About Silence

This page includes information about the aims and scope of Silence, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information. For details of how to prepare and submit a manuscript through the online submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Aims & scope

Silence is an online, peer-reviewed, open access journal that covers all aspects of genetic and epigenetic control that are mediated by RNA.

Silence aims to feature research involving small RNA molecules, and submissions are invited describing novel insights into the biogenesis and activity of such molecules. Manuscripts describing other RNA-mediated mechanisms in prokaryotes and eukaryotes are also of interest, particularly if they involve aspects of nucleic acid biochemistry that are relevant to processes involving small RNA. In addition to novel research findings, the Editors of Silence are particularly interested in receiving submissions describing novel methods for analysis and manipulation of RNA-mediated regulation. Silence also encourages bioinformatic and computational methods manuscripts describing results and protocols that are accessible to molecular biologists and geneticists.

Open access

All articles published by Silence are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in Silence are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Silence therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1475/$2225/€1725 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

All articles published in Silence are included in PubMed, the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service, which is run by the US National Library of Medicine. Other bibliographic databases that index articles published in Silence include:

• CAS
• Citebase
• Global Health
• Google Scholar
• Index Copernicus
• OAIster

• PubMed
• PubMed Central
• Scirus
• Scopus
• SOCOLAR
• Zetoc

The full text of all research articles is deposited in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and other digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

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

Publication and peer review process

Content overview

Research: reports of data from original research. These articles will form the major content of the journal.

Reviews: comprehensive, authoritative, descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal.

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, and are often written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board.

Methods articles: presentations of 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 should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

Short reports: brief reports of data from original research.

Minireviews: usually based on one or more recently published articles interesting enough to warrant a short commentary. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders invited by the Editorial Board.

Software articles: describe the source code for new software applications, tools or algorithm implementations. Typically, an archive of the source code of the current version of the software should be included with the submitted manuscript as a supplementary file.

Peer-review policies

All manuscripts are reviewed by internationally recognized experts in the field, selected in part from our Editorial Board. Reviews are rapid and the suitability of a manuscript for publication is assessed solely on criteria of scientific excellence. Final decisions are made by the Editors-in-Chief.

Edited by David Baulcombe, Phillip Zamore and Olivier Voinnet, Silence is supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript through the submission system at any time by logging into My Silence, a personalized section of the site.

Copyediting and proofs

All articles published in Silence are copyedited before publication of the final version.

Articles published in Silence are published immediately on acceptance in the form of a provisional PDF. Copyedited and fully formatted PDF and full-text (HTML) versions are made available shortly after that.

Edited versions will be sent by email and corrections should be returned within two working days. Please provide a typed list of corrections clearly indicating where the corrections should be made and please send this list by email.

The editing is designed only to correct such things as misused words, spelling errors, missing references or incomplete citation information.

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Supplements

Silence will consider supplements based on proceedings (full articles or meeting abstracts), reviews or research. All articles submitted for publication in supplements are subject to peer review. Published supplements are fully searchable and freely accessible online and can also be produced in print. All full length articles (proceedings, reviews or research articles) are indexed by PubMed. PubMed displays the title of the supplement only in the case of meeting abstract collections. For further information, please contact us.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Silence should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Citing articles in Silence

Articles in Silence should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. Silence [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Silence 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Why publish your article in Silence?

High visibility

Silence's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

Silence offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The article will subsequently be published in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Silence, BioMed Central and PubMed Central and will also be included in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in Silence gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Silence are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and are highlighted on Silence's pages and on the BioMed Central homepage.

In addition, articles published in Silence may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Silence. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BioMed Central is available here.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Silence retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.