“Biopolymers and cell” covers a wide scope of problems related to molecular biology and genetics including structural and functional genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, biomedicine, molecular enzymology, molecular virology and immunology, theoretical bases of biotechnology, physics and physical chemistry of proteins and nucleic acids and bioorganic chemistry. Unpublished previously and completed experimental works drawn up as articles, reviews, short communications, materials from congresses and conferences, book reviews and creative portraits of scientists are published.

Biopolym. Cell is an open access journal. Articles published at Biopolymers and Cell are available online in open access immediately upon publication of the print version. The journal has neither article processing nor submission charges.

Since 2014, we publish papers in English only both in the printed and online versions of the journal (www.biopolymers.org.ua).

To submit your article, you need to send the following files to the email addresses: biopolym.cell@gmail.com and j_bpcell@imbg.org.ua:

1. The file of the manuscript of the article in English with two summaries in English and Ukrainian in *.doc or *.docx format, (family_name.doc). Insert illustrations and tables to this file after their citation with a resolution sufficient for viewing on the screen.
2. Moreover, all illustrations should be send in separate files in black-and-white (for the printed version) and color forms (for the online version) in one of the standard graphic formats (the rules are described below) (family_name_1.ppt, family_name_2.opg or family_name_3.psd etc) with high resolution (600 dpi).
3. The protocol of the ethical committee of your institution when using animal, cellular or human material.
4. File with information about the authors: family names, first names and paternal names (patronymics) of all authors and full postal addresses of their institution should be given, including post codes, in English and Ukrainian languages (family_name_auth.doc). The corresponding author/s should be indicated, including their e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers.
5. Authors are asked to sign an License Agreement. (more information at Editorial Polices)

We follow the rules approved by International Committee of medical journal Editors (ICMJE). (Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals)

"When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. All procedure must be included in the Materials and Methods section".

"Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. The requirement for informed consent should be included in the journal's instructions for authors. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article."

"Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion."

Biopolym. Cell requires all authors to disclose any financial conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Authors must declare any such conflict in the cover letter accompanying the manuscript and in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript itself. The corresponding author will be asked to sign a form on behalf of all the authors regarding potential conflicts of interest at the time of acceptance. This policy applies to all submitted research manuscripts and review material. Examples of statement language include: AUTHOR is an employee and shareholder of COMPANY; AUTHOR is a founder of COMPANY and a member of its scientific advisory board; This work was supported in part by a grant from COMPANY.

The editors reserve the right to return manuscripts that are not in accordance with the following instructions.

Length

The total character count for the entire paper, including the title page, abstracts in two languages (English and Ukrainian), tables, figure legends, and references) of an experimental article should not exceed 13 pages (27000 characters including spaces). The size of a review should not exceed 24 pages (50000 characters). For a short communication the maximum size is 6 pages (12000 characters).

Typing

The materials should be submitted in the Microsoft Word-supported format, page size of A4, book-oriented, font Times New Roman, at 14 point size, double line spacing.

Subdivision and formatting of the manuscript

Manuscripts should be subdivided into: Title page, Structured Abstract, “Introduction”, “Materials and Methods”, “Results and Discussion” with Figures, Legends to Figures, Tables, “Conclusions”, Acknowledgements, Funding, References. All pages should be numbered.

Title page:

• UDC (Universal Decimal Classification);
• Title;
• Authors: family names and initials of all authors;
• Author affiliation: Institution and complete address(es) with the postal code for each author;
• e-mail address of corresponding author;
• running head (short title) up to 50 characters

Structured abstract:

Abstract of an experimental article should be subdivided into Aim, Methods, Results, Conclusions. The total character count should not exceed 1500 characters including spaces, the title of an article, initials and family names of all authors and the keywords (no more than 6).

Figures

There must be not more than 6 figures in review or experimental article and not more 4 in short communication. Electronic images (figures and schemes) must be at a minimum resolution of 600 dpi for line drawings and 300 dpi for color or grayscale. pdf, ai, ppt, psd, opj, xls, and tiff file formats are acceptable. All the voluminous inscriptions on the figures must be replaced by numbers or lettering and their descriptions must be put into the captions. Authors are responsible for providing digital art that has been properly sized and cropped. Figures could be with the following size a single column width (8,5 cm) 1,5 column width (12 cm) and a full two-column width 17,5 cm. The abscissa and ordinate should be clearly labeled with appropriately sized type, and units of measurement must be given. Failure to comply with these specifications will require new figures and delay publication.

Figure legends

Provide these separately from figures.

Tables

The tables must have the heading and the serial number. The notes on the table are placed straight under the table.

Funding

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by comma and space. Where the research was supported by more than one agency, the different agencies should be separated by semi-colon, with “and” before the final funder. Thus: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number zzzz]; and the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number aaaa].

References

Authors should provide direct references to original research sources whenever it is possible. Authors are responsible for accuracy of the references. Only published papers, book and published (and accessible via Internet) material of the conferences may be cites in the reference list. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as “unpublished observations” with written permission from the source.

The references list is compiled in the order of citation. Source numbers are given in square brackets in the text (individual numbers or number groups like [1-3] are separated by a comma and a space) and in the form of a numbered list in the corresponding section of the manuscript. The use of hyperlinks in the references list is not allowed.

The references list is written in English. If the source name is originally written in Cyrillic, then transliteration should be applied to create a name written in Latin. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the style used in MEDLINE (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals).

If the list of references is compiled without the help of reference managers, then individual items are formed as follows.

Link to the journal article:

• Authors' surnames and initials are written in italics, the author's initials come after the author's surname and are written by themselves without full stops. The data of individual authors are separated by commas, with a full stop at the end. If the article has up to 4 authors, then we indicate all authors. If the article has more than 4 authors, then we indicate the authors as follows:
  3 first authors, comma, "et al.", comma, "and" last author.
• The title of the article is written in normal font, with a full stop at the end.
• The name of the source is written in italics, with a full stop at the end. Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the style used in MEDLINE (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals).
• Clarification of the source is written as follows:
  • year in normal font,
  • semicolon,
  • the volume number in bold, followed by without a space the journal number in parentheses,
  • colon,
  • page numbers separated by a short dash (not a hyphen), while in the number of the last page we delete all those numbers that coincide with the numbers in the corresponding positions in the number of the first page,
  • full stop.

Examples:

Link to the book:

• Authors' surnames and initials are written in italics, the author's initials come after the author's surname and are written by themselves without full stops. The data of individual authors are separated by commas, with a full stop at the end.
• The title of the book is written in normal font, with a full stop at the end.
• Space, short dash (not hyphen), space.
• City of publication, colon, space, name of publishing house (in quotes), comma, space, year of publication, semicolon, space, number of pages and the letter "p" (without space), full stop.

Example:

The articles are reviewed by two independent experts who are appointed by the editorial board (double blind reviewing process), more information at "Policies on Conflict of Interest". After that the corresponding author receives a copy of an article manuscript with reviewers remarks. Reprint version revised by the author and agreed with reviewers is considered the final one and must be signed by the reviewers and authors. After that the text, figures and tables replacements or modifications are prohibited. When publishing an article the editorial board follows the last version delivery date.

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent reviewers when they submit their manuscripts, but these suggestions may not be followed by the journal. Authors may also request the journal to exclude not more than two individuals or laboratories. The journal sympathetically considers such exclusion requests and usually honors them, but the editor's decision on the choice of peer-reviewers is final.

Our journal editors treat the submitted manuscript and all communication with authors and referees as confidential. Authors must also treat communication with the journal as confidential: correspondence with the journal, reviewers' reports and other confidential material must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission from the editors, whether or not the submission is eventually published.

Biopolym.cell requires all authors to disclose any financial conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Authors must declare any such conflict in the cover letter accompanying the manuscript and in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript itself. The corresponding author will be asked to sign a form on behalf of all the authors regarding potential conflicts of interest at the time of acceptance. This policy applies to all submitted research manuscripts and review material. Examples of statement language include: AUTHOR is an employee and shareholder of COMPANY; AUTHOR is a founder of COMPANY and a member of its scientific advisory board; This work was supported in part by a grant from COMPANY.

The papers are routinely scanned for plagiarism using free online plagiarism checker tools (http://www.articlechecker.com/ http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/ http://www.plagscan.com/ other)

Authors are asked to sign an License Agreement. Since 2015 all articles distributed under Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) it mean that Biopolymers and Cell readers are entitled to use, reproduce, disseminate or display these articles provided that:

1. the original authorship is properly and fully attributed;
2. the journal and publisher are attributed as the original place of publication with correct citation details given;
3. if an original work is subsequently reproduced or disseminated not in its entirety but only in part or as a derivative work this is clearly indicated;
4. more inforamtion at Creative Commons