About Microbial Cell Factories

What is Microbial Cell Factories?

Microbial Cell Factories is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that covers any topic related to the development, use and investigation of microbial cells as producers of recombinant proteins and natural products, or as catalyzers of biological transformations of industrial interest.

Microbial Cell Factories is aimed at microbiologists, biochemists, structural and environmental biologists and to any biotechnologist interested in biological or technical aspects of the Microbial Cell Factories.

The journal approaches microbial biotechnology from an angle not covered by any other biotechnology and microbiology journal - by stressing the cell factory concept and considering not only the final products but also the physiology of the producing cell.

Content overview

Microbial Cell Factories considers the following types of articles:

• Research: reports of original research describing experimental findings on the microbial cell factory concept from any of its multiple sides.
• Commentaries: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the journal's scope. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings. They focus on specific issues and are about 1500 words.
• Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of Microbial Cell Factories. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board. They can be submitted either upon specific invitation or editorial acceptance of an author's proposal. To submit a proposal, authors should send a tentative title and abstract to the Editorial Office, justify their expertise in the target area, and explain both the scientific relevance and the absence of recent reviews on the topic.
• Technical Notes : should present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article must describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available. The method needs to have been well tested and ideally, but not necessarily, used in a way that proves its value.

Peer review policies

Submitted manuscripts are immediately sent for revision to two external reviewers with recognized expertise in the field, and to a member of the editorial board. Since the electronic procedure allows fast communication, the reviewers are asked to complete their revision within 20 days. The editorial decision is taken with at least two reports

Edited by Antonio Villaverde, Microbial Cell Factories is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Publishing in Microbial Cell Factories

All articles will be listed in PubMed immediately upon acceptance (after peer review), and will be covered by PubMed Central, Thomson Reuters (ISI), CAS, Biosis and Embase.

Articles in Microbial Cell Factories should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. However, because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

Microb Cell Fact 2004, 2:1

refers to article 1 from volume 2 of the journal.

As an online journal, Microbial Cell Factories does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

To keep up to date with the latest articles from Microbial Cell Factories, why not register to receive alerts? Registration also enables you to customise your subject areas of interest, store your searches, and submit your manuscripts.

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to Microbial Cell Factories using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

General journal policies

Microbial Cell Factories is published  by BioMed Central, an independent publisher committed to ensuring peer-reviewed biomedical research is Open Access. That means it is freely and universally accessible online, it is archived in at least one internationally recognised free access repository, and its authors retain copyright, allowing anyone to reproduce or disseminate articles, according to the BioMed Central copyright and licence agreement. Microbial Cell Factories however, has taken this further by making all its content Open Access.

Microbial Cell Factories's articles are archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.

BioMed Central is working closely with the Thomson Reuters (ISI) to ensure that citation analysis of articles published in Microbial Cell Factories will be available.

Microbial Cell Factories is able to deliver summaries of frequently updated content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These are accessible via the orange "XML" button at the top of the list of recent articles or the list of most accessed articles. For more information about RSS feeds see our publisher's website.

For further information about general policies please see the instructions for authors.