The Open Natural Products Journal is
an Open Access online journal, which publishes Research
articles, Reviews and Letters in the field of natural product
research, aiming at providing the most complete and reliable
source of information on current developments in the field.
Manuscripts may be submitted directly to tonpj@benthamopen.org.
Each peer-reviewed article that is published in a Bentham
OPEN Journal is universally and freely accessible via
the Internet in an easily readable and printable PDF format.
ONLINE MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION: An online
submission and tracking service via Internet facilitates
a speedy and cost-effective submission of manuscripts.1
The full manuscript has to be submitted online via Bentham's
Content Management System (CMS) at http://www.bentham-editorial.org/
View
Instructions
Alternatively, you may also submit your full manuscript
by e-mail to tonpj@benthamopen.org
Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the
manuscript and should not be submitted by anyone on their
behalf. The principal/corresponding author will be required
to submit a Covering Letter along with the manuscript, on
behalf of all the co-authors (if any). The author(s) will
confirm that the manuscript (or any part of it) has not
been published previously or is not under consideration
for publication elsewhere. Furthermore, any illustration,
structure or table that has been published elsewhere must
be reported, and copyright permission for reproduction must
be obtained.
For all online submissions, please provide your complete
manuscript in the form of a single zipped folder containing
soft copies of all the materials (main text in MS Word or
Tex/LaTeX), figures / illustrations in TIFF, PDF or JPEG,
and chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (CDX) / ISISDraw
(TGF) as separate files, while a PDF version of the entire
manuscript must also be included, embedded with all the
figures / illustrations / tables / chemical structures etc.
A successful electronic submission of a manuscript will
be followed by a system-generated acknowledgement to the
principal/corresponding author within 72
hours of the dispatch of the manuscript. Any questions with
regards to the preparation of and submission of your manuscript
to the journal should be addressed to tonpj@benthamopen.org
and copied to managingeditor@benthamopen.org
NOTE: Any queries therein should be addressed
to oa@benthamscience.org
and copied to Jalil@benthamscience.org
Manuscript Preparation:
The manuscript should be written in English in a clear,
direct and active style. All pages must be numbered sequentially,
facilitating in the reviewing and editing of the manuscript.
For further convenience, the customer support team available
at Bentham Publishing Services (www.benthampublishingservices.com)
can provide assistance to authors for the preparation of
manuscripts.
Manuscript Length:
Research Articles: The total number of
words for a published research article is from 4000 to 8000
words.
Review Articles: The total number of words
for a published comprehensive review article article is
from 8000 to 40000 words, and for mini-review articles from
3000 to 6000 words.
Letter Articles: The total number of words
for a published letter/short communication article is from
3000 to 6000 words.
There is no restriction on the number of figures, tables
or additional files e.g. video clips, animation and datasets,
that can be included with each article online. Authors should
include all relevant supporting data with each article.
Manuscripts Published: The Journal accepts letters/
short communications, original research articles, and mini-
and full-length review articles written in English. Supplements,
proceedings of conferences and book reviews may also be
considered for publication.
Supplements/Single Topic Issues:
The journal also considers Supplements/Single topic issue
for publication. A Supplements/Single topic will be a collection
of review articles (minimum of 6, maximum of 20 articles)
based on a contemporary theme or topic of great importance
to the field. Mini-supplements consisting of between 3 to
5 articles are also welcome. The Guest Editors' main editorial
task is to invite the contributors to the Supplement and
to manage the peer review of submitted manuscripts. A short
summary or proposal for editing a supplement should be submitted
to the Editor-in-Chief at e-mail to tonpj@benthamopen.org
with a copy to specialissue@benthamopen.org
Conference Proceedings: For proposals to publish conference proceedings in this journal, please contact us at email: proceedings@benthamscience.org.
Open Access Book Reviews: This journal
publishes open access reviews on recently published books
(both print and electronic) relevant to the journal. Publishers
and authors of books are invited to contact our book reviews
editor at tonpj@benthamopen.org
with book review requests. All submitted books will be reviewed
by an independent expert in the field.
MANUSCRIPT SECTIONS FOR PAPERS: Manuscripts for
research articles and letters submitted to the respective
journals should be divided into the following sections;
however, there can be an extension in the number of sections
in review articles in accordance with the requirements of
the topic.
Covering letter
Title page
Abstract
Text organization
List of abbreviations (if any)
Conflict of interest (if any)
Acknowledgements (if any)
References
Appendixes
Figures/illustrations (if any)
Chemical structures (if any)
Tables and captions (if any)
Supportive/supplementary material (if any)
COVERING LETTER: It is a mandatory requirement
that a signed covering letter also be submitted along with
the manuscript by the author to whom correspondence is to
be addressed, delineating the scope of the submitted article
declaring the potential competing interests, acknowledging
contributions from authors and funding agencies, and certifying
that the paper is prepared according to the 'Instructions
for Authors'. All inconsistencies in the text
and in the reference section, and any typographical errors
must be carefully checked and corrected before the submission
of the manuscript. The article contains no such material
or information that may be unlawful, defamatory, fabricated,
plagiarized, or which would, if published, in any way whatsoever,
violate the terms and conditions as laid down in the agreement.
The authors acknowledge that the publishers have the legal
right to take appropriate action against the authors for
any such violation of the terms and conditions as laid down
in the agreement. Download
the Covering letter
TITLE: The title should be precise and
brief and must not be more than 120 characters. Authors
should avoid the use of non-standard abbreviations. The
title must be written in title case except for articles,
conjunctions and prepositions.
Authors should also provide a short ‘running title’.
ABSTRACT: The abstract should not exceed
250 words for review and research papers and should be limited
to only 150 words for letters, summarizing the essential
features of the article. The use of abbreviations should
be reduced to a minimum and the references should not be
cited in the abstract.
TEXT ORGANIZATION: The main text should
begin on a separate page and should be divided into separate
sections. For Research articles, the preparation of the
main text must be structured into separate sections as Introduction,
Materials and Methodology, Results, Discussion and Conclusion.
For Review and Letter articles, the manuscript should be
divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The
text may be subdivided further according to the areas to
be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgement
(if any) and Reference sections. The review article should
mention any previous important reviews in the field and
contain a comprehensive discussion starting with the general
background of the field. It should then go on to discuss
the salient features of recent developments. The authors
should avoid presenting material which has already been
published in a previous review. The authors are advised
to present and discuss their observations in brief. The
manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text and
10 pt Times New Roman fonts should be used. The full term
for an abbreviation should precede its first appearance
in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.
The reference numbers should be given in square brackets
in the text. Italics should be used for Binomial names of
organisms (Genus and Species), for emphasis and for unfamiliar
words or phrases. Non-assimilated words from Latin or other
languages should also be italicized e.g. per se, et
al. etc.
Greek Symbols and Special Characters: Greek
symbols and special characters often undergo formatting
changes and get corrupted or lost during preparation of
manuscript for publication. To ensure that all special characters
used are embedded in the text, these special characters
should be inserted as a symbol but should not be a result
of any format styling (Symbol font face) otherwise
they will be lost during conversion to PDF/XML2.
Authors are encouraged to consult reporting guidelines.
These guidelines provide a set of recommendations comprising
a list of items relevant to their specific research design.
Chemical equations, chemical names, mathematical usage,
unit of measurements, chemical and physical quantity &
units must conform to SI and Chemical Abstracts or IUPAC.
All kinds of measurements should be reported only in International
System of Units (SI).
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: If abbreviations
are used in the text either they should be defined in the
text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be
provided.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Financial contributions
to the work being reported should be clearly acknowledged,
as should any potential conflict of interest.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Please acknowledge anyone
(individual/company/institution) who has contributed to
the study by making substantial contributions to conception,
design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation
of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript
or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Please list the source(s) of funding for the study, for
each author, and for the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements
section.
REFERENCES: References must be listed in
the ACS Style only. All references should be numbered sequentially
[in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same
numerical order in the reference section. The reference
numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully
formatted before submission.
See below few examples of references listed in the ACS Style:
Journal Reference:
[1] Bard, M.; Woods, R.A.; Bartón, D.H.; Corrie,
J.E.; Widdowson, D.A. Sterol mutants of Saccharomyces
cerevisiae: chromatographic analyses. Lipids,
1977, 12(8), 645-54.
Book Reference:
[2] Crabtree, R.H. The Organometallic Chemistry of the
Transition Metals, 3rd ed.; Wiley & Sons: New York,
2001.
Book Chapter Reference:
[3] Wheeler, D.M.S.; Wheeler, M.M. In Studies in Natural
Products Chemistry; Atta-ur-Rahman, Ed.; Elsevier Science
B. V: Amsterdam, 1994; Vol. 14,
pp. 3-46.
Conference Proceedings:
[4] Jakeman, D.L.; Withers, S.G.E. In Carbohydrate Bioengineering:
Interdisciplinary Approaches, Proceedings of the 4th
Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting, Stockholm, Sweden,
June 10-13, 2001; Teeri, T.T.; Svensson, B.; Gilbert, H.J.;
Feizi, T., Eds.; Royal Society of Chemistry: Cambridge,
UK, 2002; pp. 3-8.
URL(Web Page):
[5] National Library of Medicine. Specialized information
services: Toxicology and environmental health. http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/Tox/ToxMain.html
(accessed May 23, 2004).
Patent:
[6] Roy, R. Insect repellent. U.S. Patent 20026441034, August
27, 2002.
Thesis:
[7] Kirby, C.W. Thesis, University of Waterloo, 2000.
E-citations:
[8] Citations for articles/material published exclusively
online or in open access (free-to-view) , must contain the
exact Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s),
except those posted on an author’s Web site unless
editorially essential, e.g. ‘Reference: Available
from: URL’.
Some important points to remember:
*All references must be complete and accurate.
*All authors must be cited and there should be no use of
the phrase et al. (the term “et al.”
should be in italics).
*Online citations should include the date of access.
*Journal abbreviations should follow the Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
*Take special care of the punctuation convention as described
in the above-mentioned examples.
*Avoid using superscript in the in-text citations and reference
section.
*Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications
(which can only be included if prior permission has been
obtained) should not be given in the reference section but
they may be mentioned in the text and details provided as
footnotes.
*The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote
(version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10)
when formatting their reference list, as this allows references
to be automatically extracted.
APPENDIXES: In case there is a need to
present lengthy, but essential methodological details, use
appendixes, which can be a part of the article. An appendix
must not exceed three pages (Times New Roman, 12 point fonts,
900 max. words per page).The information should be provided
in a condensed form, ruling out the need of full sentences.
A single appendix should be titled APPENDIX, while more
than one can be titled APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, and so on.
FIGURES/ILLUSTRATIONS: The authors should
provide the illustrations as separate files, as well as
embedded in the text file, numbered consecutively in the
order of their appearance. Each figure should include a
single illustration. No charges will be levied on the use
of color figures except in the reprints. Each figure should
be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space
surrounding the illustration.
If a figure consists of separate parts, it is important
that a single composite illustration file be submitted,
containing all parts of the figure.
Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate,
as well as high-resolution component files.
Scaling/Resolution:
For Line Art image type, which is generally
an image based on lines and text and does not contain tonal
or shaded areas, the preferred file format is TIFF or EPS,
with colour mode being Monochrome 1-bit or RGB, in a resolution
of 900-1200 dpi.
For Halftone image type, which is generally a continuous
tone photograph and contains no text, the preferred file
format is TIFF, with colour mode being or RGB or Grayscale,
with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.
For Combination image type, which is generally an image
containing halftone in addition to text or line art elements,
the preferred file format is TIFF, with colour mode being
or RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 500-900 dpi.
Formats:
For illustrations, the following file formats are
acceptable:
• Illustrator
• EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
• PDF (also especially suitable for
diagrams)
• PNG (preferred format for photos
or images)
• Microsoft Word (version 5 and above;
figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (figures must be a single
page)
• TIFF
• JPEG (conversion should be done
using the original file)
• BMP
• CDX (ChemDraw)
• TGF (ISISDraw)
Bentham OPEN does not process
figures submitted in GIF format.
If the large size of TIFF or EPS figures acts as an obstacle
to online submission, authors may find that conversion to
JPEG format before submission results in significantly reduced
file size and upload time, while retaining acceptable quality.
JPEG is a 'lossy' format, however. In order to maintain
acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files
are saved at High or Maximum quality.
Files should not be compressed with tools such as Zipit
or Stuffit prior to submission as these tools will in any
case produce negligible file-size savings for JPEGs and
TIFFs, which are already compressed.
Please do not:
1. Supply embedded graphics in your word processor (spreadsheet,
presentation) document;
2. Supply files that are optimized for screen use (like
GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
3. Supply files that are too low in resolution;
4. Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for
the content.
Image Conversion Tools:
There are many software packages, many of them freeware
or shareware, capable of converting to and from different
graphics formats, including PNG.
Good general tools for image conversion include GraphicConverter
on the Macintosh, PaintShop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick,
which is available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.
Note that bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be
converted to EPS, since this will result in a much larger
file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP, with
no increase in quality. EPS should only be used for images
produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator
or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can be saved
in, or exported as, EPS format. In case the images have
been originally prepared in an Office application, such
as Word or PowerPoint, then the original Office files should
be directly uploaded to the site, instead of being converted
to JPEG or another format that may be of low quality.
Chemical Structures: Chemical structures
MUST be prepared according to the guidelines below.
Structures should be prepared in ChemDraw and provided
as separate file, submitted both on disk and in printed
formats.
Structure Drawing Preferences:
[As according to the ACS style sheet]
Drawing Settings:
Chain angle 120°
Bond spacing 18% of
width
Fixed length 14.4
pt (0.500cm, 0.2in)
Bold width
2.0 pt (0.071cm, 0.0278in)
Line width 0.6
pt (0.021cm, 0.0084in)
Margin width 1.6 pt
(0.096cm)
Hash spacing 2.5 pt (0.088cm,
0.0347in)
Text settings:
Font
Times New
Roman
Size
8 pt
Under the Preference Choose:
Units
points
Tolerances 3
pixels
Under Page Setup Use:
Paper
US letter
Scale
100%
TABLES:
*Data Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word table
format.
*Each table should include a title/caption being explanatory
in itself with respect to the details discussed in the table.
Detailed legends may then follow.
*Table number in bold font i.e. Table 1,
should follow a title. The title should be in small case
with the first letter in caps. A full stop should be placed
at the end of the title.
*Tables should be embedded in the text exactly according
to their appropriate placement in the submitted manuscript.
*Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct
by ensuring that the borders of each cell are displayed
as black lines.
*Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals sequentially
in order of their citation in the body of the text.
*If a reference is cited in both the table and text, please
insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the
numbered reference in the text.
*Tabular data provided as additional files can be submitted
as an Excel spreadsheet.
SUPPORTIVE/SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: We do
encourage to append supportive material, for example a PowerPoint
file containing a talk about the study, a PowerPoint file
containing additional screenshots, a Word, RTF, or PDF document
showing the original instrument(s) used, a video, or the
original data (SAS/SPSS files, Excel files, Access Db files
etc.) provided it is inevitable or endorsed by the journal's
Editor.
Published/reproduced material should not be included unless
you have obtained written permission from the copyright
holder, which must be forwarded to the Editorial Office
in case of acceptance of your article for publication.
Supportive/Supplementary material intended for publication
must be numbered and referred to in the manuscript but should
not be a part of the submitted paper. In-text citations
as well as a section with the heading "Supportive/Supplementary
Material" before the "References" section
should be provided. Here, list all Supportive/Supplementary
Material and include a brief caption line for each file
describing its contents.
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 only on
our Web site. Please also make sure that each additional
file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload
linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet). Supportive/
Supplementary material must be provided in a single zipped
file not larger than 4 MB.
Authors must clearly indicate if these
files are not for publication but meant for the reviewers'/editors'
perusal only.
PERMISSION FOR REPRODUCTION: Published/reproduced
material should not be included unless you have obtained
written permission from the copyright holder, which should
be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance
of your article for publication.
For obtaining permission for reproducing any material published
in an article by Bentham Science Publishers, please fill
in the request FORM
and send to tonpj@benthamopen.org
for consideration.
AUTHORS AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS:
The author will be required to provide their full names,
the institutional affiliations and the location, with an
asterisk in front of the name of the principal/corresponding
author. The corresponding author(s) should be designated
and their complete address, business telephone and fax numbers
and e-mail address must be stated to receive correspondence
and galley proofs.
REVIEWING AND PROMPTNESS OF PUBLICATION:
All manuscripts submitted for publication will be immediately
subjected to peer-reviewing, usually in consultation with
the members of the Editorial Advisory Board and a number
of external referees. Authors may, however, provide in their
Covering Letter the contact details (including e-mail addresses)
of four potential peer reviewers for their paper. Any peer
reviewers suggested should not have recently published with
any of the authors of the submitted manuscript and should
not be members of the same research institution.
All peer-reviewing will be conducted via the Internet to
facilitate rapid reviewing of the submitted manuscripts.
Every possible effort will be made to assess the manuscripts
quickly with the decision being conveyed to the authors
in due course.
LANGUAGE AND EDITING: Manuscripts submitted
containing many English typographical errors will not be
published. Manuscripts which are accepted for publication
on condition that the written English submitted is corrected,
will be sent a quote by Eureka
Science, a professional language editing company. Authors
from non-English language countries who have poor English
language written skills, are advised to contact the language
editing company prior to submitting their manuscript to
the journal. Please contact Eureka
Science for a language editing quote at e-mail: info@eureka-science.com
stating the total number of words of the article to be edited.
PROOF CORRECTIONS: Authors are required
to proofread the PDF versions of their manuscripts before
submission. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should
be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned
within 48 hours. Major changes are not
acceptable at the proof stage. If unable to send corrections
within 48 hours due to some reason, the
author(s) must at least send an acknowledgement on receiving
the galley proofs or the article will be published exactly
as received and the publishers will not be responsible for
any error occurring in the manuscript in this regard.
The corresponding author will be solely responsible for
ensuring that the revised version of the manuscript incorporating
all the submitted corrections receives the approval of all
the authors of the manuscript.
COPYRIGHT: Authors who publish in Bentham
OPEN Journals retain copyright to their work. Submission
of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that
all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Covering
Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of
publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have
not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted
or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden,
and by submitting the article for publication the authors
agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate
action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated
information is discovered. Once submitted to the journal,
the author will not withdraw their manuscript at any stage
prior to publication.
Articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution non-commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/)
which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution
and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work
is properly cited.
PUBLICATION FEES: The publication fee
details for each article published in the journal are given
below:
Letters: The publication fee for each published
Letter article submitted is US $600.
Research Articles: The publication fee
for each published Research article is US $800.
Mini-Review Articles: The publication fee
for each published Mini-Review article is US $600.
Review Articles: The publication fee for
each published Review article is US $900.
Book Review: The open access fee for a
published book review is US $450.
Once the paper is accepted for publication, the author will
receive by email an electronic invoice. The fee form is
also available on the Web site at www.benthamscience.com/open/feeform
MEMBERSHIP: Join as a member of Bentham Open today
to obtain great discounts on your article publication fees!
For details click
here.
REPRINTS: High quality printed reprints
of published articles are available for purchase, if ordered,
with a minimum number of 100 reprints.
1 The submission process
is compatible with version 3.0 or later of Internet Explorer
and Netscape Navigator, and with most other modern Web browsers.
It can be used from PC, Mac, or Unix platforms.
2 In this connection, we
recommend the use of Microsoft Word version 2000 and above.
