Instructions for authors

Scope

Biological Imaging provides a single interdisciplinary open access forum for important bioimaging research. The journal publishes original research articles, reviews and other article types on techniques and methods that use quantitative and computational imaging at their core and that enable discoveries and advances in biology. It covers topics including, but not limited to, microscopy, image acquisition and processing, image data mining and analysis, mathematical modelling and machine learning.

Submissions are sought on the following themes:

All imaging modalities related to photonic and electron microscopy imaging in biology, from molecular to tissue scales, including multi-modal approaches. These imaging modalities will seek to provide technically sound, quantitative answers to fundamental and applied biological questions.
Mathematical and image processing approaches of image formation, acquisition, reconstruction, processing, analysis, statistics and visualisation.
Computational imaging devices, experimental imaging and analysis protocols and novel algorithms.
Hardware devices and software tools, with experimental protocols to assist in the design, validation and testing for bioimaging approaches.
Software and hardware implementations and distributions with a wide appeal to the open-source bioimaging community.

Biological Imaging publishes papers on diverse imaging modalities and analytical techniques and thus aims to create some cross-fertilisation across the spectrum of biological imaging research. These include but are not limited to the following:

Optical imaging including brightfield microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, light-sheet microscopy, super-resolution microscopy, quantitative phase microscopy, digital holographic microscopy, lens-less imaging, ptychography and optical tomography.
Electron microscopy including transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, focussed-ion-beam electron microscopy, multimodal/correlative imaging.
Imaging based on other physical/chemical measures including traction force microscopy, atomic force microscopy, mass spectrometry imaging, near-field microscopy, imaging through scattering media.

Modalities predominantly used for macroscopic medical imaging (including computerised tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron-emission tomography (PET), ultrasonography (US)) and for which multiple publication venues exist, do not fall in the scope of the journal, unless they are associated to modalities at the microscopy level. Manuscripts reporting mainly on biological research or probe chemistry without technological or methodological innovation, do not fall within the scope of the journal.

Article types

Biological Imaging publishes the following peer-reviewed article types. Word counts are given as a guide, given that the journal is online-only.

Research Articles - a research article is an original piece of research with strong, well-supported conclusions that mark an advance in understanding and global implications (of approximately 5,000 - 10,000 words). The text should be divided into the following sections: introduction, methods, results and discussion and conclusion.

Rapid Communications – these articles contain original research that is of the highest quality and particular urgency of up to 4,000 words (not including abstract and references). These papers receive expedited peer review and expedited production to accelerate publication.

Reviews - a review article should provide a balanced overview of a given topic of approximately 10,000 - 15,000 words. We welcome descriptive reviews (e.g. on mathematical models). The text should be divided into coherent sections.

Perspectives - the length of the Perspective article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality, but generally articles should not exceed 7,000 words for the main text and should be lightly referenced. Perspectives will provide a personal view of aspects of biological imaging and possibly implications to the wider society.

Commentaries – these articles are responding to original research articles published by the journal are always welcome and readers are encouraged to submit these as soon as possible. Commentaries will be subject to review by the editor responsible for the publication of the original article, if possible. Commentaries are flexible in format but should generally be limited to 500 words, without figures.

Software Reports – these papers describe novel software and one or more applications of the software. Authors should make their code available wherever possible. These articles should not exceed 7,000 words.

Protocols – these are research papers presenting or using new or improved methods in biological imaging. They should be reported in sufficient detail to make them easily replicable. These articles should not exceed 8,000 words.

Challenges (not exceeding 6,000 approximately words) – this type of article reports on a challenge competition such as a hackathon or a competition on segmentation (for example) that has been organised by a group of scientists or within a conference, and where the authors report on the methods, performances, ranking (if applicable), data and results.

Funding open access

An article processing charge (APC) of £2045 will apply to all new submissions that go on to be accepted, with a waiver scheme for eligible countries - see the journal information page for more details on our waiver policies.

The decision whether to accept an article for publication will rest solely with the Editor-in-Chief, Executive Editors and Associate Editors, and without reference to the funding situation of the authors.

Please note: APC collection is managed by RightsLink, who will contact authors following acceptance of their article.

Copyright and licensing

Authors accepted in the journal are asked to sign a publishing agreement, which can be found on the journal information page. Articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) as standard. This means that the article is freely available to read, copy and redistribute, and can also be adapted (users can "remix, transform, and build upon" the work) for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, as long as proper attribution is given. For more information on Creative Commons licensing, please visit creativecommons.org/licenses.

Preprint policy

At any point during the submission and review process, authors are free to make their article available via a recognised preprint repository such as arXiv, bioRxiv or the Open Science Framework. This is consistent with the general Cambridge University Press policy on preprints. It is best practice to make sure that the preprint version and the version that is published after peer review ('Version of Record') are linked together. This can be achieved by:

1. Mentioning the preprint in your acknowledgments section and providing its DOI (or permanent identifier); and

2. Including preprint in the references section. Authors are also encouraged to update the preprint record with the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article.

Peer review process

Articles submitted to the journal are subject to a single-blind peer review process. All submitted papers will go first through a pre-screening review by the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editors. Articles of a high scientific and ethical standard are then assigned to an Associate Editor who will seek two or more reviews before recommending a decision. An article may be rejected without review if the Editor-in-Chief / Executive Editors determine that it is inappropriate or of insufficient quality to merit peer review.

Submission

All new submissions should be submitted online via the journal’s ScholarOne site.

Article preparation

For all submissions, please adhere to our formatting guidelines below:

Templates

Research article templates are available for download:

Cover letter

Authors are prompted to provide a short cover letter through a form in the ScholarOne system.

Article file

The article must contain the following:

Title page

The first page of the main manuscript should include:

A concise (preferably up to 12 words) but informative title, reflective of the content;
The names and institutional affiliations (including the town / city and country) for the authors, indicating with asterisk the corresponding author and their email address
Any ORCIDs of the authors

Authorship

Authorship should be based on the following principles, as outlined in the Cambridge University Press Publishing Ethics Guidelines:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
Final approval of the version to be published;
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In the process of submitting the article through the ScholarOne system, the corresponding author is prompted to provide further details about contributions to the article. People who have contributed to the article but do not meet the full criteria for authorship should be recognised in the acknowledgements section.

Our default position is that the corresponding author has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors, and we expect the corresponding author to confirm this at the beginning of the submission process.

Keywords

During submission, you will be asked to include up to five keywords (a minimum of three keywords), separated by semi colons.

Abstract

This must summarise the background, findings, and implications of the work and be no more than 250 words in length.

Impact statement

Beneath the abstract authors must provide a 200 word impact statement that summarises the significance of the research problem, so that the paper's contribution can be quickly grasped by a wider and multidisciplinary audience (industry, government, wider academia) and to aid impact, citation and dissemination.

Main text

The body of the article, which can be separated using headings such as Introduction and Conclusion and subheadings.

For all types of articles, please make sure the manuscript is presented with figures incorporated in roughly the correct place if possible, with legends. Also please submit a document with numbered lines. All these requests are made to facilitate the reviewing process.

Equations should be cited in numerical order (e.g. Equation (1)) in the text. If using Word, please note that equations must NOT be converted to picture format and the ﬁle must be saved with the option ‘make equation editable’.

Graphics and tables

Submitting your figures, illustrations, pictures and other artwork (such as multimedia and supplementary files) in an electronic format alongside the main article file helps us produce your work to the best possible standards, ensuring accuracy, clarity, and a high level of detail. For guidance on producing graphics and tables, please visit the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

References

References and citations should be formatted correctly in journal style when the article is submitted to the journal but formatting is not grounds for rejection at the submitting phase.

References in the text should be cited in numerical order in superscripted round brackets before any punctuation:

In recent years, interest in research has been growing in the vast field of engineering^(2–4), especially with the advent of ...

The references section should be in numerical order as the references appear in the manuscript. References should be cited by the author(s) surname(s), then initials and the year of publication (e.g. Smith J (2012)). References with two authors should be cited with both surnames (e.g. Smith J & Wright D (2013)). References with three or more authors should be cited with the first author followed by et al. (in italics).

1. Smith J & He J (2019) What makes science different? Int J Sci 2, 100–107.

References to written, not oral, communications may be inserted (in parentheses) in the text. Include among the references articles accepted but not yet published, or published online only (please supply Digital Object Identifier [DOI] reference, if known); designate the journal and add ‘(in press)’. For in press citations, an acceptance letter from the publisher will be required. Information from manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted should be cited in the text as ‘unpublished observations’.

The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents.

Please follow the above Vancouver reference style. Research articles should not exceed 75 references in the main text and reviews should not exceed 150 references.

Required Statements

The sections below must be included. These statements should be included at the end of the manuscript, before the References section.

a) Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advise, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the Financial Support section (see below).

b) Competing interests

Authors should include a Competing Interests Declaration in their manuscript. If authors do not include this, their submission will not proceed to peer review.

Competing Interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content of publication of an author's work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
Competing Interests do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. Authors should declare any real or perceived Competing Interests in order to be transparent about the context of their work.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the manuscript must include Competing Interest Declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a Competing Interest Declaration is as follows: “Competing Interests: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no Competing Interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing Interests: Author A and Author B declare none”.

c) Author Contributions

A short statement should be provided indicating how each author contributed to the work. For example: AB and CD conceived and designed the study. CD and EF conducted data gathering. GH performed statistical analyses. AB, EF and GH wrote the article.

d) Funding statement

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant number XXXXXXX)". Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with 'and' before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors' initials. For example, "This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the Australian Research Council (A.B., grant number GGGG), (E.F., grant number HHHH)".

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."

e) Data availability statement

See more details in our 'Research Transparency and Reproducibility' section below.

Publishing ethics

Biological Imaging considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that:

The manuscript is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work;
The manuscript has been submitted only to the journal - it is not under consideration, accepted for publication or in press elsewhere. Manuscripts may be deposited on preprint servers;
All listed authors know of and agree to the manuscript being submitted to the journal; and
The manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, fraudulent, illegal, libellous, or obscene.

The journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on research and publications ethics. All Cambridge journals adhere to a set of Ethical Standards, as laid out here. Where research involves human and/or animal experimentation, the following statements should be included (as applicable): "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008." and "The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional guides on the care and use of laboratory animals." Any other specific ethical clearance with details of the granting institution should be given with the Experimental Details.

We take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Text taken directly or closely paraphrased from earlier published work that has not been acknowledged or referenced will be considered plagiarism. Submitted manuscripts in which such text is identified will be withdrawn from the editorial process. If a concern is raised about possible plagiarism in an article submitted to or published in the journal, this will be investigated fully and dealt with in accordance with the COPE guidelines. We use iThenticate software to screen papers for unoriginal material.

Please visit the ethics guideline page for information on our ethical guidelines.

Research transparency and reproducibility

Authors must follow the journal's policy for supporting research transparency and reproducibility. Authors must make all data, materials, protocols and software available to readers without undue barriers to access.

Data availability statement

Research articles must contain sufficient information to allow others to understand, verify, and replicate findings. See the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) policy for more details.

The article must contain a Data Availability Statement explaining how data and other resources were created, from where they are available, along with information about any restrictions on the accessibility of data and other resources.

Quantitative hypothesis testing (Bayesian or frequentist) should be used throughout and code should be made available to promote reproducibility.

Supplementary material

Additional material (e.g. data sets, large tables) relevant to the article can be submitted with your manuscript for publication online, where they are made available via a link from the article. Supplementary material can take the form of a Word document, Excel file or image. The article should stand alone without these data. Supplementary material must be cited in a relevant place in the text of the article.

Please note that captions or legends should be included for all figures and tables in Supplementary material. You should number figures or tables with the prefix ‘S’, e.g. Supplementary Figure S1, Supplementary Table S1. Colour images for online publication as Supplementary material must be saved in RGB format (not CMYK).

Supplementary material is not checked, copyedited or typeset after acceptance and it is loaded onto the journal’s website exactly as supplied. You should check your Supplementary material carefully to ensure that it adheres to journal styles. Corrections cannot be made to the Supplementary material after acceptance of the manuscript. Please bear this in mind when deciding what content to include as Supplementary material.

Journal style

Authors should note the following:

S.I. units should be used throughout in text, figures and tables.
Authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in the text and they should be defined in the text at first use.
Foreign quotations and phrases should be followed by a translation.

Author language services

Cambridge recommends that authors have their manuscripts checked by an English language native speaker before submission; this will ensure that submissions are judged at peer review exclusively on academic merit. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate. Use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense.

Production - further details

For further information on this journal, please see our Production FAQs.

As part of an additional service to authors, the journal has partnered with the BioImage Archive. The BioImage Archive (BIA) stores and distributes biological images that are useful to life sciences researchers. It also provides data archiving services to the broader bioimaging database community including added-value bioimaging data resources such as EMPIAR, Cell-IDR and Tissue-IDR. Please find further information here.

Digital preservation policy

Cambridge University Press publications are deposited in the following digital archives to guarantee long-term digital preservation:

CLOCKSS (journals)
Portico (journals and books)

ORCID IDs

Biological Imaging requires that all corresponding authors identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to the journal. Joining ORCID is fast, free and you do not need to have a current affiliation. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration in key research workflows such as publication and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you’ve authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your ID or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID profile, and will save you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID profile is a neat place to record and display (if you choose) validated information about your research activities.

If you don’t already have an ID, you’ll need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to Biological Imaging. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne or via https://orcid.org/register. If you already have an ID, please use this when submitting by linking it to your ScholarOne user account. Simply log in to your account using your normal username and password. Edit your account by clicking on your name at the top right of the screen and from the dropdown menu, select 'E-Mail / Name'. Follow the instructions at the top of the screen to update your account.

For more information read this.