Author Guidelines

This guide outlines key points for preparing primary research manuscripts for submission to the Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences. Before submission, the corresponding authors should be familiar with the editorial policies of the journals published by the Asian Network for Scientific Information. Before submission, the corresponding author ensures that all authors are included in the author list and agree with its order and that they are aware the manuscript is to be submitted.

The corresponding is solely responsible for communicating with the journal and managing communication between coauthors.

A properly prepared and formatted manuscript is essential for the successful processing of the manuscript. The following guidelines will help you prepare your manuscript according to the journal format. Click on the type of the manuscript to read the guidelines in detail.

• Original Articles: Original research manuscripts. The journal considers all original research manuscripts provided that the work reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information. Authors should not unnecessarily divide their work into several related manuscripts. The quality and impact of the study will be considered during peer review.
  
  Download the Template for Original Article
• Review Articles: Review articles welcome by the journal and are generally solicited by the Editor-in-Chief; authors wishing to submit an unsolicited Review Article are invited to contact the Editor-in-Chief prior to submission in order to screen the proposed topic of relevance and priority, given other review articles that may already be in preparation. Review Articles must be concise and critical and should include appropriate references to the literature. All Review Articles, including those solicited by the Editors, rigorously peer-reviewed before a final publication decision is made.
  
  Download the Template for Review Articles
• Systematic Reviews whose methods ensure the comprehensive and unbiased sampling of existing literature. Systematic reviews should follow the PRISMA guidelines.
• Methodology Articles: Methodology articles should present a new experimental or computational method, test, or procedure. The method described may either be completely new or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The described method needs to be well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.
  
  Methodology Articles should follow the same layout as the original article.
  
  Download the Template for Methodological Articles
• Communications: Communications are restricted to reports of unusual urgency, timeliness, significance, and broad interest. A brief statement explaining how the manuscript meets the criteria of urgency and significance should be included in the author's cover letter. It is desirable that the principal conclusions be stated in the opening sentences of the manuscript. The submission of multiple Communications on the same or closely related topics within a short period of time is not an acceptable means of publishing a body of work that is too large for a single Communication. Such work should be described in the format of an Article. The major concepts must not have appeared previously as a report or publication. If a previous Communication by the same author(s) has already appeared and the present manuscript describes a technical improvement or increases the scope of the work, it will not be accepted in the absence of a novel conceptual advance.
  
  Communications should follow the same layout as the original article.
  
  Download the Template for Communications
• Letters to the Editor are short, invited opinion pieces that discuss an issue of immediate importance to the research community. Editorials should have fewer than 1000 words total, no abstract, a minimal number of references (definitely no more than 5), and no figures or tables (although they do have a photograph of the author as an illustration).
  
  Letters to the Editor are considered for publication (subject to editing and abridgment) provided that they do not contain material that has been submitted or published elsewhere.
• Perspectives: Perspectives should be in the range of 5-10 formatted Journal pages. Perspectives are personal reviews of a field or area, and they are focused rather than comprehensive. Perspective authors are asked to assess the current status of the field with an emphasis toward identifying key advances being made or those advances that are needed and with an eye to the future.