Submission, Review, & Publication Processes
Initial Submissions
For initial submissions, mBio welcomes papers in any format (format-neutral submissions). At this stage, authors may upload individual files or a combined PDF, so long as they convey all of the materials intended for review. The reference style, the arrangement of sections of the paper, and other formatting issues are at the discretion of the author. Detailed formatting guidelines are described below. For revisions, resubmissions, and AAM Contributions, you may be asked to conform to these guidelines and/or provide publication-ready source files.
Submission Process
All submissions to mBio must be made electronically via the online submission and peer review system. First-time users must create an Author account.
Review Process
All manuscripts are considered to be confidential and are reviewed by members of the mBio Board of Editors, invited editors, or invited reviewers.
To expedite the review process, authors must recommend five (5) members of the mBio Board of Editors who would be able to handle the review of their manuscript. Authors also must suggest at least three (3) reviewers (five are recommended) who have expertise in the field, who are not members of their institution(s), who have not been recently associated with their laboratory(ies), and who could not otherwise be considered to have a conflict of interest regarding the submitted manuscript. Please provide their contact information where indicated on the submission form. Impersonation of another individual during the review process is considered serious misconduct.
When a manuscript is submitted to the journal, it is given a manuscript control number (e.g., mBio00123-19) and assigned to a member of the Board of Editors. (Always refer to this control number in communications with the editor and the Journals Department.) From there it is assigned to at least two independent experts for peer review. A single-blind review, where authors’ identities are known to reviewers, is applied. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to inform the coauthors of the manuscript’s status throughout the submission, review, and publication processes. The reviewers operate under strict guidelines set forth in “Reviewer Guidelines” and are expected to complete their reviews expeditiously.
The corresponding author is notified, generally within 4 weeks after submission, of the decision to accept, reject, or require modification. When modification is requested, the corresponding author must either submit the modified version within 30 days or withdraw the manuscript. A point-by-point response to the review(s) must be included (as a separate “Response to Reviewer Comments” file), and a compare copy of the revised manuscript should be included as a “Marked Up Manuscript” file.
AAM Contributions
mBio is published in association with the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM), and AAM Fellows are entitled to submit one paper per calendar year via a special, accelerated submission path. This path requires Fellows to obtain two reviews prior to submission (from reviewers who are not recent collaborators, trainees, etc.), make any necessary modifications in response to the reviewers' comments, and communicate the entire package to mBio: the initial reviews, point-by-point responses to the reviewer comments, the revised paper, and e-mail verification showing that each reviewer has seen and approved the final manuscript.
AAM Contributions should be formatted as either Research Articles or Observations and are subject to the same length requirements (13 pages for Research Articles and 7 journal pages with a maximum of 2 figures and 25 references for Observations). Reviewers for AAM Contributions are required to fill out an external review form. Detailed instructions for submitting an AAM Contribution can be found at https://mbio.asm.org/content/fellows.
Submitting via this path does not guarantee acceptance. The editor still has the option of recommending modification or rejection. However, AAM Contributions will not be subject to additional blind review. Like all other mBio articles, AAM Contributions are expected to represent the top 10% of work in the field.
Papers cannot be “communicated” via the AAM Contribution path; AAM Fellows can submit only papers that they have authored or coauthored.
Manuscripts that were previously rejected from the standard peer review path are not eligible for resubmission through the AAM Contribution path.
Rejected Manuscripts
Authors who believe that their manuscript has been unfairly rejected because an important aspect was misunderstood or overlooked by the reviewers may submit an appeal. The appeal will be processed by the editor in chief, who may consult with the editor and/or invited editor of the manuscript. Please note that while we are willing to entertain appeals, it is uncommon for editorial decisions to be reversed.
Manuscripts that have been rejected, or withdrawn after being returned for modification, may be resubmitted to mBio (once; see below) if the major criticisms have been addressed. Manuscripts rejected by mBio may be resubmitted to a more appropriate ASM journal without penalty; however, a manuscript rejected by another ASM journal is considered rejected by mBio and will not be reviewed.
The cover letter of every resubmitted manuscript must state that the manuscript is a resubmission, and the former manuscript control number must be provided in the appropriate field on the submission form. A point-by-point response to the review(s) must be included (the Response to Reviewer Comments section appears in the submission form only if the manuscript is a modification), and a compare copy of the revised manuscript should be included as a “Marked Up Manuscript” file. Manuscripts resubmitted to the same journal are normally handled by the original editor. Rejected manuscripts may be resubmitted only once unless permission has been obtained from the original editor or from the editor in chief.
Manuscripts Reviewed by Non-ASM Journals
mBio will consider previous reviews from certain highly selective non-ASM journals. If you have addressed the review comments from the other journal and feel that your manuscript may be suitable for publication in mBio, you should include the following items in your mBio submission:
- A cover letter declaring the previous submission and requesting expedited review
- A PDF file of the entire previously submitted manuscript uploaded as a "Related Manuscript File"
- A "Response to Reviewer Comment" file containing the previous decision letter(s), all previous reviews, any manuscript correspondence, and your point-by-point response to the reviews, including page and line numbers where changes have been made
- A tracked-changes file showing the revisions made, uploaded as a “Marked Up Manuscript” file
In many cases, manuscripts with previous reviews will receive an expedited decision. The editor still has the option to request additional review and revisions.
Notification of Acceptance
When an editor has decided that a manuscript is acceptable for publication on the basis of scientific merit, the author and the Journals Department are notified. The text files undergo an automated preediting, cleanup, and tagging process specific to the particular article type, and the illustrations are examined. If all files have been prepared according to the criteria set forth in these Instructions and those in the manuscript submission system, the acceptance procedure will be completed successfully. If there are problems that would cause extensive corrections to be made at the copyediting stage or if the files are not acceptable for production, ASM Journals staff will contact the corresponding author. Once all the material intended for publication has been determined to be adequate, the editorial staff of the ASM Journals Department completes the editing of the manuscript to bring it into conformity with prescribed standards.
mBio Publication Schedule
mBio articles are released in an article-based workflow. Articles are not held until an issue is released. The articles published over the preceding weeks are collected into a bimonthly issue and moved into the mBio archive.
Page Proofs
Page proofs, together with a query sheet, will be made available to the corresponding author electronically. Included in the proofs will be the typeset pages of the article, a page showing the legends for any supplemental material (since these legends will appear in the HTML view of the published article), and an author query sheet. All author queries must be answered, and any changes related to the queries, as well as any additional changes, must be indicated in the text. Note that the copy editor does not query at every instance where a change has been made. Queries are written only to request clarification or to draw attention to edits that may have altered the sense. It is the author’s responsibility to read the entire proof. The corrected, annotated PDF file must be returned within two business days to mBio@asmusa.org
The proof stage is not the time to make extensive corrections, additions, or deletions. Figures as they appear in the proofs are for validation of content and placement, not quality of reproduction or color accuracy. Print output of figures in the PDF page proofs will be of lower quality than the same figures viewed on a monitor. Please avoid making changes to figures based on quality of color or reproduction in proof.
Important new information that has become available between acceptance of the manuscript and receipt of the proofs may be inserted as an addendum in proof with the approval of the editor. If references to unpublished data or personal communications are added, it is expected that written assurance granting permission for the citation will be included. Limit changes to correction of spelling errors, incorrect data, and grammatical errors and updated information for references to manuscripts that have been submitted or are in press. If URLs have been provided in the article, recheck the sites to ensure that the addresses are still accurate and the material that you expect the reader to find is indeed there.
Questions about proofs should be directed to the mBio staff.
Funding Agency Repositories
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) requests that its grantee and intramural authors provide copies of their accepted manuscripts to PubMed Central (PMC) for posting in the PMC Public Access Repository. mBio authors are automatically in compliance with this policy and need take no action themselves. For the past several years, ASM has deposited in PMC all publications from all ASM journals. Since mBio articles are open access and are made available through PMC and international PMC-like repositories immediately after publication, ASM is in full compliance with NIH policy. For more information, see https://publicaccess.nih.gov/.
ASM also allows mBio authors whose work was supported by funding agencies that have public access requirements like those of the NIH (e.g., the Wellcome Trust) to post their accepted manuscripts in publicly accessible electronic repositories maintained by those funding agencies. If a funding agency does not itself maintain such a site, then ASM allows the author to fulfill that requirement by depositing the article in an appropriate institutional or subject-based open repository established by a government or noncommercial entity.
ASM requests that when submitting an accepted manuscript to PMC or a public access site, the author specify that the posting release date for the manuscript be no earlier than the date of publication on the mBio website. Articles are published on the website as soon as they are processed, so delays should be minimal.