The journal was founded in 2005, registered under “Біотехнологія” name, ISSN 1995-5537.  It was renamed in 2013, КВ No 19650-9450ПР series at 01.30.2013, as “Biotechnologia Acta”, the official abbreviation is Biotechnol. Acta, from No1, 2008 to No6, 2012 it is transliterated as Biotekhnolohiia. Beginning from №1, 2015, ISSN was registered as ISSN 2410-7751 (print version) and ISSN  2410-776X (Online). “Biotechnologia Acta” is issued bimonthly, publication is fee. The format of ‘Biotechnologia Acta’ corresponds to the international standards.  DOI of the journal is 10.15407(biotech). All the published articles have DOI. The articles are published in English and have identical summaries in Ukrainian and Russian languages.

Stoika Rostislav  ¾ Deputy Head editor, Ph.D., Professor, Head of Department of Regulation of Cell Proliferation, Institute of Cell Biology of the NAS of Ukraine, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv, (Ukraine) stoika@cellbiol.lviv.ua

Kolybo Denis  ¾ Deputy Head editor , PhD., Deputy Director of Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, (Ukraine), Kolybo@nas.gov.ua

Levitsky Eugene  ¾  Scientific Editor,  PhD, Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, (Ukraine), biotech@biochem.kiev.ua

Vinogradova Alyona – Executive Editor, Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, (Ukraine), biotech@biochem.kiev.ua

Borisova Tatiana –  PhD., Professor, member of the working group of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), Head of Neurochemistry Department, Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, (Ukraine), tborisov@biochem.kiev.ua

Buchatskiy Leonid  – PhD., Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Informatization, Member of the Academy of Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences,  President of the Ukraine Association of ichthyopathologists, State Prize laureate of Ukraine in Science and Technology, Institute of Fisheries  of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, (Ukraine), irido1@bigmir.net

Drobot Liudmila - PhD., Professor, head of the Cell Signaling Department, Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine, drobot@biochem.kiev.ua

Dzyadevych Sergiy – PhD. (Biotechn.), Professor, Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv (Ukraine), dzyad@yahoo.com

Filonenko  Valeriy  –  PhD. (Mol. Biol.), Professor, Head of the Department of Cell Signaling,  Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv (Ukraine), filonenko@imbg.org.ua

Karpov Olexandre – PhD., Professor, National University of food technologies, Kyiv, Ukraine, karpov_av@hotmail.com

Kuchuk Mykola – PhD., Professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, director of the Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering, Kyiv, Ukraine, nkuchuk@icbge.org.ua

Kunakh Victor –  PhD. (Genetics), Professor, Corresponding member of  the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ditector of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, head of the Department of Cell Population Genetics, Kyiv (Ukraine), kunakh@imbg.org.ua

Lukash Lyubov  – PhD. (Mol. Genetics), Professor,  head of the Department of Human Genetics, Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, (Ukraine), lukash@imbg.org.ua

Matyshevska Olga – PhD., Professor, member of the working group of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, Kyiv, (Ukraine), matysh@yahoo.com

Melnichuk Maksim – PhD., Professor, full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, National University for Bioresources, Kyiv, Ukraine, maksym@nauu.kiev.ua

Minchenko Olexandre – PhD., Professor, head of molecular department, Palladin Institute of Biochemistry, Kyiv, Ukraineб ominchenko@yahoo.com

Prylutskyy Yuriy  PhD. (Theoretical Physics), Professor, Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, Kyiv, Ukraine, prylut@ukr.net

Sandomirsky  Boris  –  Ph.D. (in Medicine), Professor, Member of Science Surgery Association, Member of Intenational Endotoxin Society, Member of the European Society of Artificial Organs (ESAO), Head of the Department of Experimental Cryomedicine, Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine, Kharkov (Ukraine), bsan38@yahoo.com

Soldatkin Alexey – PhD., D.Sc. (biotechnology), Professor, Corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, head of Laboratory of Biomolecular Electronics, Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine, Kyiv (Ukraine), a_soldatkin@imbg.org.ua

Spivak Mikola – PhD, Professor, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, leading immunologist of Ukraine, Head of the Department of Interferon and Immunomodulators of the Institute of Microbiology and Virology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv (Ukraine), spivak@serv.imv.kiev.ua

General information
Results of scientific research and survey on different directions of current biotechnology, brief reports, articles on biotechnology history, and new publications on biotechnology and adjoining branches of science are published in English and have identical summaries in Ukrainian and Russian languages.

Bioethical norms

“Biotechnologia Acta” is focuses on the rules recommended by the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes (Strasbourg, 1986) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

All procedures describing experiments involving laboratory animals, any biomaterials of human origin including donors and/or patients should be carried out guided by the bioethics norms. Experimental record should be reviewed and approved by the National Commissions on Bioethics and meet the International Standards.

Basic requirements to the articlesare novelty, relevance and validity of the given facts, reproducibility of the experimental data on the reported methods and drawing up of the manuscript according to the journal requirements.

Article submission

The following documents are provided via E-mail biotech@biochem.kiev.ua:
•    full text of the article (including a summary in three languages, tables, figures and their captions placed as mentioned in the text and a list of references as well). This file should be named after the first author (family_name.doc);
•    color illustrations;
•    full names, first names and patronymics of all authors and full postal addresses of their institution should be given, including post codes, in Ukrainian, Russian, and English languages. The corresponding author/s should be indicated, including their e-mail and telephone;
•    copyright contract signed by all authors (see the Agreement on the Journal site). No part of the Journal publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of the publisher. If the Editorial Board rejects the article the Agreement automatically loses its force. Signing the Agreement by the authors means that they are familiar and agree with the terms of the contract.

General requirements to manuscript

The editors reserve the right to return the manuscripts that are not in accordance with the following instruction

The date of the paper receipt is the date of arrival of its last, correct version to the editorial office.

The materials should be submitted in the Microsoft Word-supported format, page size of A4, book-oriented, font Times New Roman, at 14 point size, of one and a half spacing.

The manuscript (including tables, list of references, figures, and figure captions) should not exceed 30 pages (60 thousand symbols) for review articles, 20 pages (40 thousand symbols) for experimental one, 8 pages for short reports, 5–6 pages for current events and reviews. Figure volume is 1/4 of the article. Pages should be numbered consecutively, including tables, references, figure captions, summaries, etc. All tables, figures and their captions should have a concise title and serial number. The notes on the table are placed straight under the table. Footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations.

Figures should be in one of the electronic formats * jpg or *tif in in color.

The articles are reviewed by two independent experts who are appointed by the Editorial Board.

Section article

Experimental articles should have the following scheme:
•    Title page;
•    Structured abstracts;
•    Text of the article;
•    Acknowledgements (where applicable);
•    Data concerning financial support (where applicable);
•    References.

Title page:
•    UDC (Universal Decimal Classification);
•    article title;
•    full names of all the authors;
•    name and postal address of the institution which each author works in;
•    e-mail of the corresponding author.

Article title should be brief (not more than 8-10 significant words), informative, contain keywords and cover adequately the content of the article.

Names of all authors should be given in full. Each author should list an associated department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country.

Name of the institution: If there are some authors and they work in different institutions, it needs to show in Arabic (indices) the names of the authors of the appropriate institutions.

Structured abstracts:

Abstracts up to 1,500 characters with spaces should contain:
•    article title;
•    names of all authors;
•    text of the abstract for experimental articles should be carefully structured and contain the following sections: aim, methods, results, conclusion;
•    keywords (not more than ten).

In addition, an abstract should:
•    explain how the study was done which includes any model and organisms were used, without getting into methodological specifics;
•    summarize the most important results and their significance.

Abstracts should not include:
•    citations;
•    abbreviations.

Text of the article
Experimental articles should have the following sections (headlines):
•    introduction (not entitled),
•    materials and methods,
•    results and discussion,
•    conclusion (not entitled).

The relevance and purpose of the study is formulated in the introduction.

Methods or methodology of the work should be described in a case if they are distinct in novelty.

On the common techniques it is enough to give references to publications. All the designations and denominations of physical units should be given in SI International System. Amino acids are indicated by abbreviated symbols of three letters or in single letter format FASTA.

Names of the enzymes and their codes should be given according to the recommendations of the International Biochemical Society (Enzyme Nomenclature – Acad. Press. San Diego. California and Supplement (1-6) in Eur. J. Biochem. (1993-1997, 1999) or electron version: http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/enzyme.

Names of companies and countries producers of the reagents and materials used in the experiments should be given. The number and species of the used animals as well as the methods of anaesthetization and euthanasia should be defined.

All quantitative data require statistical analysis. Its results should be given in the tables and figures. Data validity is shown as follows: * - P <0.05.

Latin name of the genus and species of the organisms should be given in italics. Mentioning firstly, it is given full specific name (preferably with indication of taxon author), and subsequently the name of the genus could be given shortly with one letter, unless it concerns species belonging to different genera with the same first letter. Latin names of taxons are given according to current sources. It needs to use only standard abbreviations of names for measures, physical, chemical and mathematical variables and terms, all other abbreviations have to be interpreted.

If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references.

References

Only published or accepted manuscripts should be included in the reference list. Manuscripts that have been submitted but not yet accepted should not be cited. References must be listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, citations should be indicated by the reference number in square brackets.

The authors are responsible for the correctness of the original sources.

Citation of published and readily accessible materials to readers is only available: articles, books, conference proceedings, dissertations, patents.

It is desirable that the manuscript has no more than 20 references in experimental work, 100 references in review, and refer to recent years.

Editorial staff has no responsibility for correctness and completeness of the given bibliographic data.

Recommendations of the "Biotechnologia Acta" journal for the references compilation:

Published papers:

Examples:
Narezhnaya E. V., Askalepova O. I., Nikashina A. A. Krukier I. I., Pogorelova T. N. Determination of L-arginine in amniotic fluid by capillary disk electrophoresis. Zhurnal Anal. Khim. 2010, 65(12), 1309–1312. (In Russian).

Liang G., Klose R. J., Gardner K. E., Zhang Y. Yeast Jhd2p is a histone H3 Lys4 trimethyl demethylase. Nature Struct. Mol. Biol. 2007, 14(2), 243-245.

Rodrigues L. R. Inhibition of bacterial adhesion on medical devices. Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. 2011, V. 715, Р. 351–367.

Skochko A.B., Konon A.D., Pirog T.P. Research of antiadhesion properties of surface-active substances of Аcinetobacter calcoaceticus IMV В-7241. Kharchova promislovist. 2012, N13, P. 77–80. (In Ukrainian).

Examples of paper descriptions with DOI:
Yang S. Y., Ryu I., Kim H. Y., Kim J. K., Jang S. K., Russell T. P. Nanoporous membranes with ultrahigh selectivity and flux for the filtration of viruses. Advanced Materials. 2006, 18(6), 709–712. doi: 10.1002/adma.200501500.

Conferences:
Riabinina A. A., Berezina E. V., Usol'tseva N. V. Surface Tension and Lyotropic Mesomorphism in Systems Consisting of Nonionogenic Surfactant and Water. Lyotropic Liquid Crystals and Nanomaterials: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference. Ivanovo: Ivanovskii Gos. Univ. 2009. (In Russian).

Theses:
Kordyum V., Suhorada E., Ruban T. Informational conditioning as the mechanism of permanent organism reconstruction. Abstracts of the 1st World Congress of Regenerative Medicine, Leipzig, Germany. 22–24 October 2003.

Electronic journal articles:
Hindorff, L. A. (all authors) A Catalog of Published Genome-Wide Association Studies. Available at http://www.genome.gov/gwastudies (accessed, September, 2012).

Description of the electronic encyclopedia articles:
Containerization. (2008). In Encyclop?dia Britannica. Retrieved May 6, 2008, from http://search.eb.com

Links to Web resources:
Pravila Tsitirovaniya Istochnikov (Rules for the Citing of Sources) Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/1034528/ (accessed 7 February 2011).

Links to online resource of scientific and technical reports:
Deming D, Dynarski S. The lengthening of childhood. (NBER Working Paper 14124). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved July 21, 2008, from http://www.nber.org/papers/w14124

Book:
McCartney E.J. Optics of the atmosphere. N. Y.: Willey. 1977, 400 p.

Book chapter:
Trachtenberg I. M., Levitsky E. L. Genetic toxicology. Genetic medicine. Zaporojan S.B. (Ed.). Odessa State University. 2008, P. 183–221. (In Russian).
6 p.

Monograph:
Lugovskoy E. V. The Molecular Mechanisms of Fibrin Formation and Fibrinolysis. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka. 2003. 219 p. (In Russian)

Dissertation abstracts:
N. Kawasaki. Parametric study of thermal and chemical nonequilibrium nozzle flow. M.S. thesis, Dept. Electron. Eng., Osaka Univ., Osaka, Japan. 2003.

J. O. Williams. Narrow-band analyzer. Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Elect. Eng., Harvard Univ., Cambridge. MA. 2010.

Dissertation:
Young R. F. Crossing boundaries in urban ecology: Pathways to sustainable cities (Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database. 2007. (UMI No. 327681).

Encyclopaedia, dictionary:
Sadie S., Tyrrell J. (Eds.). The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians (2nd ed., Vols. 1-29). New York, NY: Grove.

Patent:
Wilkinson J. P. (all the authors). Nonlinear resonant circuit devices. U.S. Patent 3 624 125. July 16, 1990.
NOTE: Use “issued date” if several dates are given.

Short messages
Smaller articles by volume that have an implicit novelty and relevance for biotechnology are published in “Biotechnologia Acta” journal. These articles are passed expedite reviewing and published in a short time. The total volume of a short message is limited to 10 typewritten pages, number of drawings and/or tables should not exceed 3, and a list of used literature sources should not contain more than 15.

Sections of the short messages are similar to that of the original article but are not shown with headings and subheadings, the results could be given together with the discussion.

Author for correspondence should justify the expediency of such an extraordinary publication in a letter to the editor. In case of acceptance, such work could be published within 3–4 months.

Notes
Authors can correct only found mistakes in the made up pages without making additional changes and supplements.

The authors ought to give their manuscripts to the following editor’s address:

“Biotechnologia Acta” journal,
Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the NAS of Ukraine, 9 Leontovicha Street, Kyiv, 01601, Ukraine
E-mail: biotech@biochem.kiev.ua
tel.: (080-44) 235–14–72

Giving an article to “Biotechnologia Acta” journal, an author thereby deligates the rights to the Publisher (©Palladian Institute of Biochemistry of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) to edit, translate into any language, reproduce and publish the work in form and format adopted by the editor.

The editors of the “Biotechnologia Acta” journal work in accordance with the international publication ethics principles, including but not limited to privacy policy, vigilance over the scholarly publications, consideration of possible conflict of interests, etc. The editorial board follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics and in particular of Publishing Ethics Resource Kit of publishing house Elsevier and of valuable practice of world-leading journals and publishers as well. Following the ethic rules of scientific publications by all the members of the process promotes guarantees for author’s intellectual property rights, improves quality of publication in the world scientific society’s sight and excludes possibility of illegal appropriation of author’s materials for the convenience of individuals.

This Condition corresponds to policy of the journal and it is one of the basic constituent of reviewing and journal’s publication.

1. Duties of authors

Authors should understand that they carry personal liability for the provided text of manuscript; that suggests the following principles:

1.1. To provide reliable results of the research. Definitely wrong, knavish or faked statements equal to unethical behavior and can be considered as inappropriate.

1.2. To take part in the process of expert assessment of article’s manuscript. The head editor can request the initial data of scientific article for editorial review, and authors must provide free access for these data, if it is possible, in every case authors should save initial materials during reasonable period of time after the publication.

1.3. To provide guarantees that the results of research stated in the manuscript are independent and original. In case of other work areas usage or appropriations of statements by other authors, this work should have corresponding bibliographic references with mandatory definition of the author and primary source. According to the condition 3.4 “Conditions about reviewing of scientific articles in the polythematic journal “Discussion”: all the articles must be subjected to the checkup by means of the program “Antiplagiat”. Excessive appropriations and plagiarism in any form, including not performed quotations, rephrasing or rights’ appropriation of somebody’s research results are considered as unethical and inappropriate actions. All the articles which consist of materials’ compilation published before by other authors, without creative revision and personal author’s cognition are unacceptable for publication in the journal.

1.4. To understand that authors carry initial liability for novelty and reliability of the scientific research results.

1.5. To recognize contribution by all the people engaged in the process of research or set the character of the presented scientific work. In particular, this article must have bibliographic references to the publications which had a meaning during the research. All the information got by talks, correspondence or discussions with other people can be used without open written permission from the source. All the sources must be opened. If this work uses written or illustrative materials by many people, permission must be got and provided to the editorial board.

1.6. To present original manuscript to the journal which hasn’t been sent to other one and hasn’t been under consideration, and also article hasn’t been published in other journal. Non-compliance of this principle is considered as a rude violation of the publication ethics and gives substantiation for reviewing refusal. Text of article must be original, in other words it must be published in the present form in periodical printing for the first time. If the elements of the manuscript were published in other article, the author must make a reference for early work and define essential differences of new work with the previous one. Literal copying of personal works and its rephrasing are inappropriate; they can be used only for basis of new conclusions.

1.7. To guarantee the right membership list of co-authors. This list should have all the people who made an essential intellectual contribution in the concept, structure and carrying out or interpretation of the given work results. Other people who took part in some aspect of the work should be thanked. The author also should guarantee that all the co-authors looked through the final variant of the article, approved it and agreed with the publication. All the authors defined in the article should carry public liability for the article’s content. If the article is a multidisciplinary work, the author can be responsible for their own contribution, being responsible for the general result. People who do not take part in the research can’t be included in the list of co-authors.

1.8. In case of detection of critical mistakes or uncertainties in the work at the stage of its consideration or after publication, it is necessary to inform the editorial staff of the journal hereof immediately and to make a collective decision concerning an error confession and/or to correct it as soon as possible. If the editorial board knows about it from third party, the author ought to eliminate or correct the mistakes immediately or to prove correctness of the information.

1.9. To define all funding sources in the manuscripts; to declare about possible conflicts of interest, which could influence the results of the research, its interpretation and reviewers’ opinion.

2. Ethic principles in the reviewer’s activity

A reviewer carries out a scientific expertise of author’s materials, so his actions should be impartial, following the next principles:

2.1. Expert assessment should help the author to improve quality of the article text and the head editor to make a decision for publication.

2.2. A reviewer who doesn’t consider himself or herself to be a specialist in the certain sphere or knows that he or she can’t provide the review of the article in time must inform the head editor about it and retire from the reviewing.

2.3. A reviewer can’t be the author or co-author of the reviewing work, and also research advisor and/or employees of the department where the author works.

2.4. Every manuscript got from the editorial board for reviewing is a confidential document. It can’t be discussed with other people excluding people defined by the head editor.

2.5. A reviewer must be impartial. Personal remarks to the author are forbidden. A reviewer must express own opinion clearly and with reason.

2.6. If it is possible, a reviewer should find published articles corresponding to the reviewing article and not quoted by the author. Every statement in the review that observation, conclusion or argument form the article has been met in the literature before, it should be accompanied with certain bibliographic reference. Reviewer also should pay attention of the head editor about similarity or partial coincidence of the peer-reviewed article with every other one published before.

2.7. A reviewer can’t use information and ideas form the article obtained for reviewing for personal purposes with due attention to confidentiality of this information and ideas.

2.8. Reviewer should take into consideration the articles with conflict of interest, caused by competition, cooperation or any other relations with any author or organization connected with the article.

3. Principles of professional ethics in activity of editorial staff

During the activity editorial staff, editorial-and-publishing group, and members of the editorial group of the journal carry liability for publication of author’s works that leads to the next main principles:

3.1. During the decision making concerning publication the head editor is guided by reliability of the presented data and scientific importance of the considered paper.

3.2. The head editor shouldn’t have conflicts of interest towards the articles he refuses or apply.

3.3. The head editor carries liability for the decision which articles will be published or refused. Meanwhile he is guided by the policy of the journal and follows juridical restrictions, avoiding libel, author’s copyright violation and plagiarism. In order to make a decision the head editor may consult with the members of the editorial staff and reviewers.

3.4. The head editor evaluates a manuscript only by scientific content regardless race, sex, sexual orientation, religious confession, nationality, citizenship, origin, social status and political views of the author.

3.5. The head editor, employees of editorial board, editorial-and-publishing group and editorial group of the journal can’t expose information about an article to nobody, except the authors, assigned potential reviewers and other editorial board members, and sometimes a publisher.

3.6. Not published data, got from the manuscripts presented for consideration, can’t be used by the head editor, employees of editorial board, editor-and-publishing group or editorial group for personal profit or given for third party (without author’s written permission).

3.7. The head editor shouldn’t allow information to publication if there are enough evidences that this article is a plagiarism.

3.8. An article, in publication case, is posted in free access; the authors’ copyrights are saved.

3.9. The head editor together with the publisher shouldn’t ignore the claims concerning the considered articles or published materials. In any conflict situation they should take measures for violated rights’ restoration, and in case of mistakes discoveries they should assist in corrective publication or disclaimer.

3.10. The head editor, members of the editorial staff, and editorial-and-publishing group should support confidentiality of names and other information concerning the reviewers. If it is necessary, in decision making for new reviewer attraction, this reviewer can be informed about previous ones.  

4. Principles of professional ethics in publisher’s activity

The publisher carries liability for publishing author’s works. It causes the necessity to follow the next main principles and procedures:

4.1. To promote realization of ethic responsibilities by the editorial board, editorial-and-publishing group, editorial group, reviewers and authors according to the requirements.

4.2. To support the journal’s editorial board in consideration of claims to ethic aspects of publishing materials and help to interact with other journals and/or publishers, if it is a responsibility of the editors.

4.3. To support confidentiality of the author’s materials before publication.

4.4. To understand that the journal’s activity is not a commercial project and can’t be considered as profitable.

4.5. To be ready to publish corrections, explanations, disclaimers or excuses, when it is necessary.

4.6. To give the editorial board a possibility to exclude the publications with plagiarism and unreliable data.

Head editor of the “Biotechnologia Acta” journal Komisarenko S.V. confirmed the condition of scientific publications’ ethics on the 25^th of June, 2015.