mBio Submission and Review Process

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. However, to assist the reviewers, manuscript pages should have continuous line numbers and page numbers. 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. Authors are encouraged to review this checklist that may be helpful when preparing your submission.

Supplemental material can be posted by mBio or, if authors prefer, can be submitted by the authors for posting by a third-party service such as Dryad, figshare, or a similar repository. In the latter case, the assigned accession number(s) must be included in the manuscript submitted for review.

Supplemental items intended for posting by ASM should be uploaded as separate Supplemental Material files. Each item in the supplemental material should be submitted as a separate file; e.g., multiple figures and/or tables should not be zipped together or combined in a single PDF. ASM will post no more than 10 individual supplemental items. The maximum size permitted for an individual file is 3 MB (20 MB for movie and data set files).

To ensure broad access, we ask that supplemental files be submitted in the following standard formats.

• Text: Word, RTF, or PDF files.
• Figures: TIFF, EPS, PPT, PDF, JPEG, GIF, or scalable vector graphic (SVG) format.
• Tables: Word, RTF, or PDF files.
• Data sets: Excel (.xls), RTF, TXT, or PDF files.
• Movies: Audio Video Interleave (.avi), QuickTime (.mov), or MPEG files.

At the end of the manuscript text file, include a legend for each item in the supplemental material. If it is necessary to cite references that are relevant only to these supplemental legends, use the style described for “Citations in abstracts”; do not include these references in the References section of the manuscript. Supplemental material should be numbered with an “S” (e.g., Movie S1, Fig. S1, Fig. S2, etc.), and each item should be cited at least once in the text.

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 recently been associated with their laboratory(ies), and who could not otherwise be considered to pose 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., mBio00123-21) 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 the "Reviewer Guidelines" and are expected to complete their reviews expeditiously. See the Reviewers section for additional information on reviewer support and recognition.

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 all of the reviews must be uploaded as a separate Response to Reviewer Comments file. Additionally, a Marked Up Manuscript file (without figures) highlighting all of the changes from the original manuscript submission must be uploaded as a separate file. For the benefit of editors and reviewers assessing revisions, all changes in this file should be highlighted, no matter how minor. Please note that a manuscript may not necessarily be processed editorially until a version with all changes noted has been submitted.

For information about manuscripts reviewed by non-ASM journals, please see the Transferring page.

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 as regular Research Articles and Observations. Reviewers for AAM Contributions are required to fill out an external review form. Please review the detailed instructions for submitting an AAM Contribution for more information.

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. 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. 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.