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BMFH Press
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Tokyo 170-0002, Japan
Tel +81-3-5978-3329
Fax +81-3-5978-4068
Editorial office e-mail: bmfh@ipec-pub.co.jp
Online ISSN: 2186-3342
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Instruction to Authors

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Revised October 13, 2023
BIOSCIENCE of MICROBIOTA, FOOD and HEALTH (BMFH) is the official joint scientific journal of The Intestinal Microbiology Society, Japan Society for Lactic Acid Bacteria and Japanese Association for Food Immunology. BMFH publishes original research and review articles, quarterly, in English, pertaining to all areas of intestinal microbiota of humans and other animals, food immunology, food function, and lactic acid bacteria. The aim of this journal is to exchange information on scientific and technological findings and to accelerate new borderless investigation/collaboration in these wide research areas.
Topics of each area covered include:
  • Intestinal microbiota of humans and animals
    • composition, ecology, metabolic activities and taxonomy of intestinal microbiota/bacteria
    • factors affecting intestinal microbiota
    • roles of intestinal microbiota in host immunity, physiology, health and disease
    • development and use of probiotics, prebiotics and biogenics
  • Lactic acid bacteria (LAB)
    • taxonomy, ecology, metabolism and applications of LAB
    • biotechnology, molecular biology and omics of LAB
    • fermentation, fermented foods and starte
  • Food immunology and food function
    • effects of food on innate and adaptive immunity
    • food modulation of immune diseases and health
    • evaluation methods of immune responses and food function
    • intestinal immune responses
    • etiological surveys and clinical studies of food allergy and life style-related diseases
Mode of publication.The BMFH is an open-access journal published on the web.
Editorial Policy. A manuscript is considered for publication on the understanding that:
  • By submission of a manuscript the author(s) automatically grant(s) the exclusive right to the publisher to publish the manuscript in all forms (including electronic) and in all languages throughout the world.
  • The author(s) transfer(s) copyright of the paper to the publisher.
  • The manuscript is approved by all named authors.
  • The manuscript reports original, unpublished work that is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  • The manuscript will not be published elsewhere in any language or form without the permission of the publisher.
  • The manuscript does not contain any table or figure or any other material that has been published elsewhere unless copyright permission has been obtained by the author(s).
  • Papers describing experimental work with humans must include a statement that the Ethical Committee of the institution where the work was done had approved it, and that the participants gave their informed consent to the work. Also, experiments with animals or with genetically manipulated organisms must have been performed in accordance with the legal requirements of the relevant local or national authority, and procedures must be such that experimental animals do not suffer unnecessarily. The animal experimental work must also include a statement that the Ethical Committee of the institution where the work was done had approved it.
  • The corresponding author must ensure that all authors have disclosed any conflicts of interest in the 12 months prior to the submission of the article. A COI includes relationships with corporations whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the article.
  • COI disclosure: Potential COI must be reported at the time the manuscript is submitted. Research funding or other support from outside the authors' stated affiliations must be clearly disclosed within the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible to ensure that the COI disclosures reported in the manuscript are accurate and consistent with the information provided by all authors. Even in the case of no COI, the author must state "The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare".
    An example of a COI disclosure is given below:
    AA and BB are employees of CC Inc. AA owns stock in CC Inc. AA and BB declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any financial relationships or commercial that could be construed as a potential COI.
Affirmation of Originality and Assignment of Copyright Form. A completed Affirmation of Originality and Assignment of Copyright Form should be signed by all authors and submitted with the manuscript data in PDF form. Authors must attach the document at the end of the submitted manuscript. The form can be downloaded from the website of BMFH Press (https://bmfh.jp/).
Submission. All submissions to BMFH must be made electronically. Requirements for submission are detailed at the home page of BMFH (https://bmfh.jp/). Articles should be divided into files as described below, and uploaded to the ScholarOne ManuscriptTM (SM) website (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bmfh). SM automatically creates a single pdf file from files uploaded individually. This pdf file is used in the reviewing process. Ensure that the text of the pdf file is accurate and that all images are sharp enough.
The following files should be prepared.
  • * Text of the manuscript: The file should contain all the text from the cover page to the references.
    - Manuscripts in Microsoft WORD are preferred. Standard fonts (Times New Roman, Century, Arial, Helvetica and Symbol) should be used.
  • * Figures: Files should be submitted to SM in PowerPoint, WORD, EXCEL, Photoshop (JPEG, TIFF), etc., formats. Note that SHS, EXE, COM, VBS, ZIP formats and files with the new extension (.pptx) will not be accepted.
  • * The use of Excel is recommended. The titles of Tables should clearly reflect the contents.
Form of manuscripts. Manuscripts should be typed in English with wide margins using double spacing. Four types of manuscript will be accepted:
  1. 1) Full papers: It is recommended that Full papers should be divided into the following headings: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References. The abstract should not exceed 250 words.
  2. 2) Notes: The Note format is intended for the presentation of brief observations that do not warrant Full papers. Each Note must have an abstract of no more than 100 words at the beginning of the paper. Section headings should not be added.
  3. 3) Reviews: Each review must have an abstract of no more than 250 words at the beginning of the paper.
  4. 4) Letters to the editor: The Editor-in-Chief will consider letters which will provide further debate on a particular topic arising from the publication of a paper in the BMFH. They should be no more than 500 words long. If the Editorin- Chief believes that publication is warranted, a reply will be solicited from the corresponding author of the article.
The cover page of the manuscript should contain the (a) title, (b) authorsf full names, (c) complete mailing address of institute, corporation, or laboratory, (d) proposed running head not exceeding 60 letters, and (e) 3 to 7 key words for indexing. The length of papers, including Tables, Figures, and any other appendices, should not exceed eight PDF pages for a Full paper or Review article, and five for a Note. One PDF page with no title, tables, or figures, will have about 850 words. Supplementary files will be published online only. Supplementary files will not be edited by the publisher. Supplementary files should have a brief title.
Author(s) must enter a minimum of two recommended reviewers through the reviewing system upon submission.
When author(s) are requested to revise the manuscript, they must resubmit it within 2 months after receiving the comment, otherwise the paper will be considered as having been withdrawn.
Abbreviations for measurable units should be (without period) as follows: m, cm, mm, mm, nm, L, dL, mL, mL, kg, mg, mg, ng, pg, ‹C, %, hr, min, sec, etc. Genus or species names, drugs, or any other abbreviations should be spelled out in full when first used in the text and in the Abstract. The Editors reserve the privilege of editing manuscripts to make them conform to the adopted style.
Data availability. We recommend that all data and related meta-data underlying the findings reported in a submitted manuscript will be deposited in an appropriate public repository (GenBank, European Nucleotide Archives, National Center for Biotechnology and Information, National Bioscience Data Center, DNA data bank of Japan).
Preprint. To widely disseminate research, BMFH permits authors to register their manuscripts on preprint servers officially approved by relevant research communities before or at the time of submitting these manuscripts to BMFH. This applies only to original-version manuscripts describing primary studies. Manuscripts revised based on reviewersf comments, accepted for publication, or already published in BMFH cannot be registered on preprint servers. However, there is no restriction on the registration of links to published papers on preprint servers.
  If the manuscript has been registered on a preprint server prior to submission, this must be acknowledged upon submission. An information of the preprint document must be provided so that reviewers and editors can evaluate this and compare it with the submitted manuscript. The preprint information should give author name(s), title, preprint server name, posted date and doi. The authors are requested to write this information after DISCUSSION under ePreprint publicationf.
References.@In the text, references should be cited by number. References should be listed in the order in which they appear in the article, and numbered as follows. In references all author's names should be listed up to 10 authors, if there are 11 or more authors, write first 10 names followed by et al.
  1. Tanaka M, Koida A, Miyazaki A, Tabata K, Takei Y, Tanimoto Y, Kawamura M, Tsuzuki M, Takahashi H, Yano T, et al. 2023. Canna starch improves immune functions and the intestinal environment in mice. Biosci Microbiota Food Health 42: 131|137.
  2. Yonezawa H, Osaki T, Kurata S, Fukuda M, Kawakami H, Ochiai K, Hanawa T, Kamiya S. 2009. Outer membrane vesicles of Helicobacter pylori TK1402 are involved in biofilm formation. BMC Microbiol 9: 197. Available at: http:// www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/9/197 (accessed 2011-08-02)
  3. Salminen S, von Wright A, Ouwehand A. (eds). 2004. Lactic Acid Bacteria: Microbiological and Functional Aspects, Marcel Dekker, New York.
  4. Hirayama K, Rafter J. 2006. Probiotics in cancer prevention. In Probiotics in Food Safety and Human Health, Goktepe I, Juneja VK, Ahmedna M (eds), CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp. 365|381.
Citations of gunpublished data,h gpersonal communications,h gabstracts,h and gtheses,h will not be accepted as References, but may be used parenthetically in the text.

Corresponding author will be charged the following fees after acceptance of manuscript for publication in BMFH.
1) Member (both corporate and individual) of either Japanese Association for Food Immunology, Japan Society for Lactic Acid Bacteria, or The Intestinal Microbiology Society: 5,000 JPY per 1 published page (plus local consumption tax where applicable).
2) Non-member of the above three societies: 10,000 JPY per 1 published page (plus local consumption tax where applicable).


Waiver policy. The publication fee for an accepted manuscript is automatically waived when the corresponding author is from a eGroup Af Research4Life country. Corresponding author from a eGroup Bf Research4Life country will be charged 1/4 of the publication fee for the non-member mentioned above. The corresponding author is requested to apply for a waiver upon submission.

Electronic Submission (Manuscript CentralTM)