Guidelines for Authors

Pre-Submission Inquiry:

• Authors uncertain about the suitability of their manuscript for JIHR may opt for a pre-submission inquiry. This service provides preliminary feedback on manuscript compatibility with the journal’s scope, potential issues with ethics, and recommendations for Special Issues or expedited review if findings are time-sensitive.

Manuscript Types:

JIHR has no restrictions on the maximum length of manuscripts, provided that the text is concise and comprehensive. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. JCM requires that authors publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible (see the guidelines on Supplementary Materials and references to unpublished data).

Manuscripts submitted to JIHR should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are listed below and a comprehensive list of article types can be found here—please note that not all article types are available for all disciplines.

• Article: These are original research manuscripts. The work should report scientifically sound experiments and provide a substantial amount of new information. The article should include the most recent and relevant references in the field. The structure should include an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions (optional) sections.

• Review: Reviews offer a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature within a field of study, identifying current gaps or problems. They should be critical and constructive and provide recommendations for future research. No new, unpublished data should be presented. The structure can include an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Relevant Sections, Discussion, Conclusions, and Future Directions.

• A Scoping Review type can be submitted as a Review. The structure is similar to that of a review. Scoping reviews should strictly follow the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews checklist (https://www.prisma-statement.org/scoping) and submit the checklist as non-published material during submission. Templates for the flow diagram can be downloaded from the PRISMA website and the diagram should be included in the main text. We strongly encourage authors to register their detailed protocols, before data extraction commences, in a public registry such as the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/) or Inplasy (https://inplasy.com/). Authors must include a statement about following the PRISMA guidelines and registration information (if available) in the Methods section.

• Systematic Review: Systematic review articles present a detailed investigation of previous research on a given topic that use clearly defined search parameters and methods to identify, categorize, analyze, and report aggregated evidence on a specific topic. The structure is similar to a review; however, they should include a Methods section.

• Systematic reviews should strictly follow the PRISMA checklist (https://www.prisma-statement.org/prisma-2020-statement) and include a completed PRISMA flow diagram as part of the main text or Supplementary Materials. Templates for the flow diagram can be downloaded from the PRISMA website. We strongly encourage authors to register their detailed protocols before data extraction commences, in a public registry such as PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/). Authors must include a statement about following the PRISMA guidelines and registration information (if available) in the Methods section.

Manuscript Submission

• Submissions should be made through email at jihr@biihr-bd.org. Authors should use the provided Microsoft Word or LaTeX templates to ensure uniform formatting and ease the review process.

Submission Checklist

Welcome to the submission page of our journal. Please follow the checklist below to ensure your manuscript is properly prepared and ready for submission:

1. Cover Letter
   A brief cover letter should accompany your submission, introducing the manuscript and explaining its relevance to the journal’s scope.

2. Title Page
   The title page must include the following:

   • Title: The full title of your manuscript.

   • Author(s): Names and affiliations of all authors.

   • Correspondence: Contact details for the corresponding author.

   • Short Title: A brief version of the title for running heads.

   • Acknowledgments: Any acknowledgments for support or contributions.

   • Declarations: Ethical considerations regarding the research.

   • Conflict of Interest: A statement regarding any conflicts of interest.

   • Data Availability Statement: Information about data availability and access.

   • Funding sources supporting the research

3. Blinded Manuscript
   Submit the manuscript with all identifying information removed for a double-blinded peer review process. This ensures impartial evaluation.

Formatting Guidelines:

• Font: Times New Roman, 12-point, single-spaced

• Margins: 1-inch margins on all sides

• Page Numbers: Page numbers should appear in the bottom right corner of each page

• Citation Style: All references should follow APA-7 guidelines for citations and references.

Preparing Figures, Schemes, and Tables

For submissions to JIHR, the following guidelines must be followed when preparing and submitting figures, schemes, and tables:

1. Placement and Numbering

   • Figures, schemes, and tables should be inserted directly into the manuscript close to their first citation.

   • They must be numbered in the order of their appearance in the text (e.g., Figure 1, Scheme 1, Figure 2, Scheme 2, Table 1, etc.).

2. Titles and Captions

   • Each figure, scheme, and table should have a concise explanatory title and a detailed caption that explains the content clearly.

3. Tables

   • All table columns must have clear, explanatory headings.

   • For larger tables, smaller fonts may be used to ensure readability, but the font size should not be less than 8 pt.

   • Tables should be created using the Table option in Microsoft Word to facilitate the copy-editing process.

4. Figures and Schemes

   • Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel).

   • There are no additional costs for publishing full-color graphics.

5. Multimedia Files

   • JIHR can publish multimedia files within the articles or as supplementary materials. Please contact the editorial office for further guidance on how to submit multimedia content.

Research and Publication Ethics

Research Ethics
Ethical considerations are paramount in research, and all authors are required to adhere to high standards of integrity and accountability in their work. This section provides detailed guidelines regarding research involving human subjects, animal studies, and vulnerable groups.

Research Involving Human Subjects

• Institutional Review Board Statement: When reporting on research involving human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must ensure that the study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki (1975, revised in 2013). Ethical approval must be obtained from a local Institutional Review Board (IRB) or another appropriate ethics committee before initiating research.

  • Example Statement: "The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code) on [date of approval]."

  • For non-interventional studies (e.g., surveys, questionnaires), authors must ensure participants are fully informed about the study’s objectives, data usage, and any associated risks. If ethical approval is not required, the authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee or cite relevant national or local legislation.

Informed Consent Statement

• Manuscripts that involve human participants, human data, or human tissues must include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained.

  • Example Statement: "Informed consent for participation was obtained from all subjects involved in the study."

  • If written consent is not required or verbal consent was obtained, the authors should explain the rationale and provide a copy of the script used for verbal consent.

  • For studies that include identifying patient or participant information (e.g., images, videos), written informed consent for publication must be obtained and a blank version of the form (without personal identifiers) submitted with the manuscript.

Requirements for Studies on Vulnerable Groups and Organ Transplants

• Research involving vulnerable groups (e.g., children, elderly, disabled individuals) will undergo additional review by the editorial office. Authors must provide documentary evidence, including consent forms and ethics board approval.

• For studies involving human organ transplants, authors must specify the institutions from which the organs or tissues were sourced. MDPI does not accept studies involving organs from illegal or unethical sources.

• Ethical guidelines for organ transplant research must be followed, and authors should consult resources from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

Ethical Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research

• Studies involving animals must adhere to the '3Rs' ethical principles:

  • Replacement: Use alternatives to animals when possible.

  • Reduction: Minimize the number of animals used.

  • Refinement: Improve experimental procedures to reduce animal suffering.

• Authors must include details about the housing, husbandry, and pain management of animals. The ARRIVE guidelines should be followed for reporting animal experiments, and the checklist must be submitted with the manuscript.

• Ethical approval is required for studies involving vertebrates or higher invertebrates, and authors must include the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board in the ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ section.

  • Example Statement: "The study was conducted in accordance with national and institutional regulations, and approval was granted by the Animal Ethics Committee (Project ID: XXX) on [date]."

Additional Ethical Considerations

• If no ethical approval is required by law or if an exemption is granted, the author must provide an explanation in the manuscript.

• For studies involving client-owned animals, informed consent from the animal owner must be obtained, and the manuscript must report this consent. Authors must also ensure high standards of veterinary care and that any potential risks are communicated to the owners.

Ethical Standards

• Manuscripts will be reviewed for ethical compliance by the editorial team. Authors may be asked to provide additional documentation or clarification if necessary.

• Submissions must follow the ethical guidelines outlined above, and the editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not meet these standards or that involve unethical practices.

Publication Ethics Statement

JIHR fully adhere to its Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines. The editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of JIHR take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy.

Authors wishing to publish their papers in JIHR must abide by the following:

• Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.

• Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.

• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.

• Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal, if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.

• Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.

• The journal accepts exact translations of previously published work. All submissions of translations must conform with our policies on translations.

• If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken. Please refer to our policy regarding Updating Published Papers.

• Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license. For further information, see the Rights and Permissions page.

• Plagiarism, data fabrication, and image manipulation are not tolerated.

• Plagiarism is not acceptable in JIHR submissions. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.

• Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.

• Allsubmissions are checked for plagiarism using the industry-standard software iThenticate. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place and action will be taken in accordance with our policies.

• Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image.

• Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness, or color balance to obscure, eliminate, or enhance some information.

• If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper.

• Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors' institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with JIHR.

Citation Policy

• Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing), the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate, permission is obtained.

• Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

• Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.

• Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.

• Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

• In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations.” This condition also applies to an author’s own work. COPE has produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.

Reviewer Suggestions

During the submission process, please suggest three potential reviewers with the appropriate expertise to review the manuscript. The editors will not necessarily approach these referees. Please provide detailed contact information (address, homepage, phone, e-mail address). The proposed referees should neither be current collaborators of the co-authors nor have published with any of the co-authors of the manuscript within the last three years. Proposed reviewers should be from different institutions than the authors. You may identify appropriate Editorial Board members of the journal as potential reviewers. You may suggest reviewers from among the authors that you frequently cite in your paper.

Extensive English Editing

It is the authors’ responsibility to submit their work in correct English. The APC includes only minor English editing, conducted by native English speakers. The APC does not include extensive English editing. If extensive editing is required, your paper could be returned to you at the English editing stage of the publication process. This could delay the publication of your work. You may have your work reviewed by an experienced English-speaking colleague or use a paid language-editing service before submitting your paper for publication. We offer rapid English editing, completed in 1 day.

Editorial Procedures and Peer Review

Pre-check

Immediately after submission, the journal’s Managing Editor will perform the technical pre-check to assess:

• Overall suitability of the manuscript to the journal/section/Special Issue;

• Manuscript adherence to high-quality research and ethical standards;

• Standards of rigor to qualify for further review.

The academic editor (i.e., the Editor-in-Chief in the case of regular submissions, the Guest Editor in the case of Special Issue submissions, or an Editorial Board member in the case of a conflict of interest and of regular submissions if the Editor-in-Chief allows) will be notified of the submission and invited to perform an editorial pre-check. During the editorial pre-check phase, the academic editor will assess the suitability of the submission with respect to the scope of the journal, as well as the overall scientific soundness of the manuscript, including the relevance of the references and the correctness of the applied methodology. Academic editors can decide to reject the manuscript, request revisions before peer review, or continue with the peer review process and recommend suitable reviewers.

Peer Review

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least two independent experts for peer review. A double-blind review is applied, where neither the authors' nor the reviewers' identities are known to each other. Peer review comments are confidential and will only be disclosed with the express agreement of the reviewer.

In the case of regular submissions, in-house assistant editors will invite experts, including recommendations by an academic editor. These experts may also include Editorial Board Members and Guest Editors of the journal. Potential reviewers suggested by the authors may also be considered. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past three years and should not currently work or collaborate with any of the institutions of the co-authors of the submitted manuscript.

Editorial Decision and Revision

All the articles, reviews, and communications published in BIIHR journals go through the peer review process and receive at least two reviews. The in-house editor will communicate the decision of the academic editor, which will be one of the following:

• Accept after Minor Revisions:
  The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.

• Reconsider after Major Revisions:
  The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.

• Reject and Encourage Resubmission:
  If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.

• Reject:
  The article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.

Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the Editorial Office of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments using an appeal form. Appeals can only be submitted following a “reject and decline resubmission” decision and should be submitted within three months from the decision date. Failure to meet these criteria will result in the appeal not being considered further. The Managing Editor will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to a designated Editorial Board Member. The Academic Editor being consulted will be asked to provide an advisory recommendation on the manuscript and may recommend acceptance, further peer review, or uphold the original rejection decision. This decision will then be validated by the Editor-in-Chief. A reject decision at this stage is final and cannot be reversed.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and publication on the www.biihr-bd.org website.