• Biometrical Letters

    Biometrical Letters

    Author Guidelines

    1. Editorial Policy

    Biometrical Letters publishes articles on the advancement of statistical and mathematical methodology in the life sciences. Our mission is to bridge the gap between theoretical development and practical application in biometry.

    The journal's editorial focus encompasses the following areas:

    • We publish high-quality papers addressing the analysis and interpretation of biometrical experiments. Submissions should demonstrate rigorous use of mathematical and statistical methods to derive meaningful insights from biological data.
    • The journal promotes the development of novel statistical tools. We specifically encourage submissions where methodological advancements are motivated by, and directly applicable to, real-world problems in the life sciences.
    • We provide a forum for reporting the practical application of established and emerging statistical methods. Papers should illustrate how these tools enhance research within the principal disciplines of biology, agriculture, medicine, and environmental sciences.
    • Biometrical Letters welcomes comprehensive review articles that synthesize current knowledge on data analysis techniques and statistical inference, providing the scientific community with valuable pedagogical resources and state-of-the-art overviews.

    The journal supports Reproducible Research. Authors are therefore strongly encouraged to submit computer code and data sets used to illustrate new methods and to reproduce the results of the paper.

    2. Submission and Review Process

    Open Access

    The journal is free of charge for authors and readers. All articles are published in full open access, ensuring immediate and unrestricted availability.

    Submission

    The submissions should be made via sending an email on the address biometrical.letters@up.poznan.pl. For general questions please contact the Editorial Office using the same email address.

    Submission of a manuscript implies that the work is original and has not been concurrently submitted or published elsewhere. Any evidence of prior publication or dual submission will result in immediate rejection.

    It is permitted to the submission of manuscripts previously shared on preprint servers. Authors retain the right to archive the submitted version at any stage, provided that all pre-publication records are subsequently updated with a direct link to the final, version of record.

    All listed authors have to agree to the final submitted version.

    All elements of submition have to be written in high quality English.

    The submission has to be prepared in two versions (see Peer Review below):

    1. full version with all authors, funding, etc., information.
    2. blind version, which guarantee anonymity of authors.

    Format Submission

    Submissions must use the journal's template. Templates in Word and LaTeX are available at the following links: ??? links ???.

    Reproducible Research and Data Availability

    It is recommended to share the data and the code reproducing the results. The accepted manuscript is required to publish a data availability statement. It confirms the presence or absence of data used and should be included in the manuscript. The implementation of the new methodology, source code for simulation studies, and data analyses should accompany the manuscript as supplementary materials. These can be provided, for example, via a GitHub repository or on one of the authors' websites. If a data set cannot be shared publicly, a simulated data set or other real data set, which is publicly available and concerns given scientific issue, should be presented.

    Copyright

    The copyright form, to be completed and attached to the submission by the corresponding author, is available here. ??? link dodać ???

    Biometrical Letters applies the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) to all published articles for their non-commercial use. Under this agreement, copyright remains with the authors, who warrant that their work is original. This license allows users to freely share the article (copy, distribute, and transmit) provided they give appropriate acknowledgment of authorship and do not alter, transform, or build upon the work.

    Simultaneously, authors grant the journal owner, the Polish Biometric Society, a license for commercial use, which includes the right to sublicense, reproduce the work, and include the article in electronic databases or information services. Authors also retain the right to use the substance of the article in their future works, reproduce it for personal purposes, and practice self-archiving.

    Title Page

    The title page should contain:

    1. An informative title, which should not contain abbreviations;
    2. The abbreviated title (no more than 50 characters);
    3. The full names of the authors;
    4. The authors' institutional affiliations and email addresses;
    5. ORCID of authors;
    6. Designation of the corresponding author;
    7. Summary of the manuscript up to 200 words;
    8. Key words in alphabetical order up to 6.

    Main Text of Manuscript

    The main text should be in a file of Word or LaTeX and include:

    1. Title page;
    2. Main body: Section 1 Introduction, Section 2-x, etc.;
    3. Data availability statement;
    4. Conflict of interest disclosure;
    5. Acknowledgements, including, in particular, funding (optional);
    6. Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies;
    7. Appendix (optional);
    8. References.

    Tables and figures should be placed in the appropriate locations within the main text. Each should have an identification number and a description, and there must be a reference to it in the text. Acceptable file formats for figures include: .pdf, .eps, .png, .jpg.

    Reference Style

    References in the text should be by author's surname and publication date. For publication by more than two authors, "et al." should be used after the name of the first author. In the list at the end of the paper, references should be in alphabetical order under the first author's name, and should include the surnames of all authors, year of publication, title, name of journal, volume number, issue number, and page numbers or elocators.

    Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies

    Authors may utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools to enhance their efforts. Nevertheless, it is important that these tools are not employed as a replacement for human critical analysis, expertise, and assessment. The application of AI technology must occur under the human supervision and governance.

    Ultimately, the responsibility for the content of their scholarly work resides with the authors. Specifically, they have to ensure the manuscript is developed in a way that safeguards data privacy, intellectual property and other rights.

    Finally, authors are prohibited from attributing authorship or co-authorship to AI Tools in the manuscript, as authorship connotes responsibilities and functions that can solely be ascribed to, and executed by, human beings.

    The incorporation of AI Tools in the manuscript preparation process must be disclosed by appending a statement at the appropriate section. An exemplar of such a statement is as follows:

    Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME OF TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.

    This declaration does not pertain to the employment of fundamental tools, such as those utilized for grammar, spelling, and reference verification. If you have nothing to disclose, you do not need to add a statement.

    To protect authors' rights and the confidentiality of their research, the utilization of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies by reviewers or editors during the peer review and manuscript evaluation process is currently prohibited.

    Peer Review

    Biometrical Letters operates under a double-blind peer review model. Manuscripts will be forwarded for review solely when the Editors-in-Chief confirm that they meet the required standards of quality and relevance.

    Revised Manuscripts

    A revised version of a manuscript should be submitted in two versions:

    1. clean version with changes,
    2. version with all changes highlighted (as information for reviewers and editors).

    In addition, a separate file containing a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments should also be submitted.

    3. After Acceptance

    Final manuscript

    The authors are asked to prepare the final version of the article, once it has been accepted, in the journal's format using Word or LaTeX and send appropriate source and resulting PDF files to editorial board. Specifically, please ensure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references align accurately with their corresponding text citations, and that figure legends correspond correctly with both the textual references and the actual visuals.