Editorial Office could avoid inviting such reviewers for an unbiased opinion.
Undisclosed conflict of interest cases before or after the publication of an article are dealt with as per the guidelines of COPE.
Undisclosed conflict of interest in a submitted article (View COPE guidelines)
Undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article (View COPE guidelines)
For more information on COIs, see the guidance from the ICMJE.
Bentham Science tries to conduct a transparent peer-review process with the help of the reviewers who do not have any conflict of interest with the authors. In this connection, reviewers who belong to the same institute or countries as authors are not invited to review manuscripts. However, it is not possible for the Editorial Office to be aware of all competing interests; therefore, it is expected from authors to submit:
List of reviewers who they think have a conflict of interest to ensure a transparent and unbiased review process.
The Editorial Office expects reviewers:
Not to accept manuscript review requests if they have any potential conflict of interest and inform the Editorial Office accordingly.
To decline review requests if they have recently published or submitted an article with any of the authors listed in the manuscript.
To inform the Editorial Office if they have any personal relationship with the authors or work in the same institutes as of authors, which could affect the review transparency.
To abstain from reviewing and informing the Editorial Office/Editor-in-Chief/Handling Editors about any scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism, conflict of interest, or any other unethical behavior related to the manuscript, which they found while reviewing it.
During the submission of review comments, reviewers are asked to reconfirm that they do not have any conflict of interest related to the article. After confirming the below statement, they can submit their comments.
“I hereby confirm that I don’t have any conflict of interest related to the manuscript.”
If, however, there are still any remaining interests, then reviewers must mention those in the ‘Confidential’ section of the review form.
Reviewers are not encouraged to contact authors directly regarding any of their conflicts of interest. Peer reviewers should follow journals’ policies in situations they consider to represent a conflict to reviewing.
If reviewers intentionally undisclosed any conflict of interest, then they will be blacklisted for any future peer reviewing activity of the journal.
The Editorial Office always ensures that an author, if added after peer review activity of a manuscript, is not part of the reviewers’ list who have conducted a peer review of the same manuscript.
Editors must not review submitted manuscripts if they have any personal, professional or financial involvement/conflict of interest with the authors of the manuscript. Every participant involved in the peer review process, including editorial board members, reviewers, and editors, must declare any potential conflicts of interest to ensure a transparent and unbiased review activity.
Editors-in-Chief or Editors who are responsible for the initial and final decision should recuse themselves to review or take decisions on any manuscript that is written by authors affiliated to the same institute as of editor, or if they have been a family member, competitor, collaborator, or have published any manuscript in last 3 years with the authors associated with the manuscript. They can however nominate someone else on the Board who could provide a neutral opinion on the manuscript.
The Editorial office recommends editors to follow COPE and WAME guidelines to process such manuscripts which involves their personal relationship.
The initial and final decision on the manuscripts submitted by an Editor/Editor-in-Chief will be taken by any other member of the Board. The Editorial Office will identify members who do not have any potential conflict of interest with the Editor or Editor-in-Chief.
Any research assistants or other individuals who assisted with the research but are not listed as authors, such as those who carried out the literature review, produced, computerized, and analyzed the data, or helped with the language, writing, or proofreading of the article, or offered any comments or suggestions, should be acknowledged. Briefly, everyone who has contributed significantly to the improvement of the paper should be acknowledged. It is recommended to mention the "Declared None" if there is no acknowledgement for the study.
Guest or honorary authorship based solely on position (e.g. research supervisor, departmental head) is discouraged.
The specific requirements for authorship have been defined by the International Committee of Medical
Journal Editors (ICMJE; www.icmje.org). Examples of authors'
contributions are: 'designed research/study', 'performed research/study', 'contributed important
reagents', 'collected data', 'analyzed data', 'wrote paper'
All clinical investigations should be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki principles. For all manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human participants, formal review and approval by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee are required.
Compliance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors www.icmje.org) is recommended, in accordance with the patient’s consent for research or participation in a study as per the applicable laws and regulations regarding the privacy and/or security of personal information, including, but not limited to, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA") and other U.S. federal and state laws relating to confidentiality and security of personally distinguishable evidence, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 and member state implementing legislation, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, India's Information Technology Act and related Privacy Rules, (together "Data Protection and Privacy Laws").
It is the responsibility of the author to ensure that:
Patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers are not mentioned anywhere in the manuscript (including figures).
Authors are responsible for obtaining the patient consent-to-disclose forms for all recognizable patients in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in the Journal, in derivative works, or on the journal’s website and for providing the manuscript to the recognizable patient for review before submission.
The consent-to-disclose form should indicate specific use (publication in the medical literature in print and online, with the understanding that patients and the public will have access) of the patient's information and any images in figures or videos, and must contain the patient's signature or that of a legal guardian along with a statement that the patient or legal guardian has been offered the opportunity to review the identifying materials and the accompanying manuscript.
If the manuscript has an individuals’ data, such as personal details, audio-video material,
A specific declaration of such approval and consent-to-disclose form must be made in the copyright letter and in a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the article especially in the case of human studies where inclusion of a statement regarding obtaining the written informed consent from each subject or subject's guardian is a must. The original should be retained by the guarantor or the corresponding author. Editors may request to provide the original forms by fax or email.
Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study. The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned requirements. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements.
Anonymous images, that do not identify the individual directly or indirectly, such as through any identifying marks or text, do not require formal consent, for example, X-rays, ultrasound images, pathology slides or laparoscopic images.
In case consent is not obtained, concealing the identity through eye bars or blurring the face would not be acceptable.
For research involving animals, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the standards set forth in the eighth edition of “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” (grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals_prepub.pdf published by the National Academy of Sciences, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.).
Research work on animals should be carried out in accordance with the NC3Rs ARRIVE Guidelines. For
Authors should clearly state the name of the approval committee, highlighting that legal and ethical approvals were obtained prior to initiation of the research work carried out on animals, and that the experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations stated below.
US authors should cite compliance with the US National Research Council's "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals"
The US Public Health Service's "Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" and "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals"
UK authors should conform to UK legislation under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 Amendment Regulations (SI 2012/3039).
European authors outside the UK should conform to Directive 2010/63/EU.
Research on animals should adhere to ethical guidelines of the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) ethical guidelines.
The manuscript should clearly include a declaration of compliance with the relevant
guidelines (
If a study is exempted from ethics approval, authors must indicate the reasons for exemption in the ethical statement.
Following is an example of Ethical Statements:
"This study involving animal subjects is exempted from ethics approval for [specific reasons]. The exemption was evaluated and authorized by [Full name of ethics committee], ensuring adherence to ethical standards”.
Client-owned animals (non-commercially available animals such as pets or livestock) should be studied exercising best practices in veterinary care. Authors must confirm that the owner(s) (or their legal representatives) have provided written consent for this purpose.
Following is an example of Ethical Statements:
"The animal study was evaluated and authorized by [Full name of the ethics committee]. The owners provided written informed consent for their animals' involvement in this study, ensuring ethical treatment and compliance with standards."
Studies involving animals must comply with internationally accepted standards and adhere to the 3Rs principles (Replace, Reduce, Refine).
- Replace: Whenever possible, replace animals with alternatives.
- Reduce: Reducing the number of animals used and
- Refine: Refining experimental settings can reduce animal damage.
Authors are encouraged to follow the ARRIVE guidelines (Reporting in Vivo Experiments) for reporting experiments involving live animals.
An example of Ethical Statements:
"This study adheres to internationally accepted standards for animal research, following the 3Rs principle. The ARRIVE guidelines were employed for reporting experiments involving live animals, promoting ethical research practices."
Studies on euthanasia, including chloral hydrate, ether, and chloroform overdose, are severely discouraged. Authors should include an in-depth description of any anesthetic, surgical, or euthanasia procedures conducted throughout the study.
If the experimental details explained in the study violate the standard animal research procedure, editors may seek extra documentation, such as approval forms and relevant literature citations.
All experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), should comply with international guidelines. The manuscript should include a declaration of compliance of field studies with relevant guidelines and/or relevant permissions or licenses obtained by the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Any unusual risks associated with the use of any chemicals, procedures, or equipment used in the work must be explicitly stated by the author in the manuscript, preferably in both the materials and methods section and the declaration section. For more information, visit The World Medical Association (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/public-health/chemicals)
We strive to promote gender and sex equity in research and adhere to the guidelines of Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) to ensure inclusivity and rigor of the work. All authors submitting research papers are required to follow the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines. These guidelines are intended to encourage the inclusion of sex and gender considerations in research in order to improve the rigor and relevance of our publications.
The SAGER guidelines for reporting sex and gender information in methodology or study design, data analysis, results, and interpretation of findings are strongly encouraged. Authors of review articles are advised to address the methods used for selecting, locating, extracting, and synthesizing data; systematic reviews are required to do so.
Bentham Science expects all contributors to respect values of justice, benevolence, and autonomy when conducting research. We understand that certain situations such as medical emergencies or humanitarian crises may differ from non-emergency scenarios. Bentham Science recommends that research efforts should not hurt human subjects/respondents or the researchers, and should be conducted with sufficient scientific rigor as permissible in these situations, respectively. Care should be taken to address potential problems faced by persons who may be victims of disasters or involved in a medical emergency. These are vulnerable individuals and their privacy and dignity should be respected. Researchers should make note of this in their research and identify potential issues in their work that may arise because of such situations. Research directed in emergency circumstances should be to the greatest advantage of survivors involved in the research and with the goal of minimizing any future casualties. For guidance, the essential requirements of research in emergency situation are the preservation of human life, wellbeing and security, along with the rights to protection, privacy and confidentiality of subjects.
Unethical behavior and misconduct may be pointed out by anyone to the Editor and Publisher with sufficient evidences. The Editor, in consultation with the Publisher, will initiate investigation against this Unethical misconduct, complete the procedure till an unbiased decision is reached, and maintain confidentiality throughout the process of the investigation. The Author should be given the opportunity to reply to all minor or major accusations.
In case of serious breaches, the employer may be informed where appropriate, by the Editor/Publisher, after reviewing all available information and evidences or after seeking help from experts in that field.
Author(s) and Reviewers must be informed in case of misinterpretation or mishandling of International Acceptable Standards
A strict notice should be sent to the author and reviewer to avoid future unethical misconduct
An Editorial on the reported misconduct should be published or official notice of unethical behavior should be posted on the website
Official letter about this misconduct should be issued to the Head of Departments, Funding Agencies of the accused author and the reviewer, as well as Abstracting & Indexing Agencies.
Where required, retraction and withdrawal of publication may be undertaken from the Publisher’s journal in discussion with the Head of the Department of the author or reviewer, and other higher authorities should be informed
The Publisher may impose restrictions for some period on future publications from the accused author in the journals
If the manuscript has an individuals’ data, such as personal detail, audio-video material
All such case reports should be followed by a proper consent prior to publishing.
A specific declaration of such approval must be made in the copyright letter and in a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the Methods section especially in the case of human studies where inclusion of a statement regarding obtaining the written informed consent from each subject or subject's guardian is a must. The original should be retained by the guarantor or corresponding author. Editors may request to provide the original forms by fax or email.
Post-publication discussions are well-timed and engaging scientific remarks and justifications on research articles published in "Current Nutrition & Food Science". These remarks must be based on the information concurrent with the original study and not on the scientific advancements being made subsequently.
Manuscript Preparation, Submission & Editorial Process:
- Post-publication discussion should commence with a short paragraph that outlines the summary of the article.
- Authors are advised to avoid using inciting tone in the comments and keep the message clear and concise.
- The main text should not exceed 1200 words with up to 15 references and may include one or two figures and/or tables.
- References should be submitted in the ACS or Vancouver style.
- The correspondents are recommended to contact the original authors first prior to submitting their comments to the journal as this may resolve the issues that may have arisen due to some misunderstanding.
- The correspondence that has been done with the authors should also be submitted as an attachment with the manuscript.
Any queries therein should be addressed to [email protected]
References should be submitted preferably in the ACS or Vancouver style. All references must be complete and accurate. The reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.
The references should be relevant to the study and should refer to the original research sources. Self-citation and self-interest should be avoided by the authors, editors, and peer-reviewers.
See below few examples of references listed in the ACS and Vancouver Style:
In ACS style, all references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. Superscript in the in-text citations and reference section should be avoided.
Different reference formats have different rules for citation. See below for some common format examples.
The minimum required information for a journal article reference is author, abbreviated journal
title, year, publication, volume number, and initial page of cited article, though complete
pagination is possible. Journal abbreviation and volume are
Bard, M.; Woods, R.A.; Bartón, D.H.; Corrie, J.E.; Widdowson, D.A. Sterol mutants of
Zhang, W.; Brombosz, S.M.; Mendoza, J.L.; Moore, J.S. A high-yield, one-step synthesis of
o-phenylene ethynylene cyclic trimer
Crabtree, R.H.
Wheeler, D.M.S.; Wheeler, M.M. D. Stereoselective Syntheses of Doxorubicin and Related
Compounds In:
Jakeman, D.L.; Withers, S.G.E. In:
National Library of Medicine. Specialized Information Services: Toxicology and
Environmental Health. sis.nlm.nih.gov/Tox/ToxMain.html
(Accessed May 23,
Hoch, J.A.; Huang, S. Screening methods for the identification of novel antibiotics. U.S. Patent 6,043,045, March 28, 2000.
Mackel, H.
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 authors must be cited and there should be no use of the phrase
Date of access should be provided for online citations.
Punctuation should be properly applied as mentioned in the examples given above.
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.
In Vancouver style, all references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. Punctuation should be properly applied as mentioned in the examples given above.
Different reference formats have different rules for citation. See below for some common format examples.
The required information for a journal article is author, abbreviated journal title, year,
publication, volume number, and initial page of cited article, though complete pagination is
possible. It is necessary to list all authors if the total number of author is six or less and
for more than six authors use three authors and then et al (the term "
Al-Habian A, Harikumar PE, Stocker CJ, Langlands K, Selway JL. Histochemical and immunohistochemical evaluation of mouse skin histology: comparison of fixation with neutral buffered formalin and alcoholic formalin. J Histotechnol 2014; 37(4): 115-24.
Guilbert TW, Morgan WJ, Zeiger RS, Mauger DT, Boehmer SJ, Szefler SJ, et al. Long-term inhaled corticosteroids in preschool children at high risk for asthma. N Engl J Med. 2006 May 11;354(19):1985-1997.
Blaxter PS, Farnsworth TP. Social health and class inequalities. In: Carter C, Peel JR, Eds. Equalities and inequalities in health. 2nd ed. London: Academic Press 1976; pp. 165-78.
Phillips SJ, Whisnant JP. Hypertension and stroke. In: Laragh JH, Brenner BM, Eds. Hypertension: pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management. 2nd ed. New York: Raven Press 1995; pp. 465-78.
Larsen CE, Trip R, Johnson CR. Methods for procedures related to the electrophysiology of the heart. US Patent 5529067, 1995.
Kimura J, Shibasaki H, Eds. Recent advances in clinical neurophysiology. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of EMG and Clinical Neurophysiology; 1995 Oct 15-19; Kyoto, Japan. Amsterdam: Elsevier 1996.
Borkowski MM. Infant sleep and feeding: a telephone survey of Hispanic Americans. PhD dissertation. Mount Pleasant (MI): Central Michigan University 2002.
Aylin P, Bottle A, Jarman B, Elliott, P. Paediatric cardiac surgical mortality in England after Bristol: descriptive analysis of hospital episode statistics 1991-2002. BMJ [serial on the Internet]. 2004 Oct 9; [cited: 15 October 2004]; 329: [about 10 screens]. Available from: sis.nlm.nih.gov/Tox/ToxMain.html
Frangioni G, Bianchi S, Fuzzi G, Borgioli G. Dynamics of hepatic melanogenesis in newts in recovery phase from hypoxia. Open Zoo J 2009; 2: 1-7. Available from: https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOZJ-2-1 [cited: 26th Jan 2009]
Abood S. Quality improvement initiative in nursing homes: the ANA acts in an advisory role. Am J Nurs [serial on the Internet]. June 2002 [cited: 12th Aug 2002]; 102(6): [about 3 p.]. Available from: www.nursingworld.org/AJN/2002/june/Wawatch.htm.
Some important points to remember
Date of access should be provided for online citations.
Avoid using superscript in the in-text citations and reference section.
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.
The source of data and materials should be mentioned in the manuscript, in support of the findings. Sharing research data is integral to its transparency and reproducibility. Data sharing involves the citation and availability of data that support the findings of the research.
Bentham Science encourages authors to share the source of data and materials in the manuscript, in support of the findings.
The four types of research data policies are mentioned below.
Wherever appropriate and possible, the journal encourages authors to publish data to support their research findings in a public repository. Any datasets mentioned in the article that are available in external repositories should be cited.
How to Cite the Data?
Whether the data was developed by the author(s) or researcher(s), all publicly available data referenced in the preparation of an article should be cited in the text and reference list. The references relating to the data availability should be presented in the following format:
Example: Name of author(s), the title of data set, data repository, document version (e.g., most recent updated version), Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and Bentham Science reference style should be included in data citations.
When authors submit a paper to a journal, the authors agree that the data provided in the publication, including the relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher who wants to use these for non-commercial reasons without jeopardising participant anonymity.
Data availability declarations are required under Bentham Science research data policy types.
The statement relating to the data availability should be presented in the following format under a separate section for ‘Availability of Data and Materials’ in the manuscript:
"The data supporting the findings of the article is available in the [repository name] at [URL], reference number [reference number]”.
Authors can add or change the statement(s) above, to fit their work the best. Depending on the nature of the research, several assertions may need to be merged.
All datasets on which the paper's conclusions are based must be made accessible to reviewers and readers, according to the journal's rules. Prior to peer review, authors must either deposit their datasets in publicly accessible repositories or provide them as supplementary materials with their submission. For further details, please visit complete guidelines at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html
Authors may provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data. if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
The Authors are encouraged to use industry-recognized reporting guidelines for biomedical and biological research, if applicable, to explain that all requirements for reporting have been adopted.
All authors must strictly follow the reporting guidelines below for preparing the study for publication.
CONSORT: All randomized clinical trials must include a flow diagram and authors should provide a completed randomized trial checklist (see CONSORT Flow Diagram and Checklist; www.consort-statement.org) and a trial protocol. For further details, please visit complete guidelines at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html
STARD and TRIPOD: Studies of diagnostic accuracy must be reported according to STARD guidelines; (www.stard-statement.org) and TRIPOD guidelines; (www.tripod-statement.org)
STROBE: Observational studies (cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional designs) must be reported according to the STROBE statement, and should be submitted with their protocols; (www.strobe-statement.org).
CARE: Case report must be reported according to CARE guidelines; (www.care-statement.org)
COREQ: Qualitative research must be reported according to COREQ guidelines; (academic.oup.com/intqhc/article/19/6/349/1791966)
CHEERS: Economic evaluations must be reported according to CHEERS guidelines; (www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1049)
STREGA: Genetic association studies must be reported according to STREGA guidelines; (www.medicine.uottawa.ca)
PRISMA: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses must be reported according to PRISMA guidelines; (www.prisma-statement.org)
MOOSE: Meta-analyses of observational studies in epidemiology must be reported according to MOOSE guideline (http://www.ijo.in/documents/14MOOSE_SS.pdf)
EQUATOR: To find the reporting guidelines see (www.equator-network.org)
All authors must strictly follow the guidelines below for preparing illustrations for publication in
The authors are expected to submit good quality figure(s) in PDF, PPT, MS Word, TIFF or JPEG versions, which, if required, should be improved yourself or by professional graphic designers of your organization/country. You may even consider approaching our contracted service provider Eureka Science for Graphics Enhancement Services.
The Graphics Designing team at Eureka Science can assist in improving the quality of your images at affordable rates. Eureka Science has contracted special rates with us of US $155 for the improvement of up to five figures, with any additional figures being charged at US $25 each.
The quality of Graphic Enhancement Services offered by Eureka Science can be viewed at http://www.eureka-science.com/images/Binder1.pdf, along with valuable feedback on their services at http://www.eureka-science.com/testimonials.php. You may contact Eureka Science at [email protected]
Illustrations must be provided according to the following guideline:
Illustrations should be 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.
All the numbers, symbols and letters in figures should be consistent and clear throughout and large enough to remain readable when the size is reduced for publication.
It must be ensured to cite each figure in the text in sequence.
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.
Illustrations may be submitted in the following file formats:
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:
Graphics embedded in word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document.
Optimized files optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG) because of the low resolution.
Files with too low a resolution.
Graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.
Requirement
Width = 8.5 inches (In-between the required size)
Height = 11 inches (In-between the required size)
Pixels/Inches = 300 (minimum dpi)
All figures should be in vector scale (except half tone, photograph.)
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.
The cost for color figures/plates/illustrations is
Color figures should be supplied in CMYK and not RGB colors.
Chemical structures must be prepared in ChemDraw/CDX and provided as separate file.
[As according to the ACS style sheet]
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)
Font
Times New Roman
Size
10 pt
Units
points
Tolerances
3 pixels
Paper
US letter
Scale
100%
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
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.
It is adequate to present data in Tables to avoid unnecessary repetition and reduce the length of the text.
The citation of each table in the text must be ensured.
Symbols and nonstandard abbreviations should be explained in the end of the text.
All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the table and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section.
Bentham Science Publishers requires that all individuals listed as authors must have made a substantial contribution to the design, performance, analysis, or reporting of the work. The role of authors is judged on the basis of ICMJE and COPE guidelines.
All contributing authors are required to sign a copyright letter, mentioning complete details, including full name, affiliation, email address, ORCID ID and their role in the article. After successful electronic submission of a manuscript, a system-generated acknowledgements will be sent to all authors on their provided email addresses.
The Corresponding Author must provide a final list of authors at the time of submission, ensuring the correct sequence of the names of authors, which will not be considered for any addition, deletion or rearrangement after final submission of the manuscript. The email address of the principal author should be provided with an asterisk. However, the complete address, business telephone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail address of the corresponding author must be stated to receive correspondence and galley proofs. Bentham Science Publishers recommends that all contributors regularly update their profiles on SCOPUS/ORCID and other databases.
The corresponding author must have the approval of all other listed authors for the submission and publication of all versions of the manuscript.
Authors are strongly recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration. Alternatively, they can acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process. For more information about ORCID IDs, visit here.
At the time of initial submission, the finalized list of authors in the correct sequence should be provided, which will not be changed once the publication process starts.
In exceptional cases, requests for the addition/deletion of an author may be considered by the publisher subject to a) written approval from all co-authors and b) a strong justification (which may or may not be accepted by the Publisher).
Here is some advice from COPE on authorship issues. Bentham strives to follow these guidelines.
Advice on how to spot authorship problems
Corresponding author requests addition of extra author before publication
Corresponding author requests removal of the author before publication
Bentham Science Publishers recognizes that authors use a variety of tools for preparing articles related to their scientific works, ranging from simple ones to very sophisticated ones.
According to the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines, "AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements".
The pertinence of such tools may vary and evolve with public opinion, due to which the use of AI-powered language tools has led to a significant debate. These tools may generate useful results, but they can also lead to errors or misleading results; therefore, it is important to know which tools were used for evaluating and interpreting a particular scientific work.
Considering the above we require that:
- The authors to report any significant use of such tools in their works, such as instruments and software along with text-to-text generative AI consistent with subject standards for methodology.
- All co-authors should sign a declaration that they take full responsibility for all of its contents, regardless of how the contents were generated. Inappropriate language, plagiarized and biased contents, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content generated by AI language tools and the relevant results reported in scientific works are the full and shared responsibility of all the authors, including co-authors.
- AI language tools should not be listed as an author; instead, authors should follow clause (1) above.
Activities such as the acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group or general administrative support, writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading alone do not qualify any contributor for authorship. Such contributors may be acknowledged individually or together as a group in the acknowledgement section. Further details for writing acknowledgements are available here. Persons not meeting authorship criteria can be acknowledged in the acknowledgement section of the article rather than being enlisted as authors.
All contributing authors should contribute substantially to the article and sign the copyright letter. Bentham Science Publishers discourages authorship based solely on position (e.g., a research supervisor or a departmental head). We use COPE guidelines for identifying any suspected ghost, guest or gift authorship.
Authors should seek professional assistance for the correction of grammatical, scientific, and typographical errors before submission of the revised version of the article for publication.
You may use the professional editing services of our nominated English Language editing organizations TopEdit or Eureka Science.
Please note that we accept a language certificate, only from one of the above two language editing organizations.
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
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.
For research articles, reviews, mini-reviews and systematic reviews the publication charges are US $490.
For thematic issues, authors will be entitled to a 20% discount on the listed page charges.
Bentham Science offers a 50% discount off all page charges for manuscripts of all corresponding authors who reside in countries which are categorized as low-income economies by the World Bank. To see if you qualify to the discount, please refer to the complete list of these countries click here
Publication Charges only become due after an article has been both reviewed and accepted for publication. Therefore, submission of an article is not a guarantee that it will be published. The final decision on the manuscript is made by the Editor-in-Chief on the basis of at least two independent peer-review reports.
Other service fees for activities such as Quick Track Services, Open Access Plus, Animated Abstracts, Color Figure, Figure Improvement or Language Editing are optional and are only charged as and when these services are availed.
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 page charges.
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 12 weeks, subject to its acceptance by the referees and modification (if any) by the authors within one week.
The author will be initially charged a small fee on receipt of the agreement form for Quick Track publication to partially cover the initial costs incurred for expedited processing of the submitted manuscript. Later, the full Quick Track publication fee (US $3280 per article charges) will be payable in advance, after acceptance of the manuscript, before online publication of the article. However, if the article is rejected at the peer-review stage, then the US $3280 per article charges will not be charged.
Please note that whether the author opts for the QUICK TRACK facility or not, standard reviewing practices will be followed, which will not in any way affect the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript by the reviewers.
Authors who have availed QUICK TRACK services in a BSP journal will be entitled for an exclusive 30% discount if they again wish to avail the same services in any Bentham journal.
For more information please contact the Editorial Office by e-mail at [email protected].
Bentham Science offers a 50% discount off the Quick Track Publication Fee for manuscripts of all corresponding authors who reside in countries which are categorized as low-income economies by the World Bank. To see if you qualify to the discount, please refer to the complete list of these countries click here.
Bentham Science offers three major services related to its publications:
- Subscription services (to subscribers, institutes, libraries, customers, etc.): Involving access to published content based on certain charges for corporates, academic institutes, and individuals.
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- Editorial/Author Post-publication Promotional Services (to authors, institutions and organizations): Open Access Plus, Animated Abstracts, Sharing PDF on KUDOS, reprints, etc.
Since these services are optional in nature and are offered for specific services rendered, hence refunds are not allowed against the availed and charged services, except under special cases.
Bentham Science also offers authors the option of “Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access)”
for publishing their articles. The article processing charges are
This paid service allows authors to disseminate their work to a much wider audience in compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License(CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). Under this license, authors are asked to indicate whether they wish to pay for the service in order to make their article more widely available on an “Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access)” basis. Where an author does not opt-in for this paid service, the article will be published under the standard subscription-based mode.
Authors who select the “Quick Track” publication option and also wish to have their article made
available on an “Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access)” basis will be entitled to a
For more information please contact us at e-mail: [email protected]
Bentham Science offers a 50% discount off the Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access) Fee for manuscripts of all corresponding authors who reside in countries which are categorized as low-income economies by the World Bank. To see if you qualify to the discount, please refer to the complete list of these countries click here.
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 print and online subscription of the journal at 50% off the normal subscription rate by contacting the subscription department at e-mail: [email protected].
Extend the scope and visibility of your research by creating an animated abstract. Bentham Science has collaborated with Focus Medica, one of the world’s largest publishers of expert animated atlases and videos in medicine and science.
An animated abstract will help summarise the essential discoveries/ key findings of your published research or review article. Each professionally produced full-coloured animated abstract in video format (length 3-5 minutes) is accompanied by an English spoken or foreign language commentary. The animated abstract will be published online along with the published article.
The payment for an animated abstract will be
Authors who opt for the “Animated Abstract” option and also wish to have their article made available on an “Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access)” basis will be entitled to a 50% discount only on the Animated Abstract fee and, in addition, pay the normal Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access) fee.
Authors will be asked whether they wish to opt-in for this paid animated abstract service, and if not, the article will be published as normal. Animated abstracts are available as open access (free viewing) for maximum visibility and awareness to readers at anytime, anywhere. The animated abstracts are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
For a sample of an animated abstract please access here https://www.benthamscience.com/pages/animated-abstract-video
Bentham Science offers discounts to those corresponding authors who are based in low-income countries*.
The authors who wish to avail this offer should request for a discount at the time of submission of their manuscripts to Bentham Science.
Bentham Science offers 50% discount on the Open Access Plus (Gold Open Access) Fee, Quick Track Fee and Article Processing Charges (APC) for manuscripts of the corresponding authors based in countries categorized as low-income economies by World Bank (list given below).
Publication Charges only become due after an article has been both reviewed and accepted for publication. Therefore, submission of an article is not a guarantee that it will be published. The final decision on the manuscript is made by the Editor-in-Chief on the basis of at least two independent peer-review reports.
Other service fees for activities such as Quick Track Services, Open Access Plus, Animated Abstracts, Color Figure, Figure Improvement or Language Editing are optional and are only charged as and when these services are availed.
For any query or suggestion, please contact us on [email protected].
List of Countries*- Afghanistan
- Benin
- Burundi
- Central African Republic
- Congo, Rep.
- Eritrea
- Georgia
- Guinea-Bissau
- Iraq
- Kosovo
- Liberia
- Marshall Islands
- Mongolia
- Nepal
- Paraguay
- Sierra Leone
- Sudan
- Tajikistan
- Tonga
- Yemen, Rep.
- Albania
- Bhutan
- Cambodia
- Chad
- Côte d'Ivoire
- Ethiopia
All papers submitted to Bentham Science for publication are immediately subjected to preliminary editorial scrutiny by the Editorial Staff and Editor-in-Chief in connection with their suitability. The Editor-in-Chief determines if the manuscript:
(a) falls within the scope of the journal and
(b) meets the editorial criteria of Bentham Science Publishers in terms of originality and quality.
Manuscripts that appear to be suitable are then subjected to double-blind peer review by, usually two to three, neutral eminent experts. The services of eminent international experts are sought through invitations to conduct the peer review of a submitted manuscript, keeping in view the scope of the manuscript and the expertise of the reviewers. The identities of both the reviewer and author are kept undisclosed to each other, ensuring anonymity and maintaining confidentiality throughout the entire review procedure. The anonymity of reviewers ensures an objective and unbiased assessment of the manuscript by the reviewers.
Before sending the manuscripts to reviewers, Bentham Science seeks consent from potential reviewers about their availability and willingness to review. Correspondence between the editorial office of the journal and the reviewers is kept confidential. The reviewers are expected to provide their reports in a timely fashion since a prompt review leads to the timely publication of a manuscript which is beneficial not only to the authors but to the scientific community as well.
The editorial process and peer-review workflow for each journal are taken care of by a team of Senior Editors, Editorial Board Members (EBMs) and dedicated Journal managers who have the required expertise in their specific fields.
Bentham Science Publishers carries out independent reviews of all articles. The reviewers are selected according to their expertise, from our, regularly updated, referee database.
On the basis of reviewer comments, the Editors may recommend acceptance, revision or rejection of a manuscript.
After a review of the manuscript by at least two or three independent experts, in addition to the views of the Editor, the decision is relayed to the authors, which may be categorized as:
Requires minor changes
Requires major changes
Rejected with no resubmission
If an article receives two contradictory reports, the Editor-in-Chief retains the right to request additional comments and the discretion to make the final decision without waiting for additional reports, taking into consideration the content and conclusions presented in all reports. This proactive approach ensures promptness in conveying the Editor's decision, thereby facilitating swift communication with the author.
Bentham Science requests not to have the manuscripts peer-reviewed by those experts who may have competing interest with the author(s) of a submitted manuscript. It is not possible for Editors to be aware of all competing interests; it is therefore expected that the reviewers would inform the Editor-in-Chief/Handling Editor if they notice any potential competing interest during the course of review of a manuscript. Moreover, the reviewers are expected to inform the Editors or editorial office of the journal if they have a conflict of interest in carrying out the review of a manuscript submitted by any author/contributor of the manuscript.
The authors are usually requested to resubmit the revised paper within 15 days and it will then be returned to the reviewers for further evaluation. The publishers normally allow one round of revision and, in exceptional cases, a second round of revision may be allowed. If further revision is needed, then the manuscript is rejected and the author is requested to resubmit the manuscript for fresh processing.
The final decision regarding acceptance or rejection is that of the Editor-in-Chief, depending on the quality of the revision and his assessment of the quality of the manuscript. In rare cases, manuscripts recommended for publication by the referees may be rejected in the final assessment by the Editor-in-Chief.
The time frame for revision of any article may vary from one to four weeks, depending on the nature of the revision required (minor or major). However, authors who need extra time for revision should consult the Editor-in-Chief/Handling Editor with valid reasons and the submission date of the revised manuscript may be extended if the request is genuine.
After the successful completion of the review and acceptance of the article, the articles are typeset and proofs are dispatched to authors for any corrections prior to final publication.
Plagiarism means copying or paraphrasing another writer's content, be it a text, a result or an observation, and stating it as one's own, without citing a reference to the original source. Therefore, authors should acknowledge and cite references to the work of other scientists in their manuscripts. The author should ensure that all the sources are authentic and that there is no discrepancy in the content of the manuscript.
Bentham Science is vigilant in checking and identifying the primary sources of the data within the content by using the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similarity of text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software verifies the content against a database of periodicals, materials on the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. The software generates a similarity report in percentage that matches the article in process and the published material. This similarity is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher's Editorial Policies. The generated report comprises the overall percentage of the content reused.
The study of an author has to be original. If there are credible sources of the content referred to in the manuscript, the author needs to cite all of them. Authors are advised to use iThenticate before submitting a manuscript to ensure that there are no instances of plagiarism. Authors are required to provide proper consent from the individuals and contributions of other authors should be acknowledged.
Bentham Science has different editorial policies for authors who have more than one publication. Following those policies, the authors need to specify the sources of the submission in their recent work. For further details, please visit the following link of Editorial Policies for Concurrent Publication/Simultaneous Submission at https://benthamscience.com/pages/editorial-policies-main
Bentham Science strictly follows COPE guidelines to detect plagiarism. For clearer insight, authors may refer to the flowcharts provided by COPE by clicking here or visiting the COPE website.
To ensure the scholarly integrity of every article, Bentham Science will publish post-publication notices. The authors of the published articles, or those who have submitted the manuscripts with false information, or fabricated the supporting data or images, will be liable for sanctions, and their papers will be retracted. For further details, please visit complete guidelines at: https://www.benthamscience.com/fabricating-stating-false-information
Bentham Science is a publishing partner of Kudos. All authors who publish in this journal will
receive an
invitation to join the Kudos platform, an entirely free service for authors. Kudos enables authors
to
help broaden their audience and readers, increase their professional profile and reputation, and
establish an impact for their publications. The website link is
Kudos provides a free platform to researchers to have their publications accessible, read and cited across multiple networks and channels available to researchers for the dissemination of their work. It takes on average 15 minutes and leads to 23% higher growth in full-text downloads.
Authors are encouraged to explain their work in clear English and to attract researchers of the relevant communities, share a trackable link that you can email to your existing network of contacts, or share on social media and academic websites, and track how well the articles are performing through the summary of views, downloads, citations, and altmetrics on the Kudos dashboard.
Authors may also use the new shareable PDF (S-PDF) service. The S-PDF provides researchers with the means to write and share a high-level overview for each of their publications. Kudos thereby provides researchers, and their publishers and institutions, with a rich understanding of which channels and activities are most effective for broadening the reach and impact of published science.
Bentham Science Publishers is 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
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, 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.
Generally, the editorial decisions are not reverted. However, authors who think that their manuscript was rejected due to a misunderstanding or mistake may seek an explanation for the decision. Appeals must give sound reasoning and compelling evidence against the criticism raised in the rejection letter. A difference of opinion as to the interest, novelty, or suitability of the manuscript for the journal will not be considered as an appeal. The EIC and other relevant editors will consider the appeal and the decision thereafter taken by the journal will be deemed final. Acceptance of the manuscript is not guaranteed even if the journal agrees to reconsider the manuscript, and the reconsideration process may involve previous or new reviewers or editors and substantive revision.
Authors who wish to make a complaint should refer them to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal concerned. Complaints to the Publisher may be emailed to [email protected]
