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Submission guidelines

Our 3-step submission process

  1. Before you submit

    Now you’ve identified a journal to submit to, there are a few things you should be familiar with before you submit.

  2. Ready to submit

    To give your manuscript the best chance of publication, follow these policies and formatting guidelines.

  3. Submit and promote

    After acceptance, we provide support so your article gains maximum impact in the scientific community and beyond.

    Please note that manuscript can only be submitted by an author of the manuscript and may not be submitted by a third party. 

Submit manuscript

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  • Annual Journal Metrics

    • Citation Impact 2023
      Journal Impact Factor: 4.4
      5-year Journal Impact Factor: 5.4
      Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.211
      SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 1.787

      Speed 2024
      Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 6
      Submission to acceptance (median days): 198

      Usage 2024
      Downloads: 2,843,729
      Altmetric mentions: 2,615

  • Peer Review Taxonomy

    This journal is participating in a pilot of NISO/STM's Working Group on Peer Review Taxonomy, to identify and standardize definitions and terminology in peer review practices in order to make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent. Further information on the pilot is available here

    The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:

    • Identity transparency: Single anonymized
    • Reviewer interacts with: Editor
    • Review information published: None.

    We welcome your feedback on this Peer Review Taxonomy Pilot. Please can you take the time to complete this short survey.

  • Announcements

    BMC Biology is recruiting new Editorial Board Members

    We are looking for Editorial Board Members in all fields of biology. If you are interested in becoming an EBM please see this page.

    Portable peer review

    BMC Biology supports portable peer review by sharing reviews and evaluating papers based on existing reports. Learn more here.

  • BMC Biology is a member of the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium.