Submissions

Author Guidelines

Manuscript prior to submission shall be accordance with the instructions and format specified below:

• You are advised to download the document titled ‘Submission Template’ and use it as a template for your manuscript
• Progress in Microbes and Molecular Biology accept manuscripts written in either American or British English with clear and comprehensive English. Non-English words usage must be kept to a minimum and the font must be italicized (except for e.g. and i.e.).
• Authors from the country that English is not the first language are advised to go through professional language and content check prior to final submission.
• All articles that are submitted should attach a cover letter as a separate file.

Cover Letter

The contents of the cover letter should consist of a brief explanation of what was previously known, the conceptual advancement with the findings and its significance to a broad readership. Authors shall provide all the information about the novelty and importance of your findings. The cover letter also serves as an evidence that the author approved the submission of the article to Progress in Microbes and Molecular Biology and has not submitted this article elsewhere.

A well-written cover letter would provide an opportunity to convince journal editors to consider the article for publication. The author’s cover letters will only be read by the editors and will be kept strictly confidential. It will not be shared with the reviewers.

The cover letter also should include the completed declarations section. Please find below for the completed declarations section. Please choose one of the styles in each declaration section.

Conflict of interests:

• HF received a grant from YYY. HS is an employee of XXX and collaboration with YYY.
• The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest

 Informed consent:

• [Written]/[Verbal] informed consent was obtained from [all subjects]/[legally authorized representatives] prior to the study.
• Informed consent was not obtained for the present study because of –‘REASON’
• Not applicable

Ethical approval: 

• Ethical approval for this study was obtained from – NAME OF ETHICS COMMITTEE OR INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD (APPROVAL NUMBER/ID)
• Ethical approval for this study was waived by – NAME OF ETHICS COMMITTEE OR INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD because ‘REASON FOR WAIVER’.
• Ethical approval was not obtained for the present study because of –‘REASON’.
• Not applicable

Trial registration: 

• Name of trial registry: Trial registration number
• This randomized clinical trial was not registered because –‘REASON’
• Not Applicable

Plagiarism, data fabrication, and image manipulation are not tolerated:

Plagiarism is not acceptable in submissions

• Plagiarism includes copying text, images, data, or ideas from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.

• The reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.

• All PMMB submissions are checked for plagiarism using the industry-standard software Turnitin. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place, and action taken in accordance with our policies.

Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image

• Irregular manipulation includes: a) enhancement, introduction, removing, or moving features from the original image; b) grouping of images that should be presented separately or c) modifying the brightness, contrast, or color balance to obscure, enhance or eliminate information.

• If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with PMMB.

Data Deposit Policy:

PMMB Research Data Policies

• PMMB is devoted to supporting open scientific exchange and enabling our authors to achieve best practices in sharing and archiving research data. We encourage all authors of articles published in PMMB to share their research data. Data sharing policies concern the minimal dataset that supports the central findings of a published study. Generated data should be publicly available and cited in accordance with PMMB guidelines.

Deposition of Sequences and of Expression Data

• New sequence information must be deposited to the appropriate database prior to submission of the manuscript. Accession numbers provided by the database should be included in the submitted manuscript. Manuscripts will not be published until the accession number is provided.

• New nucleic acid sequences must be deposited in one of the following databases: GenBank, EMBL, or DDBJ. Sequences should be submitted to only one database.
• New high throughput sequencing (HTS) datasets (RNA-seq, ChIP-Seq, degradome analysis, etc) must be deposited either in the NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) or in the GEO database.
• New protein sequences obtained by protein sequencing must be submitted to UniProt (submission tool SPIN). Annotated protein structure and its reference sequence must be submitted to RCSB of Protein Data Bank.
• All sequence names and the accession numbers provided by the databases must be provided in the Materials and Methods section of the article.

Repository Policy:

Authors are required to make all materials used to conduct their research available to other researchers. Research materials necessary to enable the reproduction of an experiment should be clearly indicated in the Materials and Methods section. Relevant materials such as protocols, analytic methods, study material, and different versions of the papers (e.g., submitted, accepted, and published versions) should preferably be uploaded to an online institutional or other repository (e.g. AMBeRepo) of the authors' choice without any embargo from the publisher.

Contributorship: 

BF and NP researched literature and conceived the study. MS was involved in protocol development, gaining ethical approval, patient recruitment and data analysis. BF wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript

Manuscript

Title

Authors should avoid the usage of excessive uncommon jargons that may not be understood by the target audience. Avoid titles that are too long and ensure that it is less than 50 words. Remember to spell out any acronyms first before using it throughout your article as this may help the readers who are not familiar with the meanings of the words. Also avoid irony, puns or humour in the title as it may not be understood by non-native speaking readers and it also tends to be more culture-specific, hence not being suitable for a broad audience.

List of Authors

Authors’ names should be spelled out fully instead of only listing their initials with their respective affiliations included in the footnotes. It must be ensured that the authors of a particular manuscript are listed based on the extent of their contribution and the major contributor should be listed first. Corresponding authors (maximum 2) must be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. Only include the email of one corresponding author for contact purposes in the manuscript. It is compulsory that all authors have viewed and approved the final version of the manuscript before submitting it via the system.

Abstract

Authors should include an abstract which is a concise summary of a research paper that is fully self-contained and makes sense by itself. It should be informative for the readers and include the research purpose and the results achieved that are significant. Please note that the abstract should be the range of 200-250 words, indented and single spaced. Ideally, an abstract should be the last thing that the author writes after completing his manuscript. Authors should also include 5-8 keywords after the abstract and avoid using the words that have already been used in the title of the manuscript.

Section Headings

Authors must ensure that all section headings, subheadings and sub-subheadings are differentiated by font size. The bold font must be used for the major headings and subheadings, and non-bold font must be used for the sub-subheadings in parenthesis.

Example:        

Headings: XXXXX
Subheadings: XXXXX
Sub-sub headings: xxxxx

Introduction

The introduction of the paper should start with an explanation of why a particular research is being conducted and end with a statement/conclusion of the selected research approach. Authors must ensure that an non-technical reader is able to understand the introduction, including the technical goals and objectives, any technical issues faced and its application in the real world. It would be beneficial for the readers if the authors provided a clear, one sentence purpose statement of the research. It would be advisable to keep the length of the introduction about 1/2 page (1-2 paragraphs).

Materials and Methods

In this section, authors are required to provide a detailed account of the procedure that was followed while conducting the research described in the report. This will help the readers to obtain a clear understanding of the research and also allow them to replicate the study in the future. Authors should ensure that every method used is described and include citations for the procedures that have been described previously. Avoid any kind of discussion in this section regarding the methods or results of any kind.

Ethics

Ethics information, including IACUC permit numbers and/or IRB name, if applicable. This information should be included in a subheading labeled "Ethics Statement" in the "Methods" section of your manuscript file, in as much detail as possible.

Results

This section can be divided into subheadings. This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.

Discussion

In this section, authors should state their interpretations and explain the implications of their results and make suggestions for future research. The discussion should be kept as short as possible while clearly and fully stating, supporting, explaining, and defending the author’s answers and discussing other important and directly relevant issues. Authors should avoid discussing side issues as it may obscure the message.

Conclusion

Authors should note that the conclusion is extremely important as it provides a closure for their paper. An effective conclusion would leave the reader feeling satisfied that the concepts have been fully explained. The conclusion should start with a clear statement of principal findings that also has to be concise. It would help to set the paper in the context of previous work as this will show the readers how significant or worthy your research is. Please restrain from rewriting the abstract and recommendations for further research can be included in this section.

Funding

It is the authors’ responsibility to declare all financial and non-financial support that may be considered as a source of competing interest in relation to their submitted manuscript in this section. Any grants, royalties, consulting fees are considered as financial supports and must be declared. Other forms of non-financial support that must also be declared are externally-supplied equipment/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors etc.

Appendix

Any technical details that are necessary to include, but that interrupts the flow of the article, can be attached in the appendix section. Any appendices should be included at the end of the main text of the paper, after the acknowledgments section (if any) but before the reference list. For supplementary figures, authors are advised to include it in the ‘Supplementary figures’ section.

Text

The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word or Latex. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7000 words.

Figures

Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as 1 file in the OJS system. Reference to the “” is strongly encouraged. Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts and schematic diagrams. Figures submitted should avoid unnecessary decorative effects (e.g. 3D graphs) as well as be minimally processed (e.g. changes in brightness and contrast applied uniformly for the entire figure). It should also be set against a white background.

Please remember to label all figures (e.g. axis etc.) and add in captions (below the figure) as required. These captions should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface. All figures must have a brief title (also known as caption) that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a legend defined as description of each panel. Please identify each panel with uppercase letters in parenthesis (e.g. A, B, C, etc.)

The preferred file formats for any separately submitted figure(s) are TIFF or JPEG. All figures should be legible in print form and of optimal resolution. Optimal resolutions preferred are 300 dots per inch for RGB colored, 600 dots per inch for grey-scale and 1200 dots per inch for line art. Although there are no file size limitation imposed, authors are highly encouraged to compress their figures to an ideal size without unduly affecting legibility and resolution of figures. This will also speed up the process of uploading in the submission system if necessary.

The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher reserve the right to request from author(s) the high-resolution files and unprocessed data and metadata files should the need arise at any point after manuscript submission for reasons such as production, evaluation or other purposes. The file name should allow for ease in identifying the associated manuscript submitted.

Tables, lists and equations

Tables, lists and equations must be submitted together with the manuscript. Likewise, lists and equations should be properly aligned and its meaning clear to readers. Tables created using Microsoft Word table function are preferred. Place each table in your manuscript file right after the paragraph in which it is first cited.

Do not submit your tables in separate files. The tables should include a concise but sufficiently explanatory title at the top. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead. All tables should be based on three horizontal lines to separate the caption, header and body. A few additional horizontal lines MAY be included as needed (example below). Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table. SI units should be used.

Supplementary information

This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. This information is relevant to the manuscript but remains non-essential to readers’ understanding of the manuscript’s main content. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file in Step 4 during submission. Please ensure the names of such files contain ‘suppl. info’. Citations and References in the Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the reference list of the main text.

References

PMMB uses the numbering referencing system. Reference examples are found below.

The following formatting styles are meant as a guide, as long as the full citation is complete and clear. We highly encourage preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. Include the digital object identifier (DOI) for all references where available.

EndNote Users: download the references style file here.

In-text citations

Reference citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in superscript square brackets. Some examples:

• Negotiation research spans many disciplines^[3,4].
• This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman^[5].
• This effect has been widely studied^{[1–5, 7]}.

Personal communications and unpublished works can only be used in the main text of the submission and are not to be placed in the Reference section. Authors are advised to limit such usage to the minimum. They should also be easily identifiable by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications and the word ‘Unpublished’ in parenthesis, E.g. (Smith J, 2000, Unpublished).

Reference list

1. Petitti DB, Crooks VC, Buckwalter JG, et al. Blood pressure levels before dementia. Arch Neurol 2005; 62(1): 112–116.
2. American Diabetes Association. Diabetes update. Nursing 2003; Suppl: 19–20, 24.
3. National Institutes of Health (US). End-of-life care. National Institutes of Health statement on the state of the science. AWHONN Lifelines 2005; 9(1): 15–22.
4. Massone L, Borghi S, Pestarino A. Localisations palmaires purpuriques de la dermatite herpetiforme (French) [Purpuric palmar sites of dermatitis herpetiformis]. Ann Dermatol Venerol 1987; 114(12): 1545–1547.
5. Ohlsen MM, Horne AM, Lowe CF. Group counseling. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; 1988. p. 416.
6. Riffenburgh RH. Regression and correlation methods. 2^nd In: Statistics in medicine. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier Academic Press; 2006. p. 447–486.
7. Rojko JL, Hardy WD Jr. Feline leukemia virus and other retroviruses. 3^rd In: Sherding RG (editors). The cat: Diseases and clinical management. New York: Churchill Livingstone; 1989. p. 229–332.