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About

Biotechnology for Biofuels: Advancing biological systems for sustainable production of fuels, chemicals, and materials

Aims and scope

Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts  is an open access peer-reviewed journal featuring studies describing advancements in fundamental understanding, technological capabilities, and technoeconomic & life cycle assessment of the production of biofuels, biochemicals and biomaterials.

The journal emphasizes understanding and advancing the application of biotechnology, bioengineering, and genetics to improve plant, algae, and other carbonaceous feedstocks, as well as devised conversion systems. Their improvement is of critical relevance to the biological production of biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials derived from plant or aquatic biomass, intermediates derived from biomass, or CO2.

Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts  focuses on the following areas:

• Anaerobic digestion of waste

• Bacterial and fungal/yeast genetics, physiology, and metabolic engineering

• Biohydrogen and bioelectricity (fuel cells)

• Biological and chemical upgrading of biomass sugars, lignins and other biomass-derived intermediates

• Biomass pretreatment, fractionation, and extraction

• Bioprocess integration, biohybrid processes and technoeconomic analysis

• Cell free and immobilized enzyme processes

• Development of terrestrial plant and algal feedstocks

• Enzyme engineering, production, and analysis

• Fermentation, biocatalytic conversion, and reaction dynamics

• Life cycle assessment and environmental impact analysis

Why publish your article in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts?

  • With a reputation for high quality research, we rank within the top 15% of journals in Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology (journal citation reports), and our expanded scope now includes all aspects of biofuels, chemicals, and other bioproducts research.
  • Led by world-renowned Editors-in-Chief, our committed editorial team delivers a swift and rigorous peer review process, with a Managing Editor and a panel of over 45 Associate Editors.
  • Open access publication ensures that your article can be easily discovered, accessed, used, and shared, maximising your impact and acting as a springboard for further discovery.
  • We provide high levels of author satisfaction, with 91% of our published authors reporting that they would definitely or probably publish with us again.

Open access

All articles published by Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £2090.00/$2890.00/€2390.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts are included in:

  • CAS
  • Citebase
  • DOAJ
  • Embase
  • OAIster
  • PubMed
  • PubMed Central
  • Science Citation Index Expanded
  • SCImago
  • Scopus
  • SOCOLAR
  • Zetoc

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts operates a single-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous.

The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Reviews will be rapid and the suitability of a manuscript for publication will be assessed on the following criteria:

  • Is the manuscript’s scope appropriate for Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts? Will this paper be of interest to others in the field, either broadly or to those working on a closely related topic?
  • Does the manuscript communicate findings of sufficient significance (e.g., in quality or impact) to merit publication in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts?
  • If the research has been covered previously, does the work contain appropriate use and citation of a priori knowledge? Authors who are building upon their own published work should minimize self-citation, whilst making it clear how their submitted work extends previous findings.
  • Are experimental or analytical methods and approaches technically sound and are they adequately described? For example, have suitable controls been included and/or have sufficient replicates been run?
  • Are conclusions appropriately supported by presented data or analyses? For example, does the manuscript avoid over-interpreting the significance of presented results?
  • Is clarity of language sufficient to warrant review of manuscript as submitted? Manuscripts requiring extensive language editing, but otherwise meeting scientific criteria, may be returned to authors as an “open reject” for being insufficiently prepared, with encouragement to resubmit once re-written to strengthen exposition clarity.

Overseen by the Editors-in-Chief, Jean-Marie Francois, Michael Himmel, Debra Mohnen and Seema Singh, Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts is supported by the Managing Editor, Roman Brunecky, and an expert panel of Section and Associate Editors, who are responsible for peer-review and editorial decision making.



Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts

Articles in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts  should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Biotechnol Biofuels [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies.

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. 

Speed of publication

Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.