General Instructions for Authors

Why Submission to Herbert Publications?

  • Fair and constructive peer review process
  • Editorial help and language revision services
  • Grants immediate open access
  • Ensure widespread visibility
  • Strongly support to submission on pubmed by artical standards
  • Articles abstracted by online indexing services

Editorial Policy and Peer Review Process

Editorial policies are subjected to protect and strengthen the journals integrity and quality aiming reader's interest. All the articles are produced with respect to the scope of the journal based on relevancy, integrity, scientific strength, potential interest, completeness, clarity and ethics. Decisions on manuscripts are not affected by the author's origin, nationality, ethnicity, race, religion or political beliefs. No government policies or agencies away from the journal will determine the decision. Decisions taken are strictly based on the articles validity and importance to the scientific readers.

Readership

The primary audience of this publication would be academicians, research scholars, graduate students, practitioners and anyone interested in research.

Review Process

Herbert Publications follows single blinded peer-review process. In this process the authors names and affiliations will be revealed to the reviewers, while authors are kept blinded from reviewer details. Authors can provide suggested reviewers and disclose any competing interests.

Initial decisions are held by Editors-in-Chief and submitted manuscripts will undergo unbiased preliminary assessment for the suitability to the scope of the journals. As an extension to the process, the assessed manuscripts are forwarded to at-least two expert reviewers in the field. This is intended to advance the correctness, clarity, and wholeness of manuscripts and help editors to decide whether the manuscript has to be published or not. Reports from at least two reviewers will be taken in to consideration for the decision to accept or reject a manuscript. Editors can give the updated guidance to the reviewers when required. Reviewers are given 3 weeks to send their fair and constructive reviews to Editor, and Editors-in-Chief are aimed to take the final decision within 6 weeks from the manuscript submission.

Types of Articles

Herbert Publications is dedicated to publish and provide access to quality information and valuable contributions to the journal's respective field. It follows a specific format for each article type to the credit of weight in the information and maintains diverse appearance for reader's convenience. Therefore the authors will be guided to meet the submission criteria of corresponding article type with the author's responsibilities, manuscript preparation and submission. Below are the generalized guidelines for the authors to meet standards of Herbert Publications. It is recommended to visit 'Authors' section at respective journal page for more information.

Contributions can be made in the format of:

Original articles should contain completely new principal research testifying major contributions to the field. The study should represent new findings or discoveries in a subject area that were not published before. The report may contain significant findings, methodology importance and considerable evidence to the conclusions.

Research articles should contain original principal research testifying major contributions to the field. The report may contain significant findings, methodology importance and considerable evidence to the conclusions.

Reviews are summarized descriptions of recent findings and significant developments at particular subject area of research considering the Journal's scope. They should include critical assessments of novel technologies, evaluation of subject advancement, elucidate unresolved questions, comparative analysis with a substantial coverage of previous works and highlight future prospects. Although there are no restrictions with the length and content of a review, authors should consider drawing reader's attention and interest with quality information.

Mini-reviews are summarized descriptions based on one or more recent findings and significant developments at particular subject area of research considering the Journal's scope. It is usually commissioned to create interest on the work and warrant further commentaries on the published articles.

Case report is a detailed description on rare diseases, novel occurrences, unusual indication or symptoms of a disease, unreported studies or unexpected events observed in a patient during the course of treatment. The study should highlight and report new cases in diagnosis of emerging diseases or specify variations and associations with new diseases. Case report should contain educational values and emphasize on the need of amendments to usual practices and approaches in the field. Case reports should comprise different findings with updated review on previous cases and investigation in the field. There should not be any preventive and therapeutic intrusions in the Case reports from the findings since they need more confirmed evidences.

Commentaries are short account commissioned by the Editorial board and call for attention on the current issues confined to a particular subject area while sometimes unsolicited articles are accepted from contemporary scientists or experts in the field. The context is to analyze the issues of interest to readers or a discussion on current research and recently published articles in the Journal. Commentaries may also include editorial opinion relevant to scope of the Journal and discuss external implications such as new technology, grant applications, peer reviewing process on research.

Debate article can be an argument from an area of subject based on research practices, social aspects and ethical concerns. The content should reflect a polite approach from an author to argue without creating damage to reputation of the referred individual or organization. The viewpoint should address pros and cons on the subject issue with factual statements and proper evidences.

Editorials reflect the opinion of an Editorial Board member or staff for particular Journal highlighting recent changes, concerned issues or announcements in relevance to the journal. This may include editorial management and policies.

Hypotheses are short articles outlining significant predictions of methods and possibilities that were not conducted before and a proposed phenomenon that has to be tested. It should not reflect review or tested method but must be an inspection in to previous studies generating surprise to readers and provide logical explanation that propels further research.

Letter to Editor is a response to or substantial re-analysis of a research article recently published in the journal. It is a brief report or critical assessment on findings in the original research article. It is an article that may not comprise standard research but provide readers opinion, remarks, support or contradictions that are adequate to the scope of the journal. Letter to Editor may be subjected to editing for maintaining clarity and prescribed length at editor's discretions and may forwarded to peer-review.

Meeting reports should present detailed information about a subject area or research methodologies discussed at large meetings. This may include new techniques, recent findings and studies, proposed methods or applications relevant to the topics solely discussed at the meetings.

Methodologies should comprise novel approaches in experiments and procedures applied at both laboratory and computational levels demonstrating the advancements over the existing methods and applications. These may be either improvised versions of tools and techniques, protocols or an absolute newly developed method. Before submission, the author should make sure that the method or tool is tested and undergone different validations.

Software articles should contain description for newly developed software tools and web-based applications intended to extend the usage on other websites or by other researchers. It should represent the broad value and utility over the existing tools or previously available software demonstrating improved usability in comparison with related software.

Database articles should contain vast biomedical information made available to wide utility, accessibility for the retrieval of data.

Short report is a helpful description on particular area of research confirming the results from previously published articles. The presentation should be in a way of extension to the previous research work with confirmatory results and evidences on negative results, clinical studies or even patients from a same family. Short report should provide the advancement in control to previous work. The basis and motivation for the work submitted as short report should be acknowledged.

Correspondence articles are letters addressed to the Editor with a short comment on topical issues or reader's reaction corresponding to an informal publication previously published in the journal. Usually correspondences will not be peer reviewed and should not contain technical comments on research articles or principal research data.

Technical advance articles should comprise novel approaches in experiments and procedures applied at both laboratory and computational levels demonstrating the advancements over the existing methods and applications. These may be either improvised versions of tools and techniques, protocols or an absolute newly developed method. Before submission, the author should make sure that the method or tool is tested and undergone different validations.

Study Protocols can be for anticipated or ongoing prospective clinical research, and should provide a complete description of the theory, rationale and methodology of the study.

Manuscript submission

On submission of a manuscript, author implies that the work submitted has not been already published or not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that all the co-authors have approved its publication, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

We use Plagarism detection tool

Cover letter

During submission process author will be asked to accompany a cover letter of approximately 500 words along with the manuscript. This should include manuscript title and a brief description on how relevant to the journal's scope, contributions made to its respective field and how it adds value to the scientific literature. Also relate the study briefly to previous work. The cover letter should include name of the co-authors if any and full contact details of the corresponding author with office or institutional address, telephone, fax and email address. Corresponding author should clearly state the approval of co-authors for manuscript submission along with any competing interests. It is also firmly suggested to declare that work is purely original and not submitted or published elsewhere. Finally, if this submission is followed by the solicitation or invitation of an Editorial Board member please provide the details. Author can also include any additional information in the cover letter helpful to the Editor.

Permissions

In accordance with ICMJE guidelines, when a previously published information or copyright material is used or reproduced in the submitted manuscript, it is the corresponding author's responsibility to attain permission in written from the appropriate author or copyright holder and citing the original source correctly. It is recommended to submit the permission statement along with the manuscript to the Editorial Office to maintain transparency.

Online Submission

Herbert Publications accept only electronic submissions to facilitate the rapid publication and reduce administrative costs. Authors are encouraged to submit the files as a batch or individually. The process is intermittent and can be continued later at the author's convenience. Upon submission a manuscript identity number will be generated and the author may use this in further correspondence for enquiries. Click here to submit your manuscript.

Manuscript Preparation

Title Page

  • A concise and informative title
  • The name(s) of the author(s)
  • The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s)
  • The e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding autho

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of approximately 300 words with no undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 10 keywords as index terms representing the article content.

Text

Text Formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

  • Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 12-point Times New Roman) for text.
  • Use italics for emphasis.
  • Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
  • Do not use field functions.
  • Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
  • Use the table function instead of spreadsheets, to make tables.
  • Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.

Note: If you use Word 2007, do not create the equations with the default equation editor but use the Microsoft equation editor or MathType instead.

Save your files in widely compatible format. Ex. Use doc. format instead of docx. format.

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be spelled out in the text for the first time and used consistently thereafter.

Acknowledgments

People who contributed towards the work in any way for the manuscript preparation, but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in acknowledgements section mentioning their contributions. These also include funding source(s) of each author and describe the involvement of funding body or organization in the whole work. It is recommended to acknowledge the editor if any manuscript was revised for language corrections.

Permissions should be obtained from all those who are acknowledged in this section.

Tables

  • Use only Arabic numerals in all tables.
  • Always cite the tables in the text in consecutive numerical order.
  • For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
  • If you use data from another published or unpublished source, obtain permission and acknowledge that source fully.
  • Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body

Preparing additional files

Although Journal title does not imply any restrictions on the length of data in a paper, but still authors may wishes to provide data sets, tables, movie files, or other information as additional information. These files can be uploaded using the 'Additional Material files' button in the manuscript submission process. The maximum file size for additional files is 20 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission. Any additional files will be linked into the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the paper. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided.

Authors should mention the following information for all additional material at the end of the document in a separate section:

  • File name
  • File format (include correct file extension and a URL of an appropriate viewer if format is unusual)
  • Title of data
  • Description of data

Additional data files should be referenced clearly by file name within the text of the article, e.g. 'See additional file 1: Movie1 for the original data used to perform this analysis'.

Additional file formats

Preferably, additional files should be in usual file formats performing on widely usable and available tools and platforms. Avoid platform-specific file formats. The following are examples of suitable formats.

Additional documentation
PDF (Adobe Acrobat)

Animations
SWF (Shockwave Flash)

Movies
MOV (QuickTime)
MPG (MPEG)

Tabular data
XLS (Excel spreadsheet)
CSV (Comma separated values)

Style and Language

Herbert Publications accept manuscripts written only in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture. Gene, scientific names should be in italic, but protein products should be in plain type. There are no frontiers on the length of articles submitted, but authors are encouraged to be concise for the interest of readers. There is no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files that can be included with each article online. Figures and tables should be sequentially referenced. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article. Herbert Publications will not edit submitted manuscripts for style or language; reviewers may advise rejection of a manuscript if it is compromised by grammatical errors. Authors are advised to write admissible and to be checked by co-authors (if any) before submission. In-house copyediting will be minimal. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of a copyediting service.

Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF.
Genes, mutations, genotypes, and alleles should be indicated in italics, and authors are required to use approved gene symbols, names, and formatting. Protein products should be in plain type.

Copyrights

According to Herbert Publications online copyright and license rules (Creative Commons Attribution License), the authors are the copyright holders for all articles in HOAJ Online (Journal Name) and have granted the right to reuse, reproduce or disseminate the article.