Reasons to submit to Biology Open

Making it easy for our authors

• The number of institutes that have a Read & Publish agreement with The Company of Biologists keeps growing year on year. Biology Open (BiO) is now included in the majority of these agreements. Corresponding authors at participating institutions with the five-journal package can publish an uncapped number of Open Access Research Articles and Methods & Techniques papers in BiO, without paying the article processing charge.
• We provide fast and fair decisions and rapid publication, showing a strong commitment at first decision, with over 90% of invited revisions being accepted for publication.
• We are pleased to consider manuscripts that have been reviewed elsewhere for fast-tracked decision making. Send us your manuscript together with the full set of reviews and decision letters, and we’ll aim to use these to make a decision.
• We also provide easy transfer of manuscripts, from Review Commons, as well as from our sister journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science, Journal of Experimental Biology and Disease Models & Mechanisms.
• We are a preprint-friendly journal and welcome the submission of manuscripts that have been deposited on preprint servers. In fact, we have a two-way integration portal with bioRxiv, allowing you to submit to the journal when you upload your preprint or, vice versa, to post your article on bioRxiv when you submit to us.

Trusted by our readers

• Submissions are handled by expert Academic Editors. Our team of research-active academics covers a range of topics.
• We show a strong ethical approach to publishing best-practice, enabling us to publish research that is trusted. With our plagiarism and image manipulation checks, structured peer-review process, copyediting by experienced scientific editors, and simple solutions for data sharing and access, we make sure that you – as readers and authors – can focus on the science.
• All articles are indexed by PubMed, PMC, Medline, Scopus and Web of Science.
• BiO was awarded the DOAJ seal.

Supporting our community

• We also strive to promote early-career researchers (ECRs). First authors of articles published in the journal are highlighted in our ‘First Person’ interviews. We also encourage reviewers to name student and postdoc co-reviewers, so that these ECRs can get the recognition they deserve.
• We publish Future Leader Reviews, which are specifically written by ECRs. These are aimed at people in the first phases of their scientific career who want to establish themselves in their field. They can also be used to help people build their profiles ahead of those all-important grant, fellowship and job applications. There is no charge for publishing a Future Leader Review in BiO.
• We are published by a not-for-profit charitable organisation, The Company of Biologists, that is run by biologists for the benefit of the biological community. The Company facilitates and organises scientific meetings and workshops, provides Travelling Fellowships for early-career researchers, and supports and funds research societies and conferences around the world.
• For every peer-reviewed article published in BiO in 2023 and 2024, a new tree will be planted in the Young People’s Forest in Derbyshire, UK, in collaboration with the Woodland Trust. In addition to this, we are funding the protection and restoration of ancient woodland on behalf of our peer reviewers. Find out more about The Forest of Biologists.

Interested in submitting an article? You can visit our submission page for more information or contact us at [email protected] if you’d like to discuss a potential submission.