Submissions

Author Guidelines

Publication of research articles by JBCS is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by our external expert editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by three experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Reviewers will also be asked to indicate how interesting and significant the research is. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

JBCS operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are not aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, and the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the submitted manuscripts, the authors need to ensure that the quality of the English language is sufficient to allow the text to be understood. If the authors need help with writing in English, they should consider hiring specialized services to translate and/or review the manuscript to be submitted.

Authors must either use the "Comments for the Editor" field during submission or provide a "Cover Letter" together with their submission to provide additional information for the editors, such as:

• An explanation of why your manuscript should be published in JBCS
• An explanation of any issues relating to journal policies
• A declaration of any potential competing interests
• The name of the special issue that you are submitting for (if this is the case)
• The title and venue of previously published papers that this paper extends (if this is the case)
• Suggestions of potential reviewers for your paper

Upon submitting their paper, the authors should select always the Section "Articles", unless they are submitting an article in response to a Special Call, such as an extended version of a paper previously presented at some event and invited for a Best Papers Collection related to it. In this case, they should select the section related to that specific Collection.

When submitting a regular paper to the Section "Articles", the authors should select the category, that best describes the topic of the paper. Only one category must be selected. When submitting a paper to a Collection, no category must be selected.

Authors submitting an extended version of a previously published conference paper must ensure that it is a non-trivial extension of the previous paper. As a rough guide, authors should ensure that the extended paper contains, at a minimum, 30% new material that provides a conceptual extension of the previously published work. In this case, the cover letter, besides explaining why the manuscript is suitable for publication in the journal, authors should indicate how they have extended the paper and why it constitutes a worthwhile extension of the original work. Authors should, for instance, point out areas where new text or results have been included, where the text has been re-written, and where extra depth is provided.

All submissions should be in PDF format, following the JBCS LaTeX template. Submissions that do not adhere to the template will be desk rejected. If the submission is accepted, the authors will be asked to provide the source files in LaTeX format.  The editorial team will not accept sources in any other format (Word, etc). If authors need assistance in converting their article to LaTeX, they should consider hiring specialized services.

JBCS is open access and free of charge for both authors and readers, bringing higher visibility for published articles by eliminating economic and geographic barriers and making them available to a broad, global audience.