Scope

Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics (QRB) covers the whole field of biophysics, from ion channels to DNA topology and from X-ray diffraction to NMR. The journal has gained a worldwide reputation, demonstrated by its high ranking in the ISI Science Citation Index, as a forum for general and specialised communication between biophysicists working in different areas. The journal features authoritative Reviews, the majority of which are invited from authors who have made significant contributions to the field, and who give critical, readable and sometimes controversial accounts of recent progress and problems in their speciality. The newly founded Discovery section publishes key Open Access original research and what may be described as true discoveries, or novel methods to reach mechanistic understanding of biological systems. While biophysics can be reasonably widely interpreted, to include areas like structural biology, our papers should be firmly anchored with a molecular view of the science.

QRB publishes papers in:

• Biophysics and biophysical chemistry
• Structural Biology
• Chemical Biology
• Genomics
• Systems Biology
• Bioimaging
• Tools for structure and dynamics investigations
• Single molecule analysis and manipulation
• Computational biochemistry

Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Nucleic acids and nucleic acid enzymes
• Genome integrity, repair and replication
• Transcription and translation
• Membrane structure, dynamics and interactions
• Cell surface proteins and cell-cell interactions
• Biological signaling including metabolic networks
• Molecular basis of disease
• Chromatin structure and remodelling
• Protein folding, processing and degradation
• Functions of noncoding RNAs
• RNA folding, ligand binding, catalysis and ribo-regulation
• Imaging tools, including 4-D and cryo electron microscopy
• Synthetic chemical tools for biological & biotechnical applications

Article Types

Article Type	Limits	Description
Review	The length of the Review article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality	Introduction This should be as short as possible to introduce the reader to the purpose of the review. Main body The main body should include appropriate headings and sub heading to break up the text and guide the reader
Observation	The length of the Observation article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality but generally articles should not exceed 4,000 words for the main text and should be lightly referenced.	Introduction This should be as short as possible, normally not more than 2-3 paragraphs, and should simply serve to introduce the reader to the purpose and significance of the work described. Main body The main body of the text should use appropriate headings and subheadings to break up the text and guide the reader.

Invited Reviews will be published at no charge to the author under a standard author publishing agreement, unless the author elects to publish their paper under an open access license (see Cambridge Open section below for more details).

SUBMISSION

Reviews should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/qrb

.

Original research for the Discovery section is no longer being considered. Please submit to QRB Discovery online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/qrb-discovery.

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and it is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

Manuscript Preparation 

Word Count

The length of the article will depend on the scope of the subject area and its topicality. If it is likely that the printed article will exceed 80 Journal pages, authors must consult with the Editorial Board before submitting. As a very rough guide, length may be approximately estimated by using the following: 

Title and Abstract: 1 page 

Contents: 1 page Text: 500 words per page 

References: 20 per page 

Figures: 2 per page 

Tables: estimated individually, depending on length

Formatting

The preferred word processing packages are Word or WordPerfect in either PC or Macintosh format. Please note that currently we are unable to use LaTeX files.

Text must be provided in English, double-spaced throughout with a wide margin all round. Page numbering and line numbering are required. Tables and captions for illustrations should be typed separately at the end of the manuscript and their required positions indicated in the text. DO NOT integrate tables, captions or figures into the text. If it is necessary to refer to various passages in the text, please ensure that the relevant manuscript page number is given.

We require that all equations are provided in Mathtype.

Organisation

Title page

The title page should include:

1. The title of the article, which should be short but informative and accurately reflect the content;
2. Authors' names;
3. Name and address of department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed for each author;
4. Name, mailing address (including town or city and country), and email address of the author responsible for correspondence about the manuscript;
5. Short running title for page headings (less than 40 characters);
6. Word count, including all text but excluding tables, figures and references.

Abstract

Each paper should include a self-contained abstract indicating the main points of the article in fewer than 300 words. Please include up to six but no less than three keywords.

Following the abstract, Review articles should include a table of contents, which should not include reference to the abstract. Chapter and section headings and the table of contents should conform to the style in any issue from volume 32 onwards (see http://cambridge.org/qrb for examples).

Figures

These may be line drawings or photographs and all should be referred to consecutively in the text as Fig. 1, etc. In the manuscript, each figure must be on a separate page and clearly identified with the author's name, short title of the manuscript and figure number. The position of each should be indicated in the text. Component parts of figures should be labelled (a), (b), (c) etc. Where there are multiple part figures, it is requested that authors supply a preferred page layout.

Captions for figures, which should be self-explanatory, must be typed, double spaced, on a separate page at the end of the manuscript.

We recommend that only TIFF, EPS or PDF formats are used for electronic artwork. Other non-preferred but usable formats are JPG, PPT and GIF files and images created in Microsoft Word. For further information about how to prepare your figures, including sizing and resolution requirements, please see our artwork guide.

Line drawings

Line drawings should not be larger than twice the final size. The axes of graphs should be carefully chosen so as to occupy the space available to the best advantage. Lines should be bold enough to stand reduction to about 0.25-0.35 mm. Line drawings should be as simple as possible and many computer-generated figures, for example 3-dimensional graphs, with fine lines, gradations of stippling and unusual symbols, cannot be reproduced satisfactorily when reduced. Unsatisfactory line drawings will have to be redrawn at the author's expense. Preferred symbols are open and filled circles, boxes and triangles, and these should be self-explanatory and unambiguous and of sufficiently high quality and size to be clearly visible after reduction to final size. Lettering of all figures within the manuscript should be of uniform style in a sans serif typeface (Helvetica) using lower case lettering.

Photographs

Photographs should be labelled and numbered as for line drawings. For microscopical preparations, scale bars with appropriate units (e.g. 50 micrometers) must be provided.

Tables

Each table should be clearly headed and submitted double-spaced on a separate page at the end of the manuscript. Tables should be numbered consecutively as Table 1, Table 2 etc. with any subsections labelled as (a), (b), etc. These must be presented to fit the page size (280 x 210 mm) without undue reduction. Oversize tables will not be accepted.

Journal Style

Contributors should note the following:

• Active voice should be used wherever feasible, and manuscripts should be written in the first person (except in the Abstract, where the third person should be used).
• Either American or British conventions of spelling and grammar are acceptable as long as used consistently throughout, except in non-British quotations and references.
• Terms that may be regarded as pejorative or contentious should be avoided.
• Footnotes should be avoided except to add information below the body of a table.
• The metric system must be used and SI units where appropriate. For further details see British Standards Institute 5775, Quantities, Units and Abbreviations.

Required Statements

Acknowledgements

You may acknowledge individuals or organisations that provided advice, support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.

Financial support

Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. For example, "This work was supported by the Medical research Council (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 Wellcome Trust (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (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."

Conflicts of Interest declarations in manuscripts

• Authors should include a Conflicts of Interest declaration in their manuscript. If authors do not include this, their submission will not proceed to peer review. • Conflicts of Interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on an author’s presentation of their work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. • Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. Authors should declare any real or perceived Conflicts of Interest in order to be transparent about the context of their work. • If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the manuscript must include Conflicts of Interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. • Example wording for a Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Conflicts of Interest: 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 Conflicts of Interest exist, the declaration should state “Conflicts of Interest: Author A and Author B declare none”.

References

The references should in an author and year style. When a paper cited has three or more authors the style 'Smith et al. 2013' should be used on all occasions.

At the end of the paper, references should first be listed alphabetically, with a full title of each paper, and the first and last pages. Journal titles should be given in full. 

Accuracy of references is the responsibility of the author(s). References must be checked against the text to ensure (a) that the spelling of authors' names and the dates given are consistent and (b) that all authors quoted in the text (in date order if more than one) are given in the reference list and vice versa.

Authors should follow the examples below for layout and punctuation:

In-text citation:

(Royo et al., 1988; Sherry, 1969; Gardiner, 1985)

Journal article:

• Mustafi M and Weisshaar JC (2018) Simultaneous binding of multiple EF-Tu copies to translating ribosomes in live Escherichia coli. mBio 16, e02143–17.
• Smith DA and Jones RM (2008) The sulfonamide group as a structural alert: a distorted story? Current Opinion in Drug Discovery & Development 11, 72–79. 
• Tourigny DS, Fernández IS, Kelley AC and Ramakrishnan V (2013) Elongation factor G bound to the ribosome in an intermediate of translocation. Science 340, 1235490

Section in edited book:

Sherry HS (1969). The ion-exchange properties of zeolites. In Ion Exchange, (ed. J. Marinsky), pp. 89-133. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Book:

Blankenship RE (2014) Molecular Mechanisms of Photosynthesis. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell

 

BioImage Archive

As part of an additional service to authors, the journal is partnering 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 note that any changes to links to images or references to images on BioImage Archive must be completed before publication of the article. The record cannot be corrected after publication of the paper.

• To use the BioImage Archive site, authors can submit their data and receive an accession identifier, which can then be referenced in the publication and released at the same time. The BIA can also link from the dataset to its associated publication. Please see the instructions on submission here.
• Linking to the whole dataset or individual image files is possible at the moment. Linking/visualisation of subcomponents of images (for example particular 2D planes within a 3D image) is not currently possible.
• There are no associated charges for using the BioImage Archive.
• The BioImage Archive can provide metrics on both whole dataset and individual file access - the frequency of these metrics is to be determined.

 

Accepted Manuscripts

Accepted manuscripts are published online as is (before copy-editing or typesetting) within approximately a week of final acceptance, provided we have received all final files and a completed license to publish form. At this point, the article will have a DOI and be considered published and citable. You will subsequently receive a proof of your typeset, edited article, which will eventually replace the accepted manuscript online and be considered the final version of record. 

The AM file must be a single Word (or similar word processor) file with the abstract, main text, references, tables and figures. It does not need to be laid out as the final article will be published but it must include all those elements in the single file. You cannot upload a zip or other format file as the AM file. It must be word processor and a single file. The AM file is processed in a different (and more rapid) way than the other source files which are copy edited and typeset. We need all the source files and the AM file.

For more information on the AM process, please click here.