umfg.sav.sk

General Physiology and Biophysics

by-nc

An International Journal

sav.sk

Instructions for Authors



Open access

All articles published in the journal General Physiology and Biophysics are freely available under an open-access publishing model. All accepted articles are published under the license Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial (CC BY NC), which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and the use is non‐commercial.

Open access publication fee

The cost of “open access” publication is covered by the Article Processing Charge (APC). A fee is payable by the authors, or their institution, in the amount of EUR 500 per accepted article. There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article or supplementary data. Authors, who choose to publish the color figures in the printed version of the journal, are charged 120 EURO per color page. Alternatively, authors may submit black-and-white versions of all figures for publication in the printed journal and keep color figures only in the online version of their article. However, if the color figures are not sufficiently comprehensive in the black-and-white version, the author will be asked to pay the color figure fee.

Initial submissions

To submit your manuscript, register and log in to the submission website of the electronic submission system MMPlus only. For detail information, please read user guide. Authors are expected to follow the instructions for authors and indicate the category in which they are publishing if it is not a research article. It is presumed that the manuscript has not been published and has not been simultaneously submitted elsewhere. The following types of manuscripts are acceptable for publishing: Research article, Review, Short Communications, Hypothesis, and Letter to the Editor.

Research article

Original experimental articles dealing with topics within the scope of the journal are preferentially accepted. The length of a full paper should be the minimum necessary to clearly describe and interpret the work.

Review

Reviews should be concise, non-limited in length, but they should contain a minimum of 8,000 words, except for references. If you wish to submit a review manuscript, please consult the editor-in-chief in advance.

Short Communications

The main text must be limited to 4,000 words and not contain the section headings. A maximum of three figures and one table is allowed. Abstract is limited to 150 words.

Hypothesis

Theoretical contributions are acceptable as long as they formulate testable hypotheses.

Letter to Editor

Letters to the Editor with comments on only the findings published in the journal will be accepted. The article should be no more than 1,000 words and contain a maximum of 10 references and 1 figure.


Preparation of manuscript

For an initial submission, authors may use an arbitrary format of manuscript, in-text citations, and the reference list. Following a favorable review, authors will be asked to format the manuscript according to the instructions below. However, all submitted manuscripts must include all sections listed below. Manuscripts should be in English, typed double-spaced with 2.5 cm margins and an unjustified right margin. Use a standard 12-point font Times New Roman throughout the main text of the manuscript. All pages must be numbered in sequence. Manuscripts must be organized in the following order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Highlights (optional), Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgments (optional), Author contributions, AI disclosure, and Figure legends. In the main text, the relevant reference should be cited in this way: the name of the author and the year of publishing (e.g., Polak 2020); in the case of two authors, include both names (e.g., Smith and Clark 2015), and for more authors, the first author should be named followed by “et al.” (Chen et al. 2019). Each paper must be consistent within itself in its use of abbreviations, symbols, and units. Authors must use SI units wherever possible and, when they are not used, provide a conversion factor to SI units.

Title

The title should contain no more than 150 characters, including spaces. Avoid non-standard abbreviations. A 60-character running title, including spaces, should also be supplied.

Authors

The names of authors should be listed as follows: given name, initials of middle name, surname. The list of author affiliations should be indexed in the order of the authors' names. Strictly follow this rule; you will avoid potential problems when inserting into scientific databases. Affiliations should contain the following information: department(s)/subunit(s); institution; city, state/region, postal code; country. An active email address and the ORCID identification number or the Web of Science ResearcherID of the corresponding author are mandatory. We encourage all authors to provide their ORCID or Web of Science ID.

Abstract

Text of abstract should be informative and completely self-explanatory, briefly present the topic, state the scope of the experiments, indicate significant data, and point out major findings and conclusions. Abstract should contain a maximum of 200 words (in Short communications, 150 words). Reference citations in the Abstract are not allowed.

Highlights

The highlights section should briefly describe the physiological significance of the reported results.

Key words

A maximum of five keywords separated by commas should be provided.

Introduction

The introduction should provide a clear statement of the problem, the relevant literature on the subject, and the proposed approach to the research. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully, and key publications cited correctly. Finally, the main aim of the work and the main conclusions should be outlined.

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section must describe all experimental procedures and specify all research materials in sufficient detail to enable independent replication. Statistical methods must be clearly described, including normality testing when applicable.

Results

TThe results of experiments should be presented with clarity and precision. The article may containmaximal 7 Figures and 5 Tables. Additional display items may be published online as Supplementary Material at the discretion of the editor (please see the Supplementary Material section for more information). For all statistics (including error bars), provide the exact n values used to calculate the statistics (reporting individual values rather than a range if n varied among experiments). For representative results, report the number of times that the measurements were repeated. Where relevant, provide exact values for both significant and non-significant p values. For ANOVAs, provide F values and degrees of freedom. For t-tests, provide t-values and degrees of freedom. To ensure the integrity and scientific validity of results documented on electrophoretic gels and blots, we ask the authors to provide all complete Western blots, including the corresponding molecular weight ladders. In order to check for the credibility of published data, please upload original, uncut, and untreated complete images as supplementary material upon first submission. Data will be available for inspection by reviewers and will not be published with the article upon acceptance, unless the authors wish otherwise.

Discussion

Discussion should interpret the findings in view of the results obtained in this and in past studies on this topic. Conclusions in a few sentences may be included at the end of the paper. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Conflicts of Interest

This section is mandatory for all papers. Authors are required to disclose any private‐sector financial conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence either the results or their interpretation in the manuscript.

Acknowledgements (optional)

Keep acknowledgments brief, with thanks to colleagues and others who contributed to improving the paper's quality. Names or numbers of grants may be acknowledged.

Author contributions (optional)

You may include a statement that specifies the individual contributions of each co-author.

AI disclosure

Authors are required to disclose the use of artificial intelligence modules, including Large Language Models, at any stage of the reported research, e.g., idea generation, hypothesis development, literature search and/or summarization, design, data collection/cleaning/preprocessing/auditing, quantitative and/or qualitative data analysis, figure or image generation, drafting manuscript or abstract text, editing or rewriting including of reference lists. A negative statement in a case where no AI was used throughout the entire research cycle is also required.

References

References must follow journal style and be sorted in alphabetical order. Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended for inclusion in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text. Citation of a reference as "in press" implies that the item has been accepted for publication.

The format for references to research articles, books and chapters from books:

Figures

Figures should be submitted as separate image files. Text of legends should be included in a separate section of the manuscript (Figure Legends) and should contain sufficient detail to make the figure easily understood without reading the text of the manuscript. If a manuscript contains color figures, authors are asked to state during submission whether they would like to pay for the figures to be in color in print. Authors, who choose to publish the color figures in the printed version of the journal, are required to pay 120 EURO per one color page – the invoice will be sent to the corresponding author by e-mail. If the color figures are not sufficiently distinguishable in the black-and-white printed version, the author will be asked to pay the color figure fee. No charge is made for color figures online. Authors wishing to have figures in color online but black-and-white in print must submit both color and black-and-white versions of the figures for review. A single legend must apply to both the color and the black-and-white figures.
Figures must comply the following criteria:

  1. Graphics should be prepared using applications capable of generating high-resolution TIFF or JPEG (min 600 dpi). Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid quality degradation. We cannot accept figure files in certain applications, such as Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Access). They are not intended for high-resolution imaging necessary for publication.
  2. Use Arabic numerals to designate figures and capital letters for their parts (e.g., Figure 1A).
  3. Always use only Arial font for the text in the figure.
  4. In figures and graphs, use standard symbols found in Microsoft Word.
  5. Appropriately sized numbers, letters, and symbols should be used so they are no smaller than 2 mm after reduction to a single column width (8 cm), a 1.5-column width (12.5 cm), or a full two-column width (17 cm). Choose an appropriate image size for the given data; please ensure that all figure descriptions are readable.
  6. Numbers, letters, and symbols used in multipaneled figures must be consistent. The abscissa and ordinate should be clearly labeled with an appropriate font size, and units of measurement must be given in parentheses.
  7. Whenever possible, include all individual data points in the graphs.
  8. Ensure that the error bars are defined throughout the figures. Symbols and abbreviations used in figures must be explained in the text of the legend.
  9. For preparing figures, use quality graphic programs so that the lettering and lines do not look a little blurry and jagged. To check whether the final version is acceptable, enlarge the PDF view on-screen to 300% or 400%. The font and lines should stay crisp, clear, and of the same type of font.
  10. If bar graphs will not be colored, change the filling in the graphs (shades of gray) to be more different and clearly distinguishable. Gray fills in graphs should be kept at least 20% different from other fills.
  11. The invoice for color images will be sent after sending the proof of the manuscript.
Tables

Tables should be kept to a minimum and be designed to be as simple as possible. Do not include tables in the manuscript, but submit tables as a separate file.
When creating tables, please adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. Tables are to be typed one-spaced throughout, including headings and footnotes
  2. For formatting tables use Word's Table function; do not use tabs or spaces to create a table
  3. Tables should not include colored text or shading (except Review)
  4. Do not use line breaks or spaces to separate data within a cell. Use separate cells for all discrete data elements within a table
  5. If bold or italic font is used within a table to indicate some feature of the data, please give an explanation of its usage in the legend
  6. All abbreviations within a table must be defined in the table legend or footnotes
  7. The same data should not be presented in both table and graph forms or repeated in the text.
Supplementary Material

In general, Supplementary Material (SM) contains large data sets, methods, calculations, figures, tables and video those directly support the main conclusions of your paper but cannot be included in the main paper due to space or file format restrictions. If a manuscript has accompanying SM, authors are asked to refer to discrete items at an appropriate point in the main text of manuscript. SM is available online-only as a part added at the end of article.


Review process

The review process consits of following steps:

  1. First, the Editor-in-Chief checks whether the submitted article falls within the scope of the journal and whether it meets the scientific standards. After initial approval, the manuscript is assigned to an Editor, who solicits two or more expert reviewers to prepare their comments. The first decision on the article's status is made by the Editor-in-Chief, on average, within 30 days (the article may be accepted, rejected, or sent for a subsequent review with minor or major revisions).
  2. When the reviewers' requirements are met, and the manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author is requested via the publishing system to provide the invoice data for paying the „open access“ fee. Subsequently, the author will receive the invoice form from the Editorial office by email. After payment, manuscripts are checked by technical editors to prepare them for publication (including language and grammatical editing and figure quality assessment). Technical editing is done after the referee process is completed.
  3. Prior to publication, the editorial office will send galley proofs to the authors for final checking before printing. No edits may be made after galleys are approved; only minor corrections are allowed. The final PDF article will be sent to the corresponding author free of charge. Articles appear in international scientific databases (WOS, PubMed, and Scopus) after the issue is printed.


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