All Biological Procedures Online articles pass through a rigorous peer review. Our peer review process is designed to provide assurance to readers that papers published in BPO have attained a high standard of scientific excellence, as judged by researchers who have expert knowledge in the pertinent field.

The editorial policy of Biological Procedures Online is governed by the policy statements of the Council of Science Editors. Further, research published in BPO must conform to the ethical directives of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals which are available at http://www.icmje.org.

Upon submission, each BPO manuscript is screened for conformation to the journal's instructions for authors. The article must be of a scholarly nature and its content must be appropriate for the journal. The manuscript is then sent for review to the reviewers recommended by its authors.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript critically with respect to conformance to the journal's scope. Among these, Biological Procedures publishes in-depth technical supplements to research methods that have been successfully used in published research. In such cases manuscripts will be assessed on the criteria that they provide a new and significant contribution to the literature in terms of increasing the understanding or facilitating the application of the techniques examined. Novelty of the techniques themselves is not a primary consideration. Other factors considered include an examination of the manuscript's appropriateness, significance, methods, scientific rigor, statistical analysis, conclusions, references and overall presentation.

Reviewers are requested to declare any conflicts they may have in reviewing the manuscript. The editorial board member will determine the appropriate course of action when such conflicts occur. The reviewer is asked to return two sets of comments: one confidential within the editorial process and one that is shared with the authors to help improve the paper. See the BPO Reviewer Report Form for the information reviewers provide when evaluating a manuscript. Names of reviewers will not be released to authors, but authors may still identify reviewers based on the list of appropriate reviewers that they recommended to BPO.

Authors may review shared comments, and have the option of re-submitting or withdrawing their manuscript from consideration before it is forwarded to our editorial board.

An editorial board member assigned to the manuscript then renders a decision for acceptance, further revision, or rejection of the manuscript using the evaluations from the author-recommended referees. Our Editorial Board is also responsible for ethical matters concerning work published in the journal. They also ensure that the process of publishing adheres to academic standards.

The process presented here is designed to ensure that articles published in Biological Procedures Online are of the highest scientific rigor and represent essential contributions to the scientific literature.