About the Journal

Exon is an open-access international peer-reviewed journal supported by TIBR Biotech Private Limited, India. The journal publishes innovative research findings from applied biology fields four times a year. We are committed to publishing valuable, scientifically accurate research that upholds the highest ethical and publishing standards. 

Aims and Scope

Exon welcomes high-quality research contributions from across the spectrum of basic and applied biological sciences and medical sciences. The journal is dedicated to publishing scientifically rigorous and ethically sound manuscripts that offer valuable insights, whether through novel findings, advancements of existing theories, replication studies, or well-executed negative/null results. By embracing a broad scope and a commitment to research integrity, Exon supports the dissemination of meaningful scientific progress.

The primary areas the journal focuses on include
1. Classical Biotechnology: This includes the production of novel animal, plant, and microbial bio-products; production, characterization, and optimization; and their applications.
2. Environmental Biotechnology: This includes bioremediation, waste management, pollutants and their effects on the environment, hazards, and their remedies.
3. Medical Biotechnology: Dealing with diseases and their solutions using biotechnological tools; current developments in medical diagnostics like innovative ideas, techniques, instruments, and so on.
4. Bioinformatics: Use of bioinformatics tools in drug design, prediction of protein structures, development of new algorithms for innovative tools, databases, etc.
5. Plant Biotechnology: Latest developments from plant biology, including plant tissue culture, stress resistance, hybridization, improvement of crop variety, genetic variation studies, and so on.
6. New Biology: including advanced molecular biology, genetic engineering, and the latest technologies like pharmacogenomics, nanotechnology, gene therapy, etc. 

7. Medical Research: Latest developments from medical sciences, including disease diagnostics, therapeutic innovations, drug discovery, clinical research, biomedical technologies, public health advancements, and so on.

Research from all fields of applied biology not falling into the above-mentioned categories could also be considered. 

Manuscripts submitted to Exon must meet high standards of scientific rigor and relevance. All articles are subjected to a single-blind peer review and will be considered for publication only upon satisfactory revision and editorial approval.

Types of papers:
Reviews: The journal welcomes manuscripts that present current developments across all areas of applied biology. We particularly encourage the submission of high-quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses, alongside comprehensive review articles. Review manuscripts will be peer-reviewed.
Regular articles: Should describe new findings and experimental procedures in detail for others to verify the work. There is no limit on length, but a concise presentation is encouraged.
Short Communications: For concise but independent reports or giving details of new models or hypotheses, innovative methods, techniques, or apparatus. Short communications are less than 4 printed pages in length.

We accept submissions including editorials (invited), case reports and case series, clinical trial studies (both interventional and observational), as well as study protocols, including clinical trial protocols. Please note that we do not consider pre-submission inquiries or opinion-based articles of any kind.

Language

"Exon" publishes high-quality articles in English. Manuscripts that do not meet the required standards of language quality will not be considered for publication. Manuscripts with poor language quality may be rejected during the initial editorial screening or at later stages of peer review and revision. 

The journal intends to develop into a world-class publication in the coming years. This journal is purely open access. Authors can submit their manuscripts according to the author guidelines through the online submission system or by emailing info@exonjournal.com or exonjournal@gmail.com. 

JOURNAL PARTICULARS

Title	Exon
Frequency	Quarterly
ISSN	3048-7706
Publisher	Dr. Noble K Kurian, Exon Journal 16/393, Pandakasalayil Hill View, Kampancode, Kollam, Kerala, India Pin 691532
Editor in Chief	Dr. Noble K Kurian, Assistant Professor, BS Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science and Technology, Vandalur, Chennai-600048
Copyright	The author holds the copyright
Starting Year	2024
Subject	Biological Sciences in general
Language	English
Publication Format	Online
Phone number	+91-9605293207
Email	info@exonjournal.com
Website	https://exonjournal.com/
Address	Exon Journal 16/393, Pandakasalayil Hill View, Kampancode, Kollam, Kerala, India Pin 691532

Peer Review Policy

The peer review process takes about 30-45 days. Exon follows a review process where the reviewers are not known to the authors during the process, while reviewers could access the identity of the authors.   This approach should be considered a combination of two models: single-blind review and open review. Upon acceptance of a manuscript, the reviewers’ names are disclosed and the review reports are published alongside the article. This would ensure that the review procedure is fully transparent and accurately reflects the journal’s actual practice.

All submissions are initially received by the editorial office. Formatting, plagiarism, and AI content will be checked at the editorial office. If the manuscript passes the checking, it will be assigned to an editor who has expertise in the field. The editor will assess the suitability of the article to be published on Exon. If the manuscript is considered suitable for the journal, it will typically be evaluated by at least two independent expert reviewers to assess its scientific quality. Final decisions regarding acceptance or rejection rest with the editorial team and are not subject to appeal. If the editorial board member is the author of a submitted manuscript, the manuscript will be handled with utmost confidentiality so that the editor who is the author will not have any access to the publication process. 

Special Issues and Article Collections

The journal publishes special issues led by invited guest editors, who help define the thematic scope and recommend compelling topics and contributors. Manuscripts submitted to special issues undergo the same rigorous peer-review process as regular submissions. While guest editors contribute in an advisory capacity, they do not oversee the peer review directly.

Open Access Policy

All articles published in Exon are freely available without registration, subscription, or payment. The journal follows the CC BY copyright license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. 

Article Processing Charges

Exon is an open-access Journal that does not charge any fees for submission, processing,  publication, or during any publication process. The journal's whole publishing process is supported by technical support and financial grants from TIBR Biotech Private Limited , an ISO certified Bio-Edtech company based on Kochi, Kerala, India.

Revenue Model 

Exon does not charge any fees for publishing; it is fully supported through grants provided by TIBR Biotech Private Limited. Additional revenue is generated through conference collaborations, guest-edited special issues, and institutional partnerships. This funding model allows Exon to remain open access, uphold editorial independence, and ensure high-quality scientific publishing without placing a financial burden on authors

Advertisement Policy 

Exon maintains a strict no-advertising policy to preserve the integrity, objectivity, and independence of its scientific content. This approach reflects our commitment to creating a focused platform for the unbiased exchange of scientific knowledge, free from external commercial influence.

Ethics and Policies

The following policies are in place to uphold Exon’s commitment to the highest standards of publication ethics. They outline recognized best practices in scholarly publishing and define various forms of scientific, academic, and publishing misconduct. Authors are strongly encouraged to review these policies to ensure that their submissions align with the ethical standards required for publication in Exon. In cases where evidence of misconduct is identified, the journal reserves the right to take appropriate action, which may include rejection of the manuscript, retraction of published articles, and/or notification of the authors' affiliated institutions.

Manuscripts presenting medical or clinical research should adhere to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. Authors are also encouraged to ensure that study populations are appropriately representative in terms of sex, age, and ethnicity to enhance the relevance and generalizability of the findings.

Plagiarism Policy 

Authors must ensure that their manuscripts are original. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, they must be properly cited or quoted. All articles submitted to Exon will be checked for plagiarism by Turnitin/Grammarly's Premium plagiarism checker. The manuscript will be rejected immediately if plagiarism is detected during the review/editorial process. If plagiarism is proven after publication, the manuscript will be retracted from the journal, and an appropriate announcement will be made. Depending on the seriousness of the case, we may take action against

1. The authors, including debarring them from future publication. We may also inform
2. The authors' funding agencies, institutes, and the original authors whose work has been plagiarized.

Exon adheres to the guidelines set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in addressing all aspects of publication ethics, particularly in managing cases of research and publication misconduct. By aligning with COPE principles, Exon upholds the highest ethical standards for publishers, editors, authors, and reviewers.

COPE flow charts will be considered while dealing with plagiarism complaints.

Suspected plagiarism in a submitted manuscript

Suspected plagiarism in a published manuscript.

Preprint Policy

Preprints are the author's version of a research manuscript before formal peer review at a journal, deposited on a public server. Preprints may be posted before submission to the journal or at any time during the peer-review process. Posting on a preprint server will not affect consideration for publication, but authors must acknowledge in the disclosure section of their manuscript that it is also available on a specific preprint server. After publication, the authors should link and update the DOI of the peer reviewed article published in Exon to the preprint server.

Duplicate Publication
Submission of a manuscript to Exon implies that the work has not been previously published and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere, either in whole or in part.

Article Corrections Policy

Authors are encouraged to report any errors in their articles that affect the accuracy of the published information. Only significant errors will be considered for correction. The decision to make corrections is at the discretion of the journal. The process for corrections depends on the publication stage of the article. Any corrections will be published as corrections and addenda in a later issue of the journal.

Article Retraction Policy

An article may be retracted due to scientific misconduct, which includes issues such as multiple submissions, false claims of authorship, plagiarism, or fraudulent use of data. Before an article can be retracted, a signed statement from all concerned authors must be submitted. Agreement from all authors of a paper is necessary before a retraction can be published.

A notice of retraction will be published and linked to the original article, clearly marked as retracted. This notice will include the reason for the retraction and identify who is retracting the article. The original article will remain accessible in both online and print versions of the journal, but it will be clearly marked as retracted. Additionally, retractions will be listed on the contents page.

Article Withdrawal Policy

Authors may only withdraw their articles for compelling and unavoidable reasons. To initiate a withdrawal, a letter signed by all authors must be submitted to the editorial office, clearly stating the reason for the withdrawal. Authors should not assume that their article has been withdrawn until they receive formal notification from the editorial office.

Archiving Policy

Exon is committed to the long-term preservation and accessibility of published scholarly content. Each article published in Exon is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to ensure permanent identification and ease of citation. To ensure that all articles remain available to the research community and the public, Exon archives its publications through the PKP PN Network and Internet Archive. 

Exon encourages authors to self-archive the final published version of their articles in institutional or subject-specific repositories, including those listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). For consistency and proper citation, authors are strongly advised to deposit the final PDF version as it appears on the Exon website.

Declaration on the Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies in Writing Manuscripts

At Exon, authors are required to disclose any use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies during the manuscript writing process at the time of submission. This policy applies only to writing assistance and does not cover the use of AI for data analysis or research insights.

Authors may use generative AI tools solely to enhance the clarity, language, or readability of their manuscripts. However, such tools must be used with careful human oversight and control. AI-generated content should be thoroughly reviewed and edited, as these tools may produce text that is inaccurate, incomplete, or biased. Authors remain fully responsible for the content and accuracy of their work.

Generative AI tools must not be listed as authors or co-authors, as authorship implies accountability and contributions that only humans can fulfill.

If AI tools were used, a declaration must be included in the manuscript under a separate section titled:
"Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies in the Writing Process"
This section should appear before the references in the submitted manuscript. Example statement:

Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies in the Writing Process
During the preparation of this manuscript, the author(s) used [NAME OF TOOL/SERVICE] for [SPECIFIC PURPOSE, e.g., improving language]. The author(s) reviewed and edited the content thoroughly and accept full responsibility for the final version of the manuscript.

A declaration is not required if only standard tools (e.g., grammar or spell checkers, reference managers) were used.

Please note: To uphold ethical standards and maintain the confidentiality of submitted research, Exon currently does not allow the use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies (such as ChatGPT or similar services) by editors or peer reviewers during the manuscript evaluation process. This policy is subject to review as AI tools continue to develop.