Instructions to Authors

Scope 

How we publish

Types of Manuscripts

Preparation of Manuscripts

Online Submission and Review of Manuscripts

Revised Manuscript

Proofs

Publication Ethics and the Use of AI

Authorship

Conflict of Interest

Publication Charges and Open Access

Availability of Data and Materials

Preprint policy

Presubmission Language Editing

Copyright

Scope

Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE) publishes leading original research at the interface between evolutionary biology and genomics. GBE’s scope embraces genome-wide evolutionary investigations at all taxonomic levels and for all forms of life—within populations or across domains. Its aims are to further the understanding of genomes in their evolutionary context and further the understanding of evolution from a genome-wide perspective. Manuscripts considered for publication report findings that concern: the evolution of genome diversity; population genomics; the structure, function, organisation and expression of genomes; comparative genomics and proteomics; and environmental genomic interactions. We also welcome articles on processes that affect evolution, such as recombination and mutation, as well as epigenetic evolution and emergent properties of genomes. Major evolutionary insights from the fields of computational biology, structural biology, developmental biology, and cell biology are also considered, as are theoretical advances in the field of genome evolution. Relevant methods and software programs addressing these topics are also appropriate. We also consider commentary on papers published in GBE and other journals.

How we publish

Genome Biology and Evolution is a peer reviewed fully open access journal publishing 12 issues per year online. All papers published in the Journal are made freely available online under open access publishing agreements, with applicable charges. Please refer to the open access section below.

Once a paper is accepted and the publishing agreement is signed, the Journal will publish the Accepted Manuscript version of the paper (before copyediting and review of the final proof) within one week on the Advance Access page. The Accepted Manuscript will be removed from Advance Access when the Version of Record of the paper (after copyediting and proof review process) is published in the currently open issue. Substantial changes to the published Accepted Manuscript may require a correction notice.

Types of Manuscripts

GBE considers the following kinds of manuscripts:

• Articles
• Letters
• Methods
• Perspectives
• Reviews
• Genome Resources

 

Table 1. Maximum word, figure and table counts for manuscript types.

Articles present analyses of genomic data or methods/software that allow for new insights from genome-scale data. Articles should be divided into the following sequence of headed sections: Abstract, Significance statement, Introduction, Results, Discussion, ​Materials and Methods, Data Availability. All supplementary information, including supplementary tables and supplementary figure legends, must be uploaded separately as "supplementary files" and not placed in the manuscript.

Letters provide the opportunity to present more limited analyses in a compact format, to discuss alternative interpretations of published data. We also welcome items of correspondence about articles previously published in GBE and other journals as a Letter; these manuscripts will be subject to peer review by two independent referees and the author(s) of the original manuscript. If accepted, the original author(s) will be given an opportunity to prepare a response if they wish. Letters should be divided into the following sequence of headed sections: Abstract, Significance Statement, Main Text, Data Availability.  All supplementary information, including supplementary tables and supplementary figure legends, must be uploaded separately as "supplementary files" and not placed in the manuscript. (See Table 1 above for details.)

Methods present statistical, computational, or experimental approaches of broad interest to the evolution community. Method papers need to clearly demonstrate robustness and practical utility using computer simulations and/or data analysis. Methods papers may also include new data and interesting results, but new or revised methods are the primary focus. Comparison with current practices is particularly helpful to our readers. Methods should be divided into the following sequence of headed sections: Abstract, Significance Statement, Main Text, Data Availability. All supplementary information, including supplementary tables and supplementary figure legends, must be uploaded separately as "supplementary files" and not placed in the manuscript.  (See Table 1 above for details.)

Perspectives provide authors the opportunity to share their opinions and/or to engage in controversy on current topics in genome evolution. Perspectives do not report new data or results, and will be subject to standard peer review. Perspectives are often solicited by the Editors, and authors interested in contributing a manuscript of this type are invited to email a short proposal to the Editors-in-Chief. Perspectives should be divided into the following sequence of headed sections: Abstract, Significance statement, Main Text.  (See Table 1 above for details.)

Reviews in GBE should present a balanced and up-to-date view of advances in the field of genome evolution.  Reviews are often solicited by the Editors, but authors interested in contributing a manuscript of this type are invited to email a short proposal ahead to the Editors-in-Chief. Reviews will be subject to peer review, and invited reviews incur no publication charges. Reviews should be divided into the following sequence of headed sections: Abstract, Significance statement, Main Text.  Section headers may be included as needed and textboxes/glossaries may be used to explain important concepts to the non-specialist reader. Supplementary materials should be avoided where possible.  (See Table 1 above for details.)

Genome Resources describe substantial enhancement of genome resources for a species or clade. Genome Resource articles usually present newly sequenced genome assemblies from one or more species, and we also encourage submissions that describe new/updates to genome resource databases or tools used in genome assembly/annotation. Manuscripts must meet the criteria listed here, or under exceptional circumstances, authors should contact the Editors-in-Chief and justify deviations prior to submission:

• Sequenced organism(s) is of interest to a broad community of evolutionary biologists and details are included on species identification and deposition (where possible). The manuscript should include reference(s) to the nearest relatives with genome resources.
• The genome sequence(s) is from a species not currently found in online databases, or where the existing assembly is of sub-standard quality. We do not publish single bacterial genomes unless of exceptional value to the community, but we will consider collections of genomes from multiple strains.
• The genome is of sufficient quality, including robust estimates of contiguity (e.g., N50) and completeness (e.g., BUSCO) scores, and sequencing, assembly and annotation methodologies are well described. Bacterial contamination should be assessed for eukaryotes. In general, draft genomes are not accepted (exceptions may be made for eukaryotic species with very large genomes).
• Genome assembly statistics must be concisely summarized in a table (either in main text or supplement) so that readers can immediately assess the quality of the reported assembly(s).
• The genome is well annotated, and the raw reads, assembled genome, and predicted set of protein sequences are available at one of the INSDC databases (NCBI, DDBJ or ENA), with accession numbers included in the DATA AVAILABILITY section.
• The analyses (and tables/figures) focus on the quality of the genome and include only concise discussion of the insights to be gained from the new genome resources. Manuscripts with extensive evolutionary analyses based on the genome should be submitted as articles or letters.
• Authors must provide evidence that the Nagoya protocol was followed when samples were taken from a foreign country.

Genome Resources can contain only two ‘display items’ (Tables/figures) and should be partitioned into the following sequence of headed sections: Abstract, Significance Statement, Introduction, Results and Discussion, Materials and Methods and Data Availability. Manuscripts will be sent for external review at the discretion of the Editors, and a decision is usually rendered within 2-3 weeks for reports that conform to standards.  (See Table 1 above for details.)

Preparation of Manuscripts

General Format

Manuscripts should be initially submitted as a single PDF file with tables and figures in line with text, and with page and line numbering. Supplementary files/figures should not be included in the PDF, and should instead be uploaded using the relevant designation for supplementary files. Use double spacing (space between lines of type not less than 6 mm) throughout the manuscript and leave margins of 25 mm (1 inch) at the top, bottom and sides of each page. Please avoid footnotes. Type references in the correct order and in GBE style (see below). Type headings in the style of the journal.  When creating the PDF file from a standard processing package, it is important to select the option “embed all fonts” (or equivalent) to ensure mathematical symbols appear correctly.

LaTeX Submissions

If you are using LaTeX, then please note the following:

• Compile a PDF output using article.cls, follow the journal’s referencing system using \bibitem and the bibliography environment. Do not use locally-created macros or style files.
• Use common LaTeX tags like \ref, \cite, etc., for the automatic referencing to figures, tables and reference citations.
• Send us all supporting files (including any .bib files used) alongside the main .tex file. Only submit macros used in the manuscript, and do not submit entire macro libraries.

Revisions should be submitted with text, tables and figures as separate files meeting the quality guidelines below. Check the final copy of your paper carefully, as any spelling mistakes and errors may be translated into the typeset version.

Sections of the Manuscript

Title: The title should accurately reflect the paper’s content and contain 150 characters or less including spaces.

Authors and affiliations: Provide the name and institutional address of all authors, match addresses to names using superscript numbers.

Corresponding author: The name of the author to whom all correspondence is to be addressed should be indicated with an asterisk in the author line and specified as follows:

*Author for Correspondence: John Smith, Department of Science, University of Somewhere, Anytown, USA, telephone number, fax number, email address

Abstract: The first page of the manuscript should begin with the abstract, which should be a concise summary of the paper. Avoid reference citations in the Abstract; if mentioned, the full reference must be given.

Graphical abstract (optional): A graphical abstract can provide greater visibility of your work and increase the impact of your research, so you are encouraged to submit one as part of your article, in addition to the text abstract. The graphical abstract should be a newly designed, unique figure that clearly summarizes the focus and findings of your article. If your article is accepted, it will be published as part of your article online and in the PDF. The graphical abstract should be submitted for peer review as a separate file, selecting the appropriate file-type designation in GBE’s online submission system. The file should be clearly named, e.g., graphical_abstract.tiff. Please see technical requirements listed below.

Graphical abstract technical requirements:

• Size: 4x3 aspect ratio, 100x75mm or 4x3in minimum
• File type: TIF, EPS or editable PDF
• Resolution: 300-600dpi minimum
• Orientation: landscape
• Font: Use a sans serif font such as Arial, 12–16 points

Key-words: Up to six key words should be given below the abstract. Key words facilitate retrieval of articles by search engines, web directories and indexes; therefore, terms that are too general should be avoided. The selected key words should not repeat words given in the title. The aim is to assist potential readers to find the article by clearly and specifically describing its subject matter, including aspects of methodology or the theoretical framework.

Significance statement: The significance statement should report the importance of the study in the context of the field, and should be accessible to anyone with an undergraduate degree in science. In other words, the statement should avoid technical language/jargon. It should be no more than 2-3 sentences (150 words), and should NOT be a condensed version of the abstract/title. There are three parts to a successful significance statement: 1) a short description of what is already known and what knowledge is missing/what problem this study is trying to address (i.e. set the stage); 2) a statement of key finding(s) of the study; and 3) an explanation of how the finding(s) address the problem outlined in part 1.

Data Availability Statement (required): Please see description under ‘Availability of Data and Materials’. The statement must be added to the endmatter of your article.

References: Published articles and those in press (state the journal that has accepted them, provide a doi where possible) may be included. Do not include any reference cited only in Supplementary files.

In the text citation, a reference should be cited by author and date. Do not place text other than the author and date within the parentheses. No more than two authors may be cited per text citation; if there are more than two authors, use et al. in the text (unless more are necessary to distinguish between references). In the reference list, list all authors if the author total is five authors or fewer; with more than five list the first author (only) followed by et al.

At the end of the manuscript, the references should be typed in alphabetical order, with the authors' names, year, paper title, journal, volume number, inclusive page numbers, and name and address of publisher (for books only). The name of the journal should be abbreviated according to the World List of Scientific Periodicals. References should therefore be listed as follows:

• Cagan RH, Rhein LD. 1980. Biochemical basis of recognition of taste and olfactory stimuli. In: van der Starre H, editor. Olfaction and Taste VII. Oxford: IRL Press. p. 35-44.
• Marshall DA, Moulton DG. 1981. Olfactory sensitivity to alpha-ionone in humans and dogs. Chem Senses. 6:53-61.
• van der Starre H, editor. 1980. Olfaction and Taste VII. Oxford: IRL Press.

Citations to published datasets should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite: Author(s), Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier

• [dataset]* Burny C et al. 2020. Secondary evolve and re-sequencing: an experimental confirmation of putative selection targets without phenotyping. Dryad. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mkkwh70vs

The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

Avoid personal communications and mention of unpublished data.

References to websites should give authors (if known), title of cited page, URL in full, and the date the site was last accessed in parentheses.

Tables: Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. When submitting revisions, tables must be supplied in an editable format (.xlsx or .docx, for example) rather than an image. They should be self-explanatory and include a brief descriptive title. When submitting revisions, tables should be of such a size that they fit easily onto a journal page, the type area of which is 234 (height) x 185 mm (double column width) or 89 mm (single column width). Footnotes to tables indicated by lower case letters are acceptable, but they should not include extensive experimental details.

Illustrations: All illustrations (line drawings and photographs) must be referred to in the text (as Figure 1 etc.) and should be abbreviated to 'Fig. 1.' only in the figure legend. When submitting revisions, you will be required to submit images electronically in one of the following formats: .jpg, .gif, .tif, .pdf or .eps.

Each figure should be on a separate page and should be submitted at roughly final magnification. Use sans serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica in figures. Use uniform font size in each figure whenever possible and recall that labels should never smaller than 6 pt at final magnification.

Electronic submission of figures: Though initially the manuscript should be submitted as a single PDF, authors will need to be mindful of requirements for revisions as described here. Save figures at a resolution of at least 300 pixels per inch at the final printed size for color figures and photographs, and 600 pixels per inch for black and white line drawings. Color art must be submitted in CMYK rather than RGB format. Authors should be satisfied with the colors in CMYK (both on screen and when printed) before submission. Please also keep in mind that colors can appear differently on different screens and printers. Failure to follow these guides could result in complications and delays. Visit our page on preparing your manuscript for useful information on preparing your figures for publication.

Figure legends: Figure legends should start with a first sentence that provides key insight and then include additional sentences with further information. Legends should be included at the end of the manuscript text. Define all symbols and abbreviations used in the figure. Common abbreviations and others in the preceding text need not be redefined in the legend.

Color Figures: All figures submitted to the journal in color will be published in color online at no cost to authors.

Permissions for Illustrations and Figures: Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared and if necessary paid for by the author; this includes applications and payments to DACS, ARS, and similar licensing agencies where appropriate. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the editors. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions. Oxford Journals can offer information and documentation to assist authors in securing print and online permissions: please see the Guidelines for Authors section. Information on permissions contacts for a number of main galleries and museums can also be provided. Should you require copies of this, please contact the editorial office of the journal in question or the Oxford Journals Rights ([email protected]) department.

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, and photographs. 

Alt text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Funding: Details of all funding sources for the work should be given in the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following convention should be followed:

• The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health’ or simply 'National Institutes of Health' not ‘NCI' (one of the 27 sub institutions) or 'NCI at NIH Grant numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number ABX CDXXXXXX]’
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers ABX CDXXXXXX, EFX GHXXXXXX]’
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.
• Example: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AP50 CA098252 and CA118790 to R.B.S.R.]; and the Education Research Council [hfygr667789].
• Oxford Journals will deposit all NIH-funded articles in PubMed Central. See Complying with Funder Policies for details. Authors must ensure that manuscripts are clearly indicated as NIH-funded using the guidelines above.

Other Information

Conventions: In general, the journal follows the conventions of the CSE Style Manual (Council of Science Editors, Reston, VA, 2006, 7th ed.). Follow Chemical Abstracts and its indexes for chemical names. For guidance in the use of biochemical terminology follow the recommendations issued by the IUPAC-IUB Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature, as given in Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents, published by the Biochemical Society, UK. For enzymes use the recommended name assigned by the IUPAC-IUB Commission on the Biochemical Nomenclature, 1978, as given in Enzyme Nomenclature, published by Academic Press, New York, 1980. Where possible, use the recommended SI (Systéme International) units.

Genotypes should be italicized; phenotypes should not be italicized.

Abbreviations: Try to restrict the use of abbreviations to SI symbols and those recommended by the IUPAC-IUB. Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses after their first mention in the text. Standard units of measurements and chemical symbols of elements may be used without definition in the body of the paper.

Chemical Formulae and Mathematical Equations: Wherever possible, write mathematical equations and chemical formulae on a single line. Submit complicated chemical structures as artwork.

Samples Collected in the Field: We also expect that authors, whose research relies on samples collected in the field, will follow the principles of the Nagoya Protocol and other initiatives that seek to avoid the pitfalls of parachute science. To this end, we have added questions on this for the authors to fill in at the time of submission, and we invite authors to add a sentence on this topic in their materials & methods or acknowledgement section as appropriate.

Human and Animal Experiments: The editors draw the authors' attention to the Declaration of Helsinki for Medical Research involving Human Subjects. In addition, when reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

Crossref Funding Data Registry: In order to meet your funding requirements authors are required to name their funding sources, or state if there are none, during the submission process. For further information on this process or to find out more about CHORUS, visit the CHORUS initiative.

Online Submission and Review of Manuscripts

Manuscripts are submitted electronically. GBE is committed to fast first submission, and so we ask that you prepare three files in pdf format: 

• a cover letter that briefly provides the EiCs with context on your paper and its relevance to GBE readers. 
• a manuscript file that: 1) includes significance statement; 2) has the Material & Methods section after the Discussion; 3) includes tables and/or figures; 4) includes continuous line numbers; and 5) includes a Data Availability statement that points to a public data repository (ideally one that assigns a doi) for any large supplementary files. 
• a single pdf file of supplementary information (e.g., text, tables and figures) that fits on a standard page. 

To submit your manuscript to GBE, please visit the GBE submission portal and follow the instructions to log in.

Submission of a paper implies that it reports unpublished work and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (see below for preprint exception). Manuscripts that are within the scope of the journal are peer reviewed. GBE has a strong commitment to the rapid handling of submissions, and authors can expect a first decision on their submission within ~six weeks. 

GBE will consider for publication manuscripts that have been rejected following peer review by other top journals in the field and those that have been accepted by Peer Community In (PCI). We already have a direct transfer system with our sister journal, Molecular Biology and Evolution. Authors taking advantage of these options are required to include ALL previous reviews along with the authors’ responses to expedite the evaluation process and avoid duplication of effort by reviewers. Manuscripts should have been fully revised based upon reviewers’ comments and authors must include: 1) a point-by-point  “Response to Reviewers” letter, and 2) both a clean and marked version of the manuscript. GBE may choose to have previously-reviewed manuscript sent for further review, or we may take a decision based on the revisions.  

Use of published material: If previously published tables, illustrations or more than 200 words of text are included in the submission, then the copyright holder's written permission must be obtained and copies of any such permission letter must be enclosed with the paper. 

To contact the editorial office, please send an email to the Editorial Office ([email protected]).

Submitting your bioRxiv preprint to the journal

You can submit your bioRxiv preprint directly from the bioRxiv server to Genome Biology and Evolution. To do this, visit the Author Area in bioRxiv and select Genome Biology and Evolution from the list of options.

This will transfer all manuscript files and author information to Genome Biology and Evolution. You will then receive an email with a link to your submission in Genome Biology and Evolution, where you will need to answer some additional questions and approve the manuscript for submission.

Authors submitting their bioRxiv preprint to Genome Biology and Evolution should refer to the section on Preprints. In particular, you should note the following:

• You should not submit your preprint to more than one journal simultaneously.
• If your paper is accepted for publication in Genome Biology and Evolution, you are responsible for ensuring that the preprint is updated with the DOI of and a link to the published paper. bioRxiv does this automatically for most papers, but the process is imperfect, particularly if the preprint and paper titles are different.
• For details on updating your preprint, please see our Author self-archiving policy.

Revised Manuscript

Revised manuscripts should be submitted within the time-frame given in correspondence from the journal. If more time is required, the authors should contact the editorial office, otherwise the manuscript may be considered a new submission.

Proofs

For accepted manuscripts, authors are sent page proofs by the publisher. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographic errors and returned to the production office within 2 working days. Essential changes of an extensive nature may be made only by insertion of a Note Added in Proof. Page charges are not levied. Authors are, however, charged for extensive changes made in proof.

Publication Ethics and the Use of AI

In order to guarantee a consistent policy for review and publication, GBE follows COPE’s Core Practices. These guidelines describe the responsibilities and expected conduct not only of authors, but also of the editors and reviewers.

Artificial Intelligence

The use of AI (e.g. to create content or images, generate complex code, process data or modify language) is strongly discouraged. Any use of AI, including for proofreading, should be disclosed both in the cover letter and in the Methods and/or Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) do not qualify as authors, and the Journal will screen for them in author lists. Please see the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI for more details.

Authorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship following principles outlined by COPE. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. The order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data. All authors must have read and approved the final version of the manuscript, assurance of which should be given in the covering letter.

Conflict of Interest

At the stage of online submission, GBE’s policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict-of-interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it? It is the Corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors adhere to this policy. If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.

Publication Charges and Open Access

Genome Biology and Evolution is a fully open access journal, and all articles are published in the journal under an open access license immediately upon publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access license.

Details of the open access licenses and open access charges.

• CC BY, CC BY-NC license – Articles and Reviews – $2850; member discount 20%*
• CC BY, CC BY-NC license – Letters, Perspectives, and Genome Resources – $1979; member discount 20%*

Please note that some article types may have different rates for open access. *Members of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution are eligible for a discount to the open access charge based on society membership. Authors will be asked to prove eligibility for the member discount.

Corresponding authors based in countries and regions, that are part of the developing countries initiative are eligible for a full waiver of publishing fees in our fully open access journals. For further details, please see our APC Waiver Policy.

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

As a society owned journal, GBE endeavours to publish accepted papers irrespective of the ability of the authors to pay. Applications for a waiver from scientists in other countries will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Waiver requests should be directed to the Open Access team at [email protected] who will forward your application to an independent adjudicator appointed by SMBE.

Availability of Data and Materials

GBE requires all authors, where ethically possible, to publicly release all data underlying any published paper as a condition of publication, and to follow FAIR principles such that the data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement in their article.

We require that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. Information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, is available here.

New sequence data must be deposited in GenBank/DDBJ/EMBL. Any sequence alignments used must be made available as supplementary data or in a data repository, such as FigShare or Dryad. Code generated for manuscripts should be deposited on a site such as Zenodo.

Data Availability Statement

The inclusion of a Data Availability Statement is a requirement for articles published in GBE. Data Availability Statements provide a standardised format for readers to understand the availability of data underlying the research results described in the article. The statement may refer to original data generated in the course of the study or to third-party data analysed in the article. The statement should describe and provide means of access, where possible, by linking to the data or providing the required accession numbers for the relevant databases or DOIs.

The Data Availability Statement should be included in the endmatter of your article under the heading ‘Data availability’. More information and example Data Availability Statements can be found here.

Data Citation

GBE supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite: Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier

• Example data Citation
  • [dataset]* Burny C et al. 2020. Secondary evolve and re-sequencing: an experimental confirmation of putative selection targets without phenotyping. Dryad. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mkkwh70vs

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

Preprint policy

Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, and this does not prevent submission to the journal. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including your published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self-Archiving policy.

 Presubmission Language Editing

If authors  are not confident in the quality of their English, they may wish to use a language-editing service to ensure that editors and reviewers understand their paper. Oxford University Press partners with Enago, a leading provider of author services. Prospective authors are entitled to a discount of 30% for editing services at Enago, via this link: https://www.enago.com/pub/oup. Our partnership with Enago also entitles you to discounted support for abstract and layperson summary writing, graphical abstract, illustration and video creation, and rejected-paper editing.Enago is an independent service provider, who will handle all aspects of this service, including payment. As an author you are under no obligation to take up this offer. Language editing is optional and does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted.

Copyright

Upon receipt of accepted manuscripts at Oxford Journals authors will be invited to complete an online copyright license to publish form.

Please note that by submitting an article for publication you confirm that you are the corresponding/submitting author and that Oxford University Press ("OUP") may retain your email address for the purpose of communicating with you about the article. You agree to notify OUP immediately if your details change. If your article is accepted for publication OUP will contact you using the email address you have used in the registration process. Please note that OUP does not retain copies of rejected articles.