The African Journal of Biotechnology (AJB) (ISSN 1684-5315) is an open access journal that provides rapid publication (one issues per week) of papers on biotechnology and applied molecular biology in areas such as of applied biochemistry, industrial microbiology, molecular biology, genomics and proteomics, food and agricultural technologies, and metabolic engineering etc.

The Journal welcomes the submission of manuscripts that meet the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence. Papers will be published shortly after acceptance.

Electronic submission of manuscripts is strongly encouraged, provided that the text, tables, and figures are included in a single Microsoft Word file (preferably in Arial font).

Article Types

Three types of manuscripts may be submitted:

Regular articles: These should describe new and carefully confirmed findings, and experimental procedures should be given in sufficient detail for others to verify the work. The length of a full paper should be the minimum required to describe and interpret the work clearly.

Short Communications: A Short Communication is suitable for recording the results of complete small investigations or giving details of new models or hypotheses, gene isolation and identification, innovative methods, techniques or apparatus. The style of main sections need not conform to that of full-length papers. Short communications are 2 to 4 printed pages (about 6 to 12 manuscript pages) in length.

Minireview: Submissions of mini-reviews and perspectives covering topics of current interest are welcome and encouraged. Mini-reviews should be concise and no longer than 4-6 printed pages (about 12 to 18 manuscript pages). Mini-reviews are also peer-reviewed.

Review Process

All manuscripts are reviewed by an editor and members of the Editorial Board or qualified outside reviewers. Authors cannot nominate reviewers. Only reviewers randomly selected from our database with specialization in the subject area will be contacted to evaluate the manuscripts. The process will be blind review.

Decisions will be made as rapidly as possible, and the journal strives to return reviewers’ comments to authors promptly. The editorial board will re-review manuscripts that are accepted pending revision. It is the goal of AJB to publish manuscripts shortly after submission.

Regular articles

All portions of the manuscript must be typed double-spaced and all pages numbered starting from the title page.

The Title should be a brief phrase describing the contents of the paper. The Title Page should include the authors' full names and affiliations, the name of the corresponding author along with phone, fax and E-mail information. Present addresses of authors should appear as a footnote.

The Abstract should be informative and completely self-explanatory, briefly present the topic, state the scope of the experiments, indicate significant data, and point out major findings and conclusions. The Abstract should be 100 to 200 words in length.. Complete sentences, active verbs, and the third person should be used, and the abstract should be written in the past tense. Standard nomenclature should be used and abbreviations should be avoided. No literature should be cited.

Following the abstract, about 3 to 10 key words that will provide indexing references to should be listed.

A list of non-standard Abbreviations should be added. In general, non-standard abbreviations should be used only when the full term is very long and used often. Each abbreviation should be spelled out and introduced in parentheses the first time it is used in the text. Only recommended SI units should be used. Authors should use the solidus presentation (mg/ml). Standard abbreviations (such as ATP and DNA) need not be defined. Use the same abbreviations as the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The Introduction should provide a clear statement of the problem, the relevant literature on the subject, and the proposed approach or solution. It should be understandable to colleagues from a broad range of scientific disciplines.

Materials and methods should be complete enough to allow experiments to be reproduced. However, only truly new procedures should be described in detail; previously published procedures should be cited, and important modifications of published procedures should be mentioned briefly. Capitalize trade names and include the manufacturer's name and address. Subheadings should be used. Methods in general use need not be described in detail.

Results should be presented with clarity and precision. The results should be written in the past tense when describing findings in the authors' experiments. Previously published findings should be written in the present tense. Results should be explained, but largely without referring to the literature. Discussion, speculation and detailed interpretation of data should not be included in the Results but should be put into the Discussion section.

The Discussion should interpret the findings in view of the results obtained in this and in past studies on this topic. State the conclusions in a few sentences at the end of the paper. The Results and Discussion sections can include subheadings, and when appropriate, both sections can be combined.

The Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc should be brief.

Tables should be kept to a minimum and be designed to be as simple as possible. Tables are to be typed double-spaced throughout, including headings and footnotes. Each table should be on a separate page, numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals and supplied with a heading and a legend. Tables should be self-explanatory without reference to the text. The details of the methods used in the experiments should preferably be described in the legend instead of in the text. The same data should not be presented in both table and graph form or repeated in the text.

Figure legends should be typed in numerical order on a separate sheet. Graphics should be prepared using applications capable of generating high resolution GIF, TIFF, JPEG or Powerpoint before pasting in the Microsoft Word manuscript file. Tables should be prepared in Microsoft Word. Use Arabic numerals to designate figures and upper case letters for their parts (Fig 1). Begin each legend with a title and include sufficient description so that the figure is understandable without reading the text of the manuscript. Information given in legends should not be repeated in the text.

References: In the text, a reference identified by means of an author‘s name should be followed by the date of the reference in parentheses. When there are more than two authors, only the first author‘s name should be mentioned, followed by ’et al‘. In the event that an author cited has had two or more works published during the same year, the reference, both in the text and in the reference list, should be identified by a lower case letter like ’a‘ and ’b‘ after the date to distinguish the works.

Examples:

Smith (2000), Blake et al. (2003), (Kelebeni, 1983), (Chandra and Singh,1992),(Chege, 1998; Steddy, 1987a,b; Gold, 1993,1995), (Kumasi et al., 2001)

References should be listed at the end of the paper in alphabetical order. Articles in preparation or articles submitted for publication, unpublished observations, personal communications, etc. should not be included in the reference list but should only be mentioned in the article text (e.g., A. Kingori, University of Nairobi, Kenya, personal communication). Journal names are abbreviated according to Chemical Abstracts. Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy of the references.

Examples:

Diaz E, Prieto MA (2000). Bacterial promoters triggering biodegradation of aromatic pollutants. Curr. Opin. Biotech. 11: 467-475.

Dorn E, Knackmuss HJ (1978). Chemical structure and biodegradability of halogenated aromatic compounds. Two catechol 1, 2 dioxygenases from a 3-chlorobenzoate-grown Pseudomonad. Biochem. J. 174: 73-84.

Pitter P, Chudoba J (1990). Biodegradability of Organic Substances in
the Aquatic Environment. CRC press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.

Alexander M (1965). Biodegradation: Problems of Molecular Recalcitrance
and Microbial Fallibility. Adv. Appl. Microbiol. 7: 35-80.

Boder ET, Wittrup KD (1997). Yeast surface display for screening combinatorial polypeptide libraries. Nat. Biotechnol. 15: 537-553.

Short Communications

Short Communications are limited to a maximum of two figures and one table. They should present a complete study that is more limited in scope than is found in full-length papers. The items of manuscript preparation listed above apply to Short Communications with the following differences: (1) Abstracts are limited to 100 words; (2) instead of a separate Materials and Methods section, experimental procedures may be incorporated into Figure Legends and Table footnotes; (3) Results and Discussion should be combined into a single section.

Proofs and Reprints: Electronic proofs will be sent (e-mail attachment) to the corresponding author as a PDF file. Page proofs are considered to be the final version of the manuscript. With the exception of typographical or minor clerical errors, no changes will be made in the manuscript at the proof stage. Because AJB will be published freely online only for the first year (to attract a wide audience), authors will have free electronic access to the full text (in both HTML and PDF) of the article. Authors can freely download the PDF file from which they can print unlimited copies of their articles.

Copyright: Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, or thesis) that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher.

Fees and Charges: Authors are required to pay a $650 handling fee. Publication of an article in the African Journal of Bio-technology is not contingent upon the author's ability to pay the charges. Neither is acceptance to pay the handling fee a guarantee that the paper will be accepted for publication. Authors may still request (in advance) that the editorial office waive some of the handling fee under special circumstances.