1. Scope
2. Categories of papers
3. Manuscript preparation guidelines
4. Abbreviations and units
5. Submission
6. Reviewing process
7. Publication
8. Fees and charges

1. Scope

Plant Biotechnology (ISNN 0289577) publishes previously unpublished basic and applied research that provides new insights into plant science at the cellular, tissue, organ, and organismal levels. We welcome submissions from a wide range of plant biology, related to molecular and cell biology, physiology, genetics, breeding, tissue culture, cellular and metabolic engineering, transgenic and genome-editing technologies, synthetic biology, and bioinformatics. Plant Biotechnology also accepts submissions regarding novel methods and tools which are useful for basic and applied research.

2. Categories of papers

2-1. Review
2-2. Mini Review
2-3. Original Paper
2-4. Short Communication
2-5. Note

The journal accepts five categories of papers, provided the information has not been previously published: Review, Mini Review, Original Paper, Short Communication, and Note. There is a standard number of printed pages for each category. As a rough guide, if there are no figures or tables on a page, the word number will be approximately 900 per page.

2-1. Review

A Review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of current research in plant science. We accept submissions from members of the Japanese Society for Plant Biotechnology (JSPB), although submissions from non-members will also be considered if they are invited by the Editor-in-Chief. A Review should present a unique perspective on the topics and be well supported with relevant literature. The length should be no more than 10 printed pages.

2-2. Mini Review

Like Reviews, Mini Reviews may be submitted by members of the JSPB, and manuscripts from non-members will be considered if they are invited by the Editor-in-Chief. A Mini Review should be shorter than a Review, at no more than six printed pages.

2-3. Original Paper

An Original Paper should provide novel insights into biological processes of plants, and/or present novel approaches, methods, tools, or resources enabling the development of plant biotechnology. The length can be up to six printed pages.

2-4. Short Communication

A Short Communication contains new findings attracting exceptional interest, which require relatively rapid review and publication. Manuscripts should be organized according to the style of an Original Paper, but not divided into headed sections. The length should be no more than four printed pages.

2-5. Note

A Note contains original findings about biological mechanisms or substantial improvement in methods or tools, even if they do not provide information as complete as that in an Original Paper. Manuscripts should not be divided into headed sections, and the length should be no more than four printed pages.

3. Manuscript preparation guidelines

3-1. Overview
3-2. File format
3-3. Organization of manuscript
3-4. Title page
3-5. Second page
3-6. Abstract
3-7. Key words
3-8. Main text
3-9. Accession numbers
3-10. Author contribution
3-11. Funding
3-12. Conflict of interest and supplementary files
3-13. References
3-14. Tables
3-15. Figures
3-16. Supplementary information

3-1. Overview

The manuscript should be accurate, concise, and clear throughout. The preferred font is Times New Roman. The first line of the first paragraph in each section should be left-justified. We recommend that authors refer to the latest issue of Plant Biotechnology to view the standard format. If the manuscript does not follow the format specified in the following guidelines, the editorial board may ask authors to resubmit the manuscript after re-formatting.

3-2. File format

Main document: DOC (.doc) or DOCX (.docx) file.

Tables: DOC (.doc) or DOCX (.docx) file, or Excel file (.xls or .xlsx). Tables formatted in .doc/.docx can be included in the manuscript file.

Figures: TIF, JPG or PDF file. Supplementary files: PDF or movie (mp4, avi or mov) file.

3-3. Organization of manuscript

Review and Mini Review

• Title (first) page
• Second page
• Abstract
• Key words
• Main text starting from the Introduction section
• Acknowledgements
• Author contribution
• Funding
• Conflict of interest
• Description of supplementary files
• References
• Tables
• Figure legends
• Figures
• Supplementary files

Original Paper

• Title (first) page
• Second page
• Abstract
• Key words
• Introduction
• Materials and methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Accession numbers
• Acknowledgements
• Author contribution
• Funding
• Conflict of interest
• Description of supplementary files
• References
• Tables
• Figure legends
• Figures
• Supplementary files

Short Communication and Note

• Title (first) page
• Second page
• Abstract
• Key words
• Main text
• Accession numbers
• Acknowledgements
• Author contribution
• Funding
• Conflict of interest
• Description of supplementary files
• References
• Tables
• Figure legends
• Figures -Supplementary files

3-4. Title page

The title page should include the following elements in the specified order. Authors can use the second page if these elements exceed one page.

1. Title: The title should be concise and informative, depicting the findings or conclusion of the study. Avoid including any abbreviations, equations, or chemical formulae.
2. Names of all authors (full name)
3. Affiliation addresses of all authors: The affiliation should be described as simply as possible for postal mail to be delivered (e.g., Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara 630-0192, Japan).

3-5. Second page

The second page should include the following elements in the specified order.

1. Name, address, phone number, and email address of the corresponding author
2. Running title (not exceeding 60 characters including spaces)
3. Abbreviations
4. Footnotes (present address, etc.)

3-6. Abstract

The abstract should summarize the background, main findings, and key conclusion of the study, in a way that can be understood by readers in various fields. The length should not exceed 250 words.

3-7. Key words

Authors should provide up to five key words or phrases in alphabetical order, avoiding general words.

3-8. Main text

Reviews and Mini Reviews should start with an Introduction, followed by sections titled by authors. For Original Papers, the main text should include Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, and Discussion; Results and Discussion can be combined if authors consider that the text will be more easily understood by readers. Short Communications and Notes should not be divided into headed sections, and detailed information about materials and/or methods can be included in supplementary files.

Authors need to provide detailed information about materials and methods, with which readers can replicate the same experiments. It is essential to explain any modification of a published method that was important to obtain the data presented in the manuscript.

Abbreviations should be defined on first use. Below are the rules for citations:

1. Literature should be cited by author(s) and publication year. When there are more than two authors, only the first is named, followed by ‘et al.’ [e.g., (Bird 2002), (Cao and Jacobsen 2002), (Finnegan et al. 1996)]. 
2. Figures and tables should be written in full as ‘Figure’ and ‘Table’, respectively, in regular font (e.g., Figure 1B, left). When multiple figure panels are cited, separate each by a comma, with no insertion of ‘and’ (e.g., Figure 1A, B, C).
3. Online resources should be cited as follows: Figure was generated using FigTree [version 1.4.4, http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk (accessed Jul 30, 2021)].

3-9. Accession numbers

Sequences of genes, cDNAs, genomes, proteins, and sequencing reads should be registered in advance in INSDC organization databases (DDBJ, GenBank, or EMBL). Accession numbers should be provided in the manuscript.

3-10. Author contribution

The contribution of each author to the manuscript must be important enough to justify authorship. The authors hold responsibility for the major aspect of the presented research. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have made genuine contributions to the research, and have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript before submission. We recommend that all individuals designated as authors meet the criteria set out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

3-11. Funding

Authors should list full names of all funding sources and grant numbers, and unless the funders specify otherwise, they should follow this convention. When describing an individual as a recipient of specific funding, add the author’s initials after the funding source’s name or grant numbers [e.g., This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP12345678, JP98765432 (to AB), or This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI to AB (JP12345678 and JP98765432)]. Even if there is no funding supporting the presented research, provide a statement in this section.

3-12. Conflict of interest and supplementary files

Authors must disclose financial interests or connections that may cause bias in their work. They should describe relevant sources of funding, personal relationships, and academic competition. The corresponding author is responsible for disclosing all relevant commercial and other relationships of all authors. The presence of a conflict of interest does not prevent publication of an article in the journal. If authors have no conflict of interest, this should be stated as follows in this section: ‘No conflict of interest declared’. After the statement of conflict of interest, create a section to list all supplementary files with captions.

3-13. References

References should be listed alphabetically as follows.

Single author: 
Bird AP (2002) DNA methylation patterns and epigenetic memory. Genes Dev 16: 6-21

Two authors: 
Cao X, Jacobsen S (2002) Role of the Arabidopsis DRM methyltransferase in de novo methylation and gene silencing. Curr Biol 12: 1138-1144

Three authors and more: 
Finnegan EJ, Peacock WJ, Dennis ES (1996) Reduced DNA methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana results in abnormal plant development. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 93: 8449-8454

If there are more than ten authors, list the first ten, followed by ‘et al.’.

Chapter in a book: 
Ehrlich M (2002) DNA hypomethylation and cancer. In: Ehrlich M (ed) DNA Alterations in Cancer. Eaton Publishing, Natick, Massachusetts, pp 273-291

Book: 
Sager R (1972) Cytoplasmic Genes and Organelles. Academic Press, New York

Preprint: 
Premarathne MDGP, Fukutome N, Yamasaki K, Hayakawa F, Nagano AJ, Mizuno H, Ibaragi N, Nagano Y (2021) Elucidation of Japanese pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum De Candolle) domestication using RAD-Seq. Preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.29.424752v3

GitHub: 
Nick JD (2021) ORForise – Prokaryote Genome Annotation Comparison and Analysis Platform. GitHub: https://github.com/NickJD/ORForise (Accessed Jul 30, 2021)

Online resource: 
Shorthouse DP (2010) SimpleMappr, an online tool to produce publication-quality point maps. URL: https://www.simplemappr.net (accessed Jul 30, 2021)

3-14. Tables

Each table should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals (e.g., Table 1, Table 2) and presented on a separate page. Tables should have concise and descriptive headings without a period at the end, enabling readers to understand the content without referring to the main text. Further essential explanations can be described as footnotes. However, there is no need to indicate experimental conditions if provided in Materials and methods, or to explain abbreviations if defined in the text. In tables, standard deviation or standard error should be provided for values obtained by statistical analysis.

3-15. Figures

Each figure should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2), and presented on a separate page. All figures should be adjusted for size, enabling direct printing: No more than a width of 8.6 cm for single column and 17.8 cm for double column, and not higher than 24 cm. When a figure contains multiple panels, add alphabetical labels in capital and bold letters at point size 12 without parenthesis (A, B, C, etc.) at the left top corner of each panel.

Lines should be supplied as color, grayscale, or black-and-white drawings suitable for reproduction. Please use RGB rather than CMYK color. Halftone illustrations should be submitted as sharp, glossy, and high-quality photographic prints with 600-1200 ppi (dpi) resolution. Color illustrations should be at >300 ppi. Avoid using complex hatched patterns; instead, use simple patterns and color schemes consistently throughout figures. Consider using colors friendly to colorblind people.

Prepare figures at actual size, but the publisher reserves the right to reduce their size. Use a sans serif font, such as Arial, at point size 8; the font size should not be smaller than 6. Show scale bars clearly in photographs.

All graphs should have scale lines for X and Y axes. Letters and numbers need to be in point size not smaller than 6, ensuring the actual font size is larger than 2 mm.

Figure legends should provide stand-alone explanations, so that figures are understandable without referring to the main text. There is no need to describe experimental conditions if provided in Materials and methods, or to explain abbreviations if defined in the text.

Prior to submission, we recommend that authors use the Quick Check List (see 9) to examine whether your manuscript including figures/tables matches the journal format.

3-16. Supplementary information

Supplementary information can be figures, tables, datasets, methods, and videos. Cite all supplementary files in the main text (e.g., Supplementary Figure S1, Supplementary Table S1, Supplementary Dataset1), and list them after the statement of conflict of interest (3-12). No supplementary files will be edited at the editorial office, and authors are entirely responsible for the published content.

Authors can provide videos for any category of article including Reviews. Videos, preferably within 30-60 s and less than 10 MB, should be uploaded as .mp4, .avi or .mov files. We recommend that you create a separate DOC/DOCX file for supplementary video legends, rather than including them in the combined PDF file.

4. Abbreviations and units

Non-standard abbreviations should be defined in full on the second page (3-5).

SI units should be used [e.g., mg, g, kg, m, cm, mm, l (liter), ml, s (second), min (minute), h (hour), mol]. Authors can use non-SI units if they are conventionally used in the academic community and difficult to translate into SI units. However, avoid mixed use of units in different metric systems (e.g., kg/cm² and bar). Concentrations are expressed as μM or μg l^-1, but not μg/l. When describing values, insert a space before the unit (e.g., 2 m, 50 μM). However, for percentage or temperature values, no space is needed (e.g., 10%, 4°C).

5. Submission

5-1. Cover letter
5-2. Notes before submission
5-3. New submission
5-4. Revised manuscripts

5-1. Cover letter

A cover letter including the following information is essential for submission.

• Title of the manuscript
• Category (Review, Mini Review, Original Paper, Short Communication, or Note)
• A brief description of the novelty and main points of the research, and its contribution to the fields of plant science and/or plant biotechnology
• Recommended and/or opposed editors and reviewers
• Other important information, such as conflicts of interest

5-2. Notes before submission

Before starting submission, authors should read this instruction carefully. If the manuscript does not follow the format directed in the guidelines, the editorial office or the editorial board may ask authors to reformat the manuscript before sending it for peer review. Authors should also refer to the latest issue of Plant Biotechnology to view the standard format.

Manuscripts should be written in clear, concise, and grammatical English. Authors whose native language is not English are strongly advised to have their manuscript checked, before submission, by a native English speaker with experience in writing scientific manuscripts. This will greatly facilitate reviewing and publication after acceptance.

Authors can submit manuscripts that have been posted to preprint servers such as bioRxiv, although, at the time of submission, they need to declare this issue in the cover letter. After submission, other versions of the manuscript cannot be posted to the preprint server. Once the article has been published on the journal website, the preprint should be linked to the published article.

5-3. New submission

All manuscripts should be submitted at this web site:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pb
You need to create a user account, and obtain a User ID and Password. To start submission, choose ‘Author’ and then click ‘Start New Submission’.

After receiving the manuscript, the editorial office may ask authors to agree to pay the publication fee after acceptance. If authors do not agree, the manuscript will not proceed to the review process.

If you have any problem with submission, please contact the editorial office:
plant-biotech[at]bunken.co.jp
(Please replace [at] with @ when you send an email.)

5-4. Revised manuscripts

Authors will be asked to submit a revised manuscript together with responses to editor’s and reviewers’ comments within two months after receiving a revision request. If a revised version is not submitted within two months without the editor being notified of any reason, the authors will be considered to have withdrawn the manuscript. If the authors resubmit a revised version after more than two months, it will be treated as a new submission and may be assigned to a handling editor and referees different from those involved in the initial review.

6.Reviewing process

6-1. Journal policy
6-2. Peer review

6-1. Journal policy

Allegations of scientific misconduct or ethical violation with respect to manuscripts submitted to the journal will be investigated by the editorial board, and a course of action will be taken in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the JSPB.

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research, and that principles of ethical and professional conduct are followed, the manuscript should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent (if the research involves human participants), and a statement on animal welfare (if the research involves animals). The journal may ask the corresponding author to collect and provide documentation of compliance with ethical standards during peer review or after publication. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. Authors are responsible for false statements and failure in fulfilling the above-mentioned guidelines.

6-2. Peer review

As a general rule, manuscripts are reviewed by two referees and a handling editor. Plant Biotechnology uses a single-anonymized review process in which reviewers know authors, while authors do not know reviewers. A final decision will be made by the handling editor based on reviewers’ comments. Manuscripts that require revision will be returned to the authors with comments specifying the problems raised by reviewers and the handling editor. During the review, referees and the handling editor also examine whether the category is appropriate, and may ask authors to resubmit the manuscript by selecting another category.

7. Publication

7-1. Overview
7-2. Registration to institute repository
7-3. Photocopying

7-1. Overview

The JSPB owns the universal copyright of all materials accepted for publication in Plant Biotechnology. The article is distributed under the terms of Creative Commons License CC-BY. No use, distribution, or reproduction is permitted that does not comply with these terms.

After acceptance, authors are requested to submit electronic files of the manuscript in accordance with instructions by the editorial office. The corresponding author will receive a galley proof, on which any changes in the content will be made at the authors’ expense. Authors can order booklets of the issue in which their article is published. The price list and the order form will be provided to the corresponding author with the galley proof.

7-2. Registration to institute repository

Articles published in Plant Biotechnology can be registered to an institute repository without permission of the JSPB. Authors should explicitly indicate the bibliographic information of the article.

7-3. Photocopying

In order to photocopy any work described in published articles, you or your organization must obtain permission from the following organization delegated for copyright clearance by the copyright owner of this publication.

Japan Academic Association for Copyright Clearance, Inc.
Akasaka 9-6-41, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052, Japan

Fax: +81-3-3475-5619

Email: info[at]jaacc.jp
(Please replace [at] with @ when you send an email.)

8. Fees and charges

8-1. Publication charge
8-2. Page charge

8-1. Publication charge 

Publication charge is 40,000 Japanese Yen (JPY) per article. If the corresponding author is a member of the JSPB, this charge is exempted.

8-2. Page charge

Regular page charges are as follows:

1. Review, Mini Review, and Original Paper: 40,000 JPY per article up to the standard number of printed pages*.
2. Short Communication and Note: 30,000 JPY per article up to the standard number of printed pages*.

*Ten pages for Review, six pages for Mini Review and Original Paper, and four pages for Short Communication and Note.

If the article exceeds the standard number of pages, 15,000 JPY will be charged for each exceeding page. Plant Biotechnology publishes articles with no charge for color pages.