Abstract
Applied Biosafety: Journal of ABSA International is a peer-reviewed scientific journal committed to promoting global biosafety awareness and best practices to prevent occupational exposures and adverse environmental impacts related to biohazardous releases. A goal of Applied Biosafety is to provide a forum for exchange of sound biosafety and biosecurity initiatives through publication of original research, review articles, and editorials. We welcome and encourage submissions that further the profession of biosafety.
The intended audiences for Applied Biosafety are those professional communities that have scientific, strategic, and operational responsibilities for biosafety and biosecurity, to include researchers, biosafety professionals, policy makers, architects, engineers, infection control professionals, manufacturers, and industrial hygienists.
The Coeditors-in-Chief and International Editors encourage submissions to the journal from professionals in these fields and others who have the responsibility or opportunity to improve biosafety.
Applied Biosafety is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics and strives to follow best practices. There are no fees payable to submit or publish manuscripts in this journal, with the exception of printed color images (see Section 4.4.6 for details).
Articles published in Applied Biosafety become open access 12 months after publication; arrangements for immediate open access may be made with SAGE (see Section 3.3).
Manuscripts considered for publication must be written in English and structured as Original Articles, Reports, Case Studies, Review Articles, Brief Review Articles, Editorials, Commentaries, Book Reviews, Reviews of a Seminal Publication, or Letters to the Editors. In addition to presenting the methods and results of a study, the author(s) should draw implications from the results, discuss their relevance, and propose recommendations for change or further study. Work involving pathogens or toxins must be conducted in accordance with relevant biosafety guidelines, and a statement on the containment used to conduct the experiment should be included.
Applied Biosafety (APB) is hosted on SAGE Track: a web-based online submission and peer-review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure that you carefully read and adhere to all the guidelines and instructions to authors provided herein, and then simply visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/apb to login and submit your article online.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics. Please read the guidelines below then visit Applied Biosafety’s submission site to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.
1. What do we publish?
1.1. Aims and Scope
Before submitting your manuscript to Applied Biosafety, please ensure you have read the Aims and Scope.
1.2. Article Types
1.3. Writing Your Manuscript
The SAGE Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
1.3.1. Make your article discoverable
When writing your manuscript, think about how you can make the published article discoverable. The title, keywords, and abstract are key to ensuring that readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract, and select your keywords, view this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
2. Editorial Policies
2.1. Peer-Review Policy
Applied Biosafety adheres to a double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. Please remove authors’ names and other identifying information from the manuscript, including the title page, text, and acknowledgments. Manuscripts are blinded to reviewers. Manuscripts that are not blinded will be returned to the author without review. The Coeditors, or members of the Editorial Board, may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer-review process will be managed by alternative members of the Editorial Board and the submitting editor/board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
2.2. Authorship
Manuscripts should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting manuscripts should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
(i) Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data, (ii) Drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content, (iii) Approved the version to be published, (iv) Sufficiently participated in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
2.3. Acknowledgments
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please list acknowledgments separately to facilitate blind peer review. Acknowledgments will be published at the end of the article, prior to your declaration of conflicting interests (if applicable), any notes, and your references.
2.3.1. Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance (eg, from a specialist communications company) do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgments section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance—including the individual’s name, company, and level of input—and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.
It is not necessary to disclose use of language-polishing services. Again, please supply any personal acknowledgments separately from the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.4. Funding
Applied Biosafety requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgments page on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding or state the following: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”
2.5. Declaration of Conflicting Interests
It is the policy of Applied Biosafety to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a “Declaration of Conflicting Interests” statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgments and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that “the author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.”
For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.
2.6. Research Ethics and Patient Consent
Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.
Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the Methods section that the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.
For research articles, authors are also required to state in the Methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript’s text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative. Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.
All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The journal has adopted the Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare for Veterinary Journals published by the International Association of Veterinary Editors.
2.7. Clinical Trials
Applied Biosafety does not publish clinical trials.
2.8. Dual Use Agents of Concern
Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) is defined as life sciences research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, information, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, materiel, or national security. The editorial policies of Applied Biosafety support the minimization of biosecurity risk while promoting the exchange of information required to improve public, occupational, and environmental health.
3. Publishing Policies
3.1. Publication Ethics
SAGE is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
3.1.1. Plagiarism
Applied Biosafety and SAGE take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors, and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted manuscripts may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where a published article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgment, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action, including, but not limited to, publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction), retracting the article, taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author’s institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies, or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2. Prior publication
If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a SAGE journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway, or if in doubt, contact the editorial office at the address given below.
3.2. Contributor’s Publishing Agreement
Before publication, SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement, which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case, copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information, please visit the SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
3.3. Open Access and Author Archiving
Applied Biosafety offers optional open-access publishing via the SAGE Choice program. For more information, please visit the SAGE Choice website. For information on funding body compliance and depositing your article in repositories, please visit SAGE Publishing Policies on our SAGE Journal Author Gateway.
4. Instructions for Authors: Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission
4.1. Overview
Manuscripts considered for publication must be written in English and structured as Original Articles, Review Articles, Letters to the Editors, Commentaries, and Brief Reviews. In addition to presenting the methods and results of a study, the author(s) should draw implications from the results, discuss their relevance, and propose recommendations for change or further study. Work involving pathogens or toxins must be conducted in accordance with relevant biosafety guidelines, and a statement on the containment used to conduct the experiment should be included.
Applied Biosafety is hosted on SAGE Track, a web-based online submission and peer-review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure that you carefully read and adhere to all the guidelines and instructions to authors provided herein, and then simply visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/apb to log in and submit your manuscript online.
Important note: If you are submitting to your journal via SAGE Track, please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year, it is likely that you have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online, please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
Provide full contact details for the corresponding author, including email, mailing address, and telephone numbers. These details should be presented separately from the main text of the manuscript to facilitate double-blinded peer review.
Submissions not complying with the instructions provided herein will be rejected.
4.2. Cover Letter
Manuscripts (except correspondence) must be accompanied by a cover letter signed by all authors stating: (1) There has been no duplicate publication or submission of any part of the work, (2) all authors have read and approved the manuscript, and (3) there is no financial arrangement or other relationship that could be construed as a conflict of interest. If a potential conflict exists, its nature should be stated in the letter and on the title page of the manuscript for each author involved (see Editorial and Ethical Policies for a complete explanation).
4.3. Title Page File
Construct a title that does not exceed 50 words and does not contain acronyms other than those acronyms that refer to clinical trials. List first and last names, affiliations, and email addresses for all authors. List the total word count. Acknowledge all sources of financial support (grants, fellowships, equipment, or remuneration of any kind) and any relationships that may be considered a conflict of interest (ie, employment, stock holdings, retainers, paid or unpaid consultancies, patents or patent licensing arrangements, or honoraria) that may pertain to the manuscript (see Editorial and Ethical Policies). Give details of any prior presentation, including meeting name, location, and date. List acknowledgments, any shared first authorship, and other author notes. Give the name, address, telephone/fax numbers, and email address(es) of a correspondent.
4.4. Manuscript File for Blinded Peer Review
Note that Applied Biosafety uses a double-blinded reviewing policy, so no information that could identify the source of the submission (eg, author or institution names) should appear in the body of the manuscript. In addition, please remove all hidden identifying information (including authorship information) from the file properties of your submission by using Microsoft Word’s document inspector. This will ensure blinding when reviewers add their own comments to your submission. Remember that deleting these data is irreversible. Before deleting the data from the document that you are submitting, please save an original version of the document with the data included for your own safekeeping. If you are confused about how to remove these data, please refer to this online tutorial. Text material must be submitted as a single Tables, figures, videos, and supplementary materials are delivered as separate files. Type section heads in bold (initial capital) letters at the left margin (do not center) followed by a hard return; subheads appear in italics (initial capital) at the left margin followed by a hard return. Third-level heads are in italicized type (first word capitalized) and indented to run in with the text.
Second-Level Head
Third-level head
Do not embed anything in the text, including fonts, links, footnotes in a hidden field, field codes, bookmarks, comments, passwords, objects, worksheets, databases, artwork, or slides (eg, PowerPoint). Use the formatting function for bold, italic, and sub- and superscripts. Symbols, foreign letters, and short (one-line) mathematical formulas may be in line in the text. Since manuscripts undergo blinded review, no author or institution name should appear in the text or header/footer.
4.4.1. Abstract
Give a substantive summary of an Original Article in 250 words or fewer. For Case Reports, the abstract should be no longer than 200 words. Provide a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 6 keywords and/or key phrases.
4.4.2. Text
Organize the text for clinical or experimental investigations into sections titled Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Case Reports require only Introduction, Case Report, Discussion, and Conclusion. Editorials and Reviews may be structured as appropriate for the material. Avoid naming any institution(s) in the work or otherwise identifying the author(s). Use SI measurements; generic drug names should be used. Define abbreviations and acronyms when they first appear in the text. Identify tables and figures using Arabic numerals in parentheses (eg, Figure 1). Place equations appearing in the text on their own line and number serially toward the right margin: v1A1 = v2A2(1) Short expressions without a number should be in line with the text. Complex equations should be prepared with appropriate software and inserted to flow with the text.
4.4.3. References
Follow the guidelines in the AMA Manual of Style (10th ed). Do not use endnotes or other bibliographic style function for reference lists. Limit the number of references for a case report to 15. Letters may have no more than 10 references. Article types, other than Letters to the Editors and Case Reports, have no limitations on references. Number references in the order of appearance in the text. Identify references in the text, tables, and legends as superscript Arabic numerals. List the first 3 authors (last name and initials separated by a comma); use “et al” for 4 or more authors. Abbreviate journal titles according to the style of Index Medicus; formats for the common types of journal citations are:
Journal article: authors’ names and initials, article title, journal name, year, volume, and inclusive page numbers. Example:
Görich J, Rilinger N, Söldner J, et al. Endovascular repair of aortic aneurysms: treatment of complications. J Endovasc Surg. 1996;6(2):136-146.
Abstracts (not more than 2 years old): authors’ names and initials, title followed by [abstract], journal name, year, volume, and inclusive page numbers. Example:
Reid DB, Diethrich EB. Intravascular ultrasound imaging in carotid artery stenting: results of a prospective study [abstract]. Cardiovasc Surg. 1996;4:661.
Books: author/editor(s), title, edition, city/state of publication, publisher, and year. Example:
Ahn SS, Moore WS, eds. Endovascular Surgery. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Co; 1991.
Book chapters: author(s), chapter title, editor(s), book title, city/state of publication, publisher, year, and inclusive page numbers. Example:
Towne JB. Postintervention surveillance. In: White RA, Fogarty TJ, eds. Peripheral Endovascular Interventions. St Louis, MO: Mosby Year Book, Inc; 1996:109-115.
4.4.4. Legends
Type all figure and movie legends on a separate page of the Microsoft Word file, explaining abbreviations and symbols used in the figure. Previously published figures must be acknowledged and accompanied by written permission from the publisher to reproduce the material if it is copyrighted.
Do not use the caption function for figure legends or include the actual figures in the Microsoft Word file.
4.4.5. Table files
Use tables to supplement the text, not duplicate it. Make separate Microsoft Word files for each table, number them sequentially using Arabic numerals, and give a title at the top of the page. Do not insert tables in the text or create/save tables as images. Format tables using the table formatting function in Microsoft Word; elaborate formatting (including reliance on shading and color) should not be used. Define any abbreviations as the first footnote under the table; list the abbreviations alphabetically. Use footnotes for explanatory material, labeling each with a superscript lowercase letter (a-z) in alphabetical order.
4.4.6. Figure files
Please note that color figures will be displayed in color online and will be printed in grayscale. If you would prefer to print the figures in color, this can be arranged for an additional fee; please indicate your interest in a comment. The fees for color are $800 for the first figure and $200 for each additional color figure. Please indicate “print color requested” at the end of the legend of any figure that needs to be printed in color and for which you are willing to pay the fee. The publisher will confirm the color order at the proof stage and send an invoice. If you are submitting a figure that will appear in color online but will be printed in grayscale because you do not want to pay the fee for color printing, please ensure that readers will be able to discern the colors when they are converted into grayscale (eg, use different line or fill patterns on graphs in addition to different colors, which will look very similar in grayscale). Figures, pictures, charts, graphs, or line art should be cited in numeric order. All image files for figures should be labeled with the figure number (label each part if figures include multiple parts, eg, 2A, 2B). The figure legend should be placed below each figure and should include descriptions of each figure part and identify the meaning of any symbols or arrows. Use color judiciously in pictures and graphics. We recommend the use of symbols, hatching, and line styles to further differentiate graphics if materials are presented using color, as figures and pictures will be printed in grayscale unless color charges are paid. Text mentioned in figures and charts should use Arial font throughout (unless reproduced from an external source). The font color of such text should be black in order to ensure better legibility in a black-and-white print. Font size of such text should not be less than 8 point. Do not embed images into the text document. High-resolution images should also be uploaded separately as figure files. Supply all figures in a digital format of suitable quality for printing: TIFF for pictures or EPS for graphs and line drawings (to preserve quality when enlarged/zoomed). Image resolution should be at least 400 ppi for color or grayscale images and 600 ppi (preferably higher) for black-and-white line drawings or graphs. Image size at these resolutions should be no less than 3-in wide for vertical images and 5-in wide for horizontally oriented figures. Use a lossless compression algorithm (such as LZW) that does not degrade the resolution.
4.4.7. Movie files
Submit video clips up to 50 MB each in size in any video format. Legends must be provided, and the callout location of each file must appear in the text. Upload a movie/video file as a “figure” or “supplementary material” as appropriate.
4.5. Supplementary (Online Only) Material
Follow the formatting instructions above for any supplementary figures, tables, reference lists, appendices, and so forth. Each item (eg, table, reference list) should be named Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Reference List, Supplementary Figure 1, and so forth, and uploaded as “supplementary material.” This journal is able to host additional materials online (eg, datasets, podcasts, videos, images) alongside the full text of the published article. For more information, please refer to SAGE’s guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
4.6. Publication
In general, accepted manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in the order in which they are received after no further author revisions are required and the SAGE Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement has been signed by the corresponding author.
Applied Biosafety reserves the right to edit accepted manuscripts to comply with Applied Biosafety’s format, to remove redundancies, to correct grammatical faults, and to improve readability without altering the meaning. Several weeks before the scheduled publication of a manuscript, the Editorial Office will send an edited version of the manuscript via email to the corresponding author for approval. After author approval of the edited version has been received, the publisher will send a PDF file of the page proof by email. At this stage, only correction of typographical errors or mistakes in the presentation of data can be made. Approval of or changes to the proof must be returned within 4 business days. A complimentary PDF of the final published article will be sent to the corresponding author after publication. The average time from acceptance to online publication is 5 weeks.
4.7. Guidance for Article Sharing
Authors’ rights with regard to sharing an article’s pre- and postpublication are outlined on the SAGE Archiving Policies page. SAGE and Applied Biosafety follow a green open access policy as follows:
Authors may share the version of the contribution that was submitted to the journal (version 1) anywhere at any time. Once the contribution has been accepted for publication, authors may post the accepted version (version 2) of the contribution on their own personal website, their department’s website, or the repository of their institution without any restrictions. Authors may not post the accepted version (version 2) of the contribution in any repository other than those listed above (ie, authors may not deposit in the repository of another institution or a subject repository) until 12 months after first publication of the contribution in the journal. Authors may use the published contribution (version 3) for their own teaching needs or to supply on an individual basis to research colleagues, provided that such supply is not for commercial purposes. Authors may use the published contribution (version 3) in a book authored or edited by themselves at any time after publication in the journal. This does not apply to books where the author is contributing a chapter to a book authored or edited by someone else. Authors may not post the published contribution (version 3) on a website or in a repository without permission from SAGE.
In all cases, when posting or reusing the contribution under this policy, appropriate credit must be given to the SAGE journal where the contribution has been published, as the original source of the content, as follows: Author(s), Article Title, Journal Title (Journal Volume Number and Issue Number), pp. xx-xx. Copyright © [year] (Copyright Holder). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. In addition, authors must provide a link to the appropriate DOI for the published version of the contribution on the SAGE Journals website (http://journals.sagepub.com).
4.8. English-Language Editing Services
Authors seeking assistance with English-language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using SAGE Language Services. Visit SAGE Language Services on the Journal Author Gateway for further information.
4.9. Additional Resources for Authors
SAGE also provides general resources for authors, including open access options, tips for promoting articles, and answers to common FAQs.
Applied Biosafety and SAGE value our relationship with our authors and appreciate your compliance with these instructions.
5. Submitting Your Manuscript
5.1. How to Submit Your Manuscript
Applied Biosafety is hosted on SAGE Track, a web-based online submission and peer-review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/apb to log in and submit your manuscript online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year, it is likely that you have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online, please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
Provide full contact details for the corresponding author, including email, mailing address, and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all coauthors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the manuscript to facilitate anonymous peer review.
5.2. ORCID
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent, and fair peer-review process, SAGE is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities ensuring that their work is recognized.
We encourage all authors to add their ORCIDs to their SAGE Track accounts and include their ORCIDs as part of the submission process. If you don’t already have one, you can register for ORCID online.
5.3. Information Required for Completing Your Submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all coauthors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage, please ensure that you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
5.4. Permissions
6. On Acceptance and Publication
6.1. SAGE Production
Your SAGE production editor will keep you informed as to your manuscript’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details, is correct and that funding and conflict of interest statements, if any, are accurate. Please note that if there are any changes to the author list at this stage, all authors will be required to complete and sign a form authorizing the change.
6.2. Online First Publication
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the SAGE Journals Help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3. Access to Your Published Article
SAGE provides authors with online access to their final article.
6.4. Promoting Your Article
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your article and ensure that it is as widely read and cited as possible. The SAGE Journal Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice. In addition, SAGE is partnered with Kudos, a free service that allows authors to explain, enrich, share, and measure the impact of their article. Find out how to maximize your article’s impact with Kudos.
6.5. E-prints
SAGE provides authors with a link to the electronic PDF, as well as opportunities to purchase reprints.
7. Further Information
Any correspondence, queries, or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Applied Biosafety editorial office as follows: