Instructions for Authors

Download as PDF

1 General Information
2 Manuscript Preparation
   2.1 File Formats
   2.2 Style and Language
   2.3 Article Types
   2.4 Organization of Full Research Papers (including reference list formatting)
   2.5 Graphics and Tables
   2.6 Supporting Information
   2.7 Additions and Corrections
   2.8 Cover Letter, Approvals and General Information
3 Plagiarism Policy

1 General Information

The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry is an international, peer-reviewed, open access online journal published and financed by the Beilstein-Institut. The journal features topics in all areas of organic chemistry including organic synthesis, organic reactions, natural products chemistry, structural investigations, supramolecular chemistry and chemical biology. The main purpose is to provide researchers worldwide free online access to high-quality articles of outstanding scientific significance (for more information see The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry).

When submitting an article to the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry authors are not charged any publication fee. All publication costs for the journal are covered completely by the Beilstein-Institut. To support rapid publication authors are required to submit new manuscripts via the secure Beilstein Publishing System. The journal does not accept mailed hardcopy manuscripts or manuscripts submitted by email. A Submission Checklist is available to help authors to provide all relevant data and information. Authors can interrupt the submission process at any time. When returning to the Beilstein Publishing System, authors may select the manuscript concerned and continue where they stopped.

Manuscripts which fall within the scope of the journal and are of potential interest to its readership are subject to a peer review process. Based on the referees' recommendation the corresponding editor makes a decision on the manuscript regarding publication, revision or rejection (for more information see the Instructions for Referees). In case of acceptance, all papers are subject to copyediting and layout to ensure that they conform to the journal style. Once the submitting author returns a corrected proof of the manuscript new articles are posted online as a formatted final PDF file and full text HTML version.

2 Manuscript Preparation

2.1 File Formats

The main manuscript must be provided as Microsoft Word (version 8 (Word 97) to version 16 (Word 2016)) document.

Note that figures, schemes and tables should be included in the manuscript after the paragraph where they are first referenced. Chemical structures should preferably be embedded in their original chemical structure drawing file format (e.g. CDX for ChemDraw).

2.2 Style and Language

General

• The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry accepts only manuscripts written in English. Spelling should be US English or British English, but not a mixture of both.
• The Authors should adhere to the ACS Style Guide (Coghill, A. M.; Garson, L. R., Eds. The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information, 3rd ed.; Oxford University Press, Inc.: New York, 2006) on matters of physical quantity symbols and units, abbreviations, references, use of italics and punctuation. On matter of nomenclature the IUPAC conventions are preferred (http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac).
• Abbreviations should be used consistently throughout the whole manuscript. Non-standard abbreviations must be defined the first time they are used in the text.
• For data pertaining to biological or biomedical research it is recommended that the applicable standards and checklists are used as given on the BioSharing portal www.biosharing.org (incorporating MIBBI).
• All reports of kinetic and binding data must fully describe the catalytic or binding entity (enzyme, protein, nucleic acid or other molecule) and the experimental conditions. For reporting enzymology data we recommend using STRENDA DB http://www.strenda-db.org – the output “Fact Sheet” should be provided as supporting information.
• Even though articles in the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry have no page limit or restrictions in length and in the number of graphics, tables or supporting information they should adhere to scientific conciseness. Authors should provide enough background information to support the aim of study and the main claims of the paper, but unimportant or trivial information should not be included.
• Authors are advised to write clearly, concise and simply, and their article should be checked by colleagues before submission. The significance of the research should be objectively discussed. Non-native speakers of English may choose to make use of a copyediting service since a manuscript may be rejected if it contains too many grammatical errors or typing mistakes. Alternatively, authors may seek the advice from colleagues whose native language is English.

Typography and Formatting

• Please format the manuscript as single-column text using double line spacing.
• Common fonts (Arial, Times, Helvetica, Courier) should be used to reduce problems during conversion of the manuscript to a PDF file.
• Type the text without manual hyphenating words at line breaks.
• Use line breaks only to end headings and paragraphs, and not to rearrange lines.
• All pages should be numbered.
• Footnotes must not be used in any section of the paper.
• Greek and other special characters should preferably be included using the font type "symbol". If you are unable to reproduce a particular special character, please type out the name of the symbol in full.

2.3 Article Types

Every manuscript submitted to the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry has to be assigned by the authors to one of the following types of article:

• Full Research Paper
• Letter
• Review
• Book Report
• Commentary

Please read the descriptions of each of the article types and choose which is appropriate before writing the article. Your article should be structured in accordance with the guidelines of the article types. If you are in doubt about the article type, your manuscript should be classified as Full Research Paper, the guidelines of which are described below.

2.4 Organization of Full Research Papers

Manuscripts for Full Research Paper articles submitted to the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry should be divided into the following sections:

• Title
• Authors' Names and Affiliations
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Results and Discussion (may be separate)
• Conclusion (optional)
• Experimental (optional)
• Supporting Information (if any)
• Acknowledgements (optional)
• References

Title

The title of an article should be clear, concise and comprehensible to all readers with the purpose of quickly identifying the focus of the reported work. It should be brief and contain the most important keywords to optimize electronic retrieval. The use of capitals should be restricted to the first word and proper nouns. As far as possible abbreviations should be avoided.

Authors' Names and Affiliations

For all authors who have made substantial contributions to the work, first name, middle initial(s) and last (family) name must be provided. Below this information the institutional address should be written in a separate line in the following format: department, organization, street/P.O. box, city/town and zip code/postal code, country. If several affiliations need to be mentioned, consecutive Arabic numerals should precede the address and these numerals must also be placed as superscript after the respective author's name. At least one author must be designated with an asterisk as the person to whom correspondence should be addressed. The full name and the email address of the corresponding author(s) separated by a hyphen should be given in a new paragraph following the affiliation. Finally, the meaning of the asterisk must be explained. We also highly encourage all authors to link their ORCID record to their manuscript. During the submission process, the submitting author will now be asked to link their existing ORCID record to their manuscript, or create an ORCID record, if they do not already have one. All co-authors will also be provided a link where they too can amend this information. It is not necessary to include the ORCID iD directly in the manuscript, only in the online submission system.

Abstract

The abstract for the manuscript should not exceed 350 words. The abstract may be a compact text or may be structured into the separate sections Background, the context and purpose of the study; Results, the main findings; Conclusion, brief summary and potential implications. Abbreviations should be used sparingly in the abstract. If used, then only common ones should be employed. Citations and references should not be given in abstracts.

Keywords

Five keywords in alphabetical order describing the main topics of the paper should appear below the abstract for indexing purpose. They should be separated by a semicolon.

Introduction

The introduction section should be written from the standpoint of researchers without specialist knowledge in that area. It should clearly state the background of the research, as well as its purposes and significance, and should include a brief statement of what is being reported in the article.

Results and Discussion

The results and discussion section should contain a description of the experimental results that substantiates the conclusions of the work. A comprehensible discussion which links the results to related investigations and to existing knowledge in the relevant field should follow. The sections may also be separated. The presentation of experimental details in this section should be kept to a minimum. Information already obvious in tables, figures or schemes should not be reiterated in the text if it is unnecessary for any important discussion.

Conclusion

This section should emphasize the major interpretations and conclusions of the paper as well as their significance. The preparation of this section is optional.

Experimental

This section, together with the supplementary material provided in the supporting information files, should describe the experimental methods used in the work in sufficient detail to allow repetition of the work by others. An experimental section should only be included in the main manuscript if up to 5 compounds with their preparation and characterization data are given. If more than 5 compounds are described the experimental section should be given as supporting information.

General experimental methods should be mentioned at the beginning of the experimental part. If the same procedure is used several times one detailed representative example should be given. For known compounds used in syntheses the methods of preparation and the literature data used to confirm the material's identity should be cited. All new compounds should be fully characterized and sufficient evidence must be provided to establish the identity and the degree of purity of each compound. Elemental analysis should be added whenever possible. Each description of an individual synthesis experiment should start with the systematic chemical name and the structure label of the reaction product, followed by an exact experimental description including details of the workup procedure. Authors are encouraged to use common abbreviations or molecular formulas for solvents or reagents and to reference other chemical structures by using the structure label instead of a chemical name. Yields of isolated and purified products are preferred to yields determined spectroscopically or chromatographically. Attention should be drawn to hazardous materials or procedures by adding the word “Caution” followed by a brief description.

Copies of spectra used in the characterization of compounds may be reproduced as figures in the supporting information. Nucleic acid sequences and protein sequences should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for any relevant accession numbers to be included in the published data. When reporting a new X-ray structure of a small molecule a CIF file (as supporting information) and a structural drawing with probability ellipsoids (ORTEP plot) should be given. A table containing the essential crystal-related data should be provided in a human readable format in the supporting information file. X-ray crystallographic data for small molecules should be deposited at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), CSD: https://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/deposit. The accession number should be included in the manuscript.

Supporting Information

If supporting information files are provided, each should be described in this section of the manuscript, providing the following information:

• a consecutive Arabic numeral in the order of the first mention in the manuscript text (e. g. Supporting Information File 1, Supporting Information File 2, etc.)
• the file name
• the file format (including the name and the URL link of an appropriate viewer if the format is unusual)
• a concise and descriptive title of 15 words maximum
• optional: a detailed description of the dataset.

Additionally, supporting information files may be referenced within the body of the article to allow the creation of a hyperlink in the full text version. For example "(see Supporting Information File 1 for full experimental data)" could be embedded at an appropriate place in the section "Results and Discussion" or "Experimental".

Acknowledgements

In this section the authors can dedicate the article to a scientist of outstanding merit or acknowledge financial support, technical assistance and other contributions or advice from persons who are not coauthors.

References

In general authors are obliged to perform literature searches and to cite original publications describing closely related work.

A complete list of all references should be provided at the end of the article with an individual reference number for each reference. All references must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, in the order in which they are first cited in the text, followed by any references in tables or legends. The references should be inserted at the appropriate location in the text by writing the reference number in square brackets. Multiple citations should be separated by commas within the square brackets. In case of more than two sequential references, ranges should be given. In general a reference should appear before a punctuation mark and not after. Reference citations should not appear in titles, headings or the abstract. Unnecessarily long lists of references are not desirable. Authors are requested to constrict the reference list to the most important or most recent references relating to a specific topic. However, all previous publications in which portions of the present article have appeared must be referenced. If references refer to a supporting information file, they should be listed at the end of that file.

The references should be presented in a style consistent with the ACS Style Guide and should not contain any form of note or comment. If automatic numbering systems are used, the reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission. Web links and URLs should be included in the reference list. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL.

Examples of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry reference style are shown below. Please take care to follow the reference style precisely; references not in the correct style must be retyped, necessitating tedious proofreading.

Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry Reference Style

2.5 Graphics and Tables

Preparation of Figures and Schemes

All figures and schemes must be embedded in the manuscript text after the paragraph where they are first mentioned. After a manuscript has gone successfully through the peer review process authors may be asked to upload individual graphic files separately. Any diagram, graph, spectra, photograph or other type of illustration is presented in the manuscript as a figure. The designation scheme should be used primarily for reaction schemes. It is the authors' responsibility to provide figures at a sufficiently high resolution to ensure high quality reproduction in the final article. The following guidelines must be considered when preparing figures and schemes:

• Figures and schemes are consecutively numbered with Arabic numerals in the order they are first cited in the manuscript text (i.e. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).
• The legends of figures and schemes should be positioned directly below the corresponding graphic in the main manuscript rather than as part of the graphic file. They should comprise the bold typed figure or scheme number followed by a colon, a detailed legend with up to 300 words and optional, a concise title of 15 words maximum. Any legend should be comprehensible without reference to the relevant parts of the manuscript text. If a figure has several labeled parts a, b, c, etc., then each part should be identified in the caption.
• Each figure or scheme should comprise only a single file. Multi-panel figures with individual parts a, b, c, etc. should be included as single composite file.
• Each figure or scheme must fit a width of 8.2 cm (single column) or 16.8 cm (double column) and should be prepared accordingly. The maximum height is 23.0 cm including the legend.
• The image resolution of raster images should be at least 300 dpi (colored graphic) or 600 dpi (black and white graphic).
• Figures and schemes should be cropped as closely as possible to minimize white space surrounding the graphic.
• The maximum file size should not exceed 10 MB to optimize online handling.
• Individual compounds must be numbered with boldface Arabic numerals in the order in which the compounds are first mentioned in the text. Boldface lower case letters may be added to distinguish compounds that differ only in the identity of substituents.
• There is no charge for the use of color.

Acceptable Formats of Figures and Schemes Including the Graphical Abstract

The following file formats can be accepted:

• SVG (preferred format for diagrams)
• PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
• CDX (ChemDraw, preferred format for chemical structures)
• GIF (suitable for images)
• TIFF (suitable for images)
• JPEG (suitable for photographic images)
• BMP (suitable for images)
• MML (suitable for mathematical formulas)
• EMF (suitable for diagrams)
• WMF (suitable for diagrams)

A raster image (e.g. GIF, TIFF JPEG or BMP) consists of pixels. If a raster image is enlarged it will become fuzzy. To ensure that such images will be of high quality in the web and in the printed article a minimum of 300 dpi (colored graphic) or 600 dpi (black and white graphic) is required.
By contrast, a vector image (e.g. SVG, CDX, EMF or WMF) is a mathematically defined geometric shape which can be enlarged without a loss of quality of the depiction. All lines of the image are sharp at any zoom.

Structure Drawing Guidelines

Chemical Structures should be prepared according to the guidelines given below. The parameters are benchmarks which should be used to prepare chemical structures with chemical structure editors such as ChemDraw, etc.

chain angle	120 degree
bond spacing	18 % of width
fixed length	0.406 cm (11.5 pt)
bold width	0.056 cm (1.6 pt)
line width	0.018 cm (0.5 pt)
margin width	0.046 cm (1.3 pt)
hash spacing	0.071 cm (2 pt)
scale	100 %
font	Arial
size	8 pt

 

Preparation of Tables

All tables must be inserted in the manuscript text after the paragraph where they are first mentioned. Large datasets can be uploaded separately as supporting information file. The following guidelines must be considered when preparing tables:

• Tables are consecutively numbered with Arabic numerals in the order they are first cited in the manuscript text (i.e. Table 1, Table 2, etc.).
• Tables must be cell-based and thus should be created using the "Table object" in the word processing program. This ensures that columns of data are kept aligned when the file is sent electronically for review. It is not allowed to generate columns by simply separating the text with tabs.
• Line returns and tabs should not be used within the cells.
• Above each table a sequential bold typed Arabic table number must be provided followed by a short and concise title after a colon.
• All table columns must have a short and self-explanatory heading.
• Footnotes should be typed below the table using low case letter designations. They should be referenced in the table with lower case superscript letters. The sequence of letters should proceed by row rather than by column. An explanation of all non-standard abbreviations used in a table as well as additional descriptive information to the table content must be given in a footnote. If a reference is cited in a table, the reference number should also be given in a footnote.
• Each table must fit a width of 8.2 cm (single column) or 16.8 cm (double column) and should be prepared accordingly.
• Individual compounds must be numbered with boldface Arabic numerals in the order in which the compounds are first mentioned in the text. Boldface lower case letters may be added to distinguish compounds that differ only in the identity of substituents.
• Color and shading should not be used.

Tabular data provided as supporting information files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls), Word document (.doc) or comma separated values (.csv). As with all files, the standard file extensions should be used.

Graphical Abstract

A graphical abstract must be supplied as a separate file and not embedded in the main manuscript. Together with the article title, the graphical abstract should provide the reader a quick visual description of the type of chemistry covered in the article. Colors should be used judiciously in graphical abstracts. The graphical abstract will be scaled to fill a nominal space of 15 by 5 cm, and should be prepared accordingly. Preferably, any graphic included within the manuscript should not be duplicated.

2.6 Supporting Information

General Information

Authors are encouraged to provide extensive supplementary material to support and enhance the scientific research described in the main manuscript. Supporting information files can be uploaded separately during the submission process with a maximum file size of 100 MB for each file. All supplementary files will be virus-scanned on submission. They will be subject to peer review and published online alongside the final article. Many types of supplementary data and thus a wide range of technical formats are allowed and supported as detailed experimental procedures including characterization data, spectra, graphs, photos, X-ray crystallographic data, physical data, biochemical data, large tables, rotatable molecular models, animations or movie files. Unlike the main article any supporting information should address the interest of specialists rather than the interest of general readers.

All pages in a supporting information file containing text, for example, the description of experimental methods, should be numbered consecutively (exception: CIF files). In such cases the first page must be a title page listing the manuscript title, the full name of all authors and the affiliation data as given in the main manuscript to emphasize the relationship between supplementary material and the corresponding article. If appropriate a detailed table of content may follow.

If possible, spectra or other graphics should be combined to a single file rather than to provide numerous individual files each containing a single image. All spectra or graphics should be marked with the corresponding structure label. Crystallographic information files (CIF) must be supplied separately from other file types.

Acceptable Formats

Ideally, file formats for supporting information files should not be platform-specific, and should be viewable using free or widely available tools. The following are examples of suitable formats.

Additional documentation

• PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
• Microsoft Word (version 8 (Word 97) to version 16 (Word 2016)).

Animations

• SWF (Shockwave Flash)

Movies

• MOV (QuickTime)
• MPG (MPEG)

Tabular data

• XLS (Excel spreadsheet)
• CSV (Comma separated values)

Files should be given the standard file extensions. This is especially important for Macintosh users, since the Mac OS does not enforce the use of standard extensions. Please also make sure that supporting information files are not linked to each other.

2.7 Additions and Corrections

The corresponding author is requested to contact the editorial office about any substantial error occurring in a published article . Additions or corrections to articles will be published if these are evaluated by the editorial office to affect seriously the interpretation of the work. All authors of the original publication must approve any desired amendment or correction.

2.8 Cover Letter, Approvals and General Information

• A full paper report which is an extension of an already published letter article (or preliminary communication) may be submitted for publication provided that the previous work is properly cited in the manuscript and contains significant new information or permits new insights. The discussion, evidence, main result and conclusion should not remain the same in the different publications. The editor must be made aware of any earlier communication in the cover letter that accompanies the manuscript. The editor must also be provided with a copy of the previous communication and any associated supporting information as review-only material.
• The editor must always be informed of any related manuscript submitted or in press elsewhere by any of the authors. Copies of those manuscripts must be supplied as review-only material and a citation must be provided to any relevant paper at an appropriate place in the manuscript.
• Any previous submission to the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry of the same manuscript must be mentioned in the cover letter. Copies of all review reports must be appended as review-only material and the cover letter should include a detailed explanation of all revisions whether or not they were performed.
• Copies of permission letters are required when authors cite unpublished results or information obtained from personal communications with people other than the authors of the manuscript. These copies must be uploaded as review-only material. Any copyrighted material (e.g. figures) which is not original but incorporated in the manuscript from another source including the web must be identified and accompanied by a written agreement of the copyright holder to reproduce it. A copy of this permission must be uploaded as review-only material. In addition, the original source must be included in the reference list and a citation should be given in the figure caption: “From [citation]” for an unmodified or “Adapted from [citation]” for a modified version of the original.
• Ethical approval for any human or animal experimentation must be provided by the responsible author's institutional committee and a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines must be included in the experimental section of the manuscript. In addition, for any experimentation with human subjects a statement that informed consent was obtained is required.

3 Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is defined as taking over the ideas, creative work or written words of others, without proper acknowledgment, i.e. claiming them as one’s own, even if this occurs in relatively small amounts. Re-using in whole or in part one’s own previously published work (ideas, text, data, etc.) without citing the original source is self-plagiarism, which ranges from duplicate or redundant publication to salami-slicing. Plagiarism and self-plagiarism include the following examples:

• Verbatim copying of text from one or more sources without enclosing the copied text in quotation marks (or using block indention) and/or without citing the source.
• Superficial paraphrasing from one or more sources whether or not the source is mentioned. This involves small modifications such as changing, inserting and/or deleting some words, rearranging the word order or changing the grammar or tense of a sentence (patchwriting).
• Paraphrasing or summarizing from one or more sources without acknowledging the respective primary or secondary source (exception: Common knowledge).
• Unclear differentiation which text has been taken over or intentional hiding of the plagiarized source by not providing the citation in the respective context. References must be linked to every place in the text of a manuscript where they are used!
• Appropriating an idea in whole or in part (exception: Common knowledge), re-using already published figures (e.g., images, graphs etc.) or presenting data and experimental results from other sources without providing a proper citation.
• Copying or paraphrasing so many ideas or words from other sources that this accounts for the majority of the “new” work, whether quotation marks and credit are given or not.

Plagiarism is a clear and severe violation of ethical principles and may also be accompanied by the legal matter of copyright infringement. This is particularly true when substantial portions of a previous publication have been copied verbatim without quotation marks whether the original source refers to the same author(s) and has been cited or not. The best advice is that authors should always use their own words when preparing a new manuscript as quotations are uncommon in scientific journals and should only be used if the respective text is being discussed itself. In addition, authors warrant during submission of a manuscript, that the submitted work is original and has not been published or submitted elsewhere.

The editorial office takes all cases of plagiarism, self-plagiarism or any other scientific misconduct very seriously. Authors should be aware that all manuscripts will be checked by using the plagiarism detection software Similarity Check and other resources. Any incident will result in a correction request or even rejection or retraction of an article. The editorial office withholds the right to impose further penalties such as a ban of publication in the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry for a period of two years.