BioTreks Guide to Participants

Sections below are numbered so BioTreks staff can point mentors and students to a specific section (for example, “see section 6”) when answering questions.

1. Journal Scope and Content

BioTreks is an open access peer reviewed journal for high school-based synthetic biology research. Each year, students are invited to submit original work detailing their research designs, laboratory results, and personal perspectives on synthetic biology and education. In April or May, the authors present the drafts of their papers at an online conference for discussion and review by their peers. Following the conference, the students perfect their manuscripts based on the feedback and questions they receive from conference attendees. A detailed schedule of the current publication cycle can be found on the BioTreks website.

BioTreks articles are prepared and published in one of four formats depending on their content. These formats are separately defined for Laboratory Reports and Design, Perspective, and Methods Articles.

Lab Reports. Lab Reports should describe the results of at least one complete experiment and draw meaningful conclusions based on these results. It is perfectly acceptable for an article to describe research that reproduces the work of others so long as the work is referenced in the manuscript. Articles that report negative results and failed experiments are also welcomed, provided the authors are able to draw meaningful insights from the results.
Design Briefs. Synthetic biology is about taking a top-down approach to engineering biological systems that serve a social or environmental problem. Successful synthetic biology projects generally start by considering what the solution is going to look like on the system, device, and part levels. Design Briefs provide opportunities for teams to carefully consider and describe each of these project components before beginning their lab work.
Perspectives Articles. Perspectives Articles provide free-flowing commentary on a wide range of topics related to performing synthetic biology research and education in high schools. These manuscripts do not follow a rigid format and are divided into sections based on the authors’ needs. Perspectives Articles are well suited for presenting new ideas and reviews of books and technologies that do not document hands-on laboratory work.
Methods Articles. These submissions provide detailed procedures and tips for performing standard synthetic biology techniques or assays. The purpose of Methods Articles is to guide others in using techniques that have been successfully applied and mastered by the authors in their own high school labs.

2. Registering for BioTreks

Registration opens in early November and closes at the end of March. To register, a teacher or mentor submits the team registration form on the BioTreks website, indicating the number of teams they intend to register.

A few things to know before you register:

A mentor must sponsor each team. Every team needs one teacher or mentor, at least 21 years old, who serves as the team’s primary point of contact and signs the BioTreks publication agreement on the team’s behalf. See “Mentor Roles and Responsibilities” (section 6) for what this involves.
Registration and publication fees are combined into a single, non-refundable fee, due at the time of registration. This fee covers both participating in the conference and publishing your paper. If your team cannot afford the fee, contact BioTreks directly – we’re happy to discuss reducing or waiving it.
Once your fee is received, your team is assigned a unique Article ID (for example, “e202001”) and given a manuscript document and a Supporting Files directory on Google Drive, where you’ll draft your paper and upload your figures and video. Your mentor will receive links to both – the link to your Supporting Files directory is in the footer of your manuscript document, so look there if you can’t find it.
Fill in your details promptly. Once you have access to your manuscript document, fill in the title, abstract, and the affiliations of every author, mentor, and correspondent. Your mentor will also be asked to provide each student’s gender, grade, and email address, which BioTreks uses only for program statistics and funding purposes.
Registering after the deadline isn’t possible. Teams whose fee isn’t received by the close of the registration window in late March cannot be included in that year’s publication cycle.

After registration closes, BioTreks reviews every manuscript for relevance and completeness. If your team’s manuscript needs fixes, you’ll be notified and given about two weeks to make them before the Peer Review session begins in May – only teams that complete these fixes by the deadline move on to Peer Review and the rest of the publication cycle.

3. The Publication Process

The BioTreks publication process generally consists of eight steps, which begin with the authors submitting an abstract for presentation at the annual conference and end with the article being published online. Each of these steps is briefly described below.

Abstract Submission. The process begins with students submitting abstracts for papers that they would like to present at the BioTreks conference and publish in the online journal. The abstract submission will generally provide the title followed by a list of authors and a brief description of the work. The submission also indicates whether the students plan on preparing a Lab Report, a Design Brief, or a Method or Perspective Article.
Manuscript preparation. After submitting an abstract, the students begin the process of preparing their manuscript for presentation at the BioTreks conference. This is accomplished by drafting the manuscript directly using a Google Docs template that BioTreks provides. There’s no separate submission step or location to send your finished manuscript to – you simply keep editing this same document, and whatever it contains at each deadline is what gets reviewed. Although authors will have unrestricted access to editing their manuscripts during the preparation phase, they will only be able to modify their papers using Suggestion Mode after beginning the peer review process. This allows reviewers to track any changes the authors make to their manuscript in response to comments and suggestions.
Peer review. Peer review is an important part of scientific publication. The process generally involves impartial experts in the field reviewing the author’s submission for accuracy and completeness. When preparing a paper for publication in BioTreks, peer review actually takes place during the online conference, when students, mentors, and experts read and discuss the manuscripts that the students have posted online. During the online conference you will most likely be participating as an author of your own work and a peer reviewer of everyone else’s work. See “Participating in the Online Conference” (section 4) and “Peer Review Expectations for Authors” (section 5) for more detail.
Author revisions. Following the conference, authors will have about three weeks to modify and improve their submissions based on the questions and feedback they receive from students, teachers, and scientists at the conference. It is important that, as an author, you take advantage of this time to make any necessary corrections to your manuscript.
Editorial review. At the end of the revision period, the student manuscripts will be locked down and the BioTreks judges will review the documents to decide which are acceptable for publication. Papers will generally be deemed acceptable for publication, provided the authors have explicitly and adequately addressed all of the reviewers’ comments and adhered to all formatting requirements, as described below. During their review, the judges will also award badges to articles that excel in key areas of peer review – see “Judging and Recognition” (section 7).
Copy editing. Copy editing involves checking the manuscript for grammatical errors and reformatting it to fit the journal style. This is also the point at which figures and tables are inserted within the body of the text. Copy editing is performed by BioTreks staff between July and September.
Author review. Following copy editing, the authors receive a PDF-formatted proof of the final article and are given a chance to identify any last-minute mistakes that may have been introduced during the copy edit process. At this point, authors are only permitted to recommend minor edits to the article.
Publication. The completed articles are published online as part of the current issue of BioTreks.

4. Participating in the Online Conference

The real-time peer review event is held on a single day, typically in April or May, starting at 10:30 AM Eastern Time – check the current publication cycle’s schedule on the BioTreks website for the exact date. Each paper in your section gets a 30-minute review slot, so the event runs for about two to two-and-a-half hours depending on how many papers are in your section. There’s no live video or audio component: all discussion happens through comments left directly on each team’s manuscript in Google Docs. Before the event, your team’s manuscript is locked against further direct edits; from that point on, you and your reviewers can only suggest changes, so everyone can track what’s being proposed.

During the event, all participants – students, mentors, visitors, and judges – read and review papers within the same review section as their own submission, organized alongside four or five other teams’ papers. Sections and their papers, with links to each, are posted on the BioTreks website ahead of the event. Each paper in your section has its own 30-minute time slot: at the designated time, everyone assigned to your section accesses that paper simultaneously via its link, reads and discusses it, then moves on together to the next paper in the section.

You should expect to play two roles at once:

As a reviewer (for papers that aren’t yours), read the paper thoroughly and post inline comments with questions or constructive feedback for the authors. You can also suggest specific changes by editing the document in Suggestion Mode.
As an author (when your own paper’s time slot comes up), be ready to answer questions in real time by responding to the comments reviewers post, and indicate whether and how you plan to address each suggestion.

The event concludes once every paper in your section has had its turn, but you’re welcome to keep reading and commenting on any paper for about a week afterward. Judges are also assigned to each review section and are asked to provide their initial feedback within about a week of the event, so you should expect comments to continue arriving for several days after it ends.

5. Peer Review Expectations for Authors

Judges finish leaving their comments within about a week of the conference (see above); from that point, you have roughly two weeks to respond to every one of the reviewers’ comments – either by explaining how you addressed the reviewer’s concern in your revised manuscript, or by explaining why you’ve decided not to follow a particular suggestion. Silence on a comment isn’t an acceptable response.

A few concrete expectations to keep in mind during this revision period:

Only use Suggestion Mode to make changes, so judges and other reviewers can track exactly what’s been revised in response to their feedback.
Address every comment, not just the ones you agree with. Reviewers and judges are specifically checking for this.
Show evidence of real revision. A paper that looks unchanged from its original submission, despite having received substantive feedback, is a red flag during editorial review.
Meet the revision deadline. Once the revision period ends, your paper is locked down for editorial review, and further changes aren’t possible except the minor corrections allowed later during author review of the final proof.

Failing to adequately address reviewer comments, leaving sections incomplete, or showing no evidence of revision are among the most common reasons a paper is not accepted for publication – so take this stage seriously.

6. Mentor Roles and Responsibilities

Every BioTreks team needs a mentor – a teacher or other adult, at least 21 years old – who takes on the following responsibilities. Only this sponsoring mentor (the one marked with an asterisk in the Mentors section) is billed the registration and publication fee and is expected to take on these responsibilities. Teams are welcome to list additional mentors – for example, a university researcher or industry professional advising the project – but they are not billed and aren’t expected to fulfill the sponsoring mentor’s role.

Serving as the team’s point of contact. Your name and email are published with the article as the corresponding contact for questions about the paper, so you should expect and be prepared to respond to inquiries even after publication.
Signing the BioTreks publication agreement on behalf of the team at registration.
Confirming manuscript details. You’ll be asked to help fill in the title, abstract, and the affiliations of every author, mentor, and correspondent, and to provide each student’s gender, grade, and email address for BioTreks’ program statistics and funding purposes.
Keeping the team on schedule. Registration, manuscript fixes, peer review revisions, and supporting-file uploads all have firm deadlines; part of your role is helping your students meet them.
Making sure supporting files are complete. Before the conference, confirm that a high-resolution graphics file and a right-of-use statement are uploaded for every figure, and that any accompanying video is uploaded in an accepted format.
Guiding your team through peer review. Encourage your students to engage seriously with reviewer feedback during the conference and the revision period that follows – this is often where students need the most support.
Being reachable over the summer. The revision period, editorial review, and copy editing continue well after the school year ends, so plan to check your email and correspond with your team throughout the summer months.

7. Judging and Recognition

BioTreks judges evaluate every paper and can award badges recognizing excellence in the following areas:

Biosafety and Ethics. Recognizes teams that carefully consider both the laboratory risks and the broader societal or environmental impact of their engineered organisms, and document those considerations in their paper.
Problem Solving. Given to teams that show perseverance and ingenuity in identifying, diagnosing, and addressing problems encountered during their research.
Innovation. Given to teams that envision new and creative applications of synthetic biology or experimental methods to address an important scientific, environmental, or social issue.
Education. Recognizes teams that do an outstanding job communicating their knowledge and techniques to their peers.
Visual Communications. Given to teams that excel at using tables and figures to support their presentation.
Scientific Rigor. Recognizes teams for providing concise, well-reasoned interpretations of their experimental outcomes, regardless of whether the experiments produced the expected results.
Collaboration. Given to teams that build on earlier BioTreks papers – by citing them and extending their work – and that describe achievable Next Steps others can build on in turn.

An eighth badge, Conference Participation, is awarded to every team that participates in the conference – unlike the badges above, it isn’t judged.

Badge results are announced after editorial review and posted on the BioTreks Table of Contents alongside your paper.

8. Manuscript Sections

Manuscripts should be organized into sections according to whether the material is intended to be published as a (L)ab Report, a (D)esign Brief, or a (M)ethod or (P)erspective Article. Excellent examples of each of these formats can be found among the papers published in previous years. The different sections are described below in the order in which they should appear in the manuscript.

Title (D, L, M, P). The title should concisely summarize the paper and any significant conclusions.
Running Title (D, L, M, P). The running title is a shorter version of the title, which is displayed in the upper right margin of the paper. The running title must be no more than 60 characters long.
Authors (D, L, M, P). The comma-delimited names of authors should be listed in alphabetical order by last name.
Mentors (D, L, M, P). The comma-delimited names of teachers and mentors should be listed in alphabetical order by last name. Also place an asterisk after the name of the mentor who will serve as the primary contact for the team.
Affiliations (D, L, M, P). Provide a comma-delimited list of the organizations with which the authors are affiliated. In most cases the Affiliations section will simply be the name of the school that you attend.
Correspondence (D, L, M, P). List the name and email address of one or two mentors who can respond to email inquiries about the paper. These names and emails will be published with the article.
Abstract (D, L, M, P). The abstract should summarize the article in fewer than 300 words as a single paragraph, briefly touching on the key points covered in the background, methods, results, and conclusions sections of research papers. Similarly, the abstract for design, methods, and perspectives papers should summarize the content addressed in each of its major sections. The abstract cannot contain any figures, tables, or citations of referenced literature.
Video (D, L, M, P). Each manuscript can optionally be accompanied by a short video in which the authors briefly describe the motivations, methodologies, and results of their project. The video is intended to give conference attendees and prospective readers a brief overview of the student project and encourage them to read the article. Upload the video file directly to your Supporting Files directory, correctly named – see “Tables, Figures, and Videos” (section 10) for the naming convention and accepted formats. This section of the manuscript can also include a link to the video, which is helpful for reviewers.
Keywords (D, L, M, P). List 3-5 comma-delimited words or phrases that will help locate the article in a search.
Author Contributions (D, L, M, P). Every manuscript should include a paragraph that briefly describes how each author contributed to the paper and the related research. For brevity, authors are referenced by their initials. The following is an example of a well-written contributions statement:

“A.B., B.C., C.D., D.E., E.F., F.G., and G.H. conceived and planned the experiments. A.B., B.C., C.D. and D.E. carried out the experiments. A.B., F.G. and E.F. planned and carried out the simulations. J.K., K.L., A.B., B.C., D.E., C.D., F.J., and F.G. contributed to sample preparation. A.B., B.C., C.D., D.E., F.J., E.F., F.G. and G.H. contributed to the interpretation of the results. A.B. took the lead in writing the manuscript. All authors provided critical feedback and helped shape the research, analysis, and manuscript.”
Background (D, L, M). The background section describes the experimental objectives and why they are important. This section will generally start by describing the big problem that the researchers are trying to solve, how they plan to go about doing this, and how the current experiment will support this process. Remember to cite all sources of information used here or elsewhere in the paper – see “APA Style and Citation Tools” (section 9).
Systems Level (D). Design Briefs should contain a section that describes the team’s solution in the context of the complete biological system. This section deals with how the system works as a whole.
Device Level (D). In Design Briefs, the Device Level section addresses the key functional components of the system. Devices would include the engineered organisms and any functional pathways required for these organisms to perform their jobs.
Parts Level (D). The Parts Level section of a Design Brief shows how specific genetic components are to be combined to make the functional operons and pathways described in the previous section.
Safety (D). Design Briefs should also include a brief discussion of how the proposed system will be safely constructed, tested, and employed to avoid harm to the developers, users, community, and environment.
Materials and Methods (L). This section is designed to tell other researchers everything they need to know to reproduce the reported experiment. It accomplishes this by providing a brief but detailed description of the various procedures followed when conducting the reported experiments. It also details the materials used, often listing the supplier of these materials in parenthesis. The Materials and Methods section should also contain a subsection that details the team’s approach to laboratory and environmental safety. This section should not contain numbered or bulleted lists – all procedures should be described in concise paragraphs, with the manufacturers of critical reagents and kits named in parenthesis. When following a protocol that accompanies a commercial kit, it’s generally sufficient to indicate that the assay was performed “in accordance with the manufacturer’s protocol.”
Requirements (M). A requirements section should be included with all methods manuscripts to describe, in separate subsections, the time, equipment, supply, and reagent requirements for the described procedure. The purpose of this section is to help the reader assess whether they have access to the necessary resources for performing the procedure.
Procedures (M). The procedures section of a methods paper generally details the processes involved in performing a particular technique as nested lists of individually numbered steps.
Notes (M). The notes section is also unique to methods papers and is used to provide tips and suggestions regarding the performance of different steps in the procedure. This section consists of a numbered series of notes, specifically referenced in the procedures section as Note 1, Note 2, Note 3, etc.
Results (L). This section describes the results of the reported laboratory study. Results sections are generally arranged in subsections according to each set of experimental outcomes. Subsection titles should concisely state the conclusions that can be drawn from the reported data. Each section is generally accompanied by one or more figures or tables to help the reader understand and interpret the data reported in this section.
Discussions (D, L, M). In Lab Reports, the Discussions section gives the authors an opportunity to summarize their experimental results and describe how they met or failed to meet study objectives. When written for a Methods Paper, the Discussions section should be used to summarize advantages and shortcomings of the method and suggest ways of improving the process.
Next Steps (D, L). Lab Reports and Design Briefs need a section that briefly describes the next steps to be performed by your team or another group to develop or implement the ideas discussed in your manuscript. Ideally, this section should propose one or more discrete research activities that can be reasonably accomplished over the course of a semester using equipment, reagents, and skills available in a typical high school synthetic biology lab. Perspectives and Methods Papers do not include a Next Steps section.
Body (P). The main body of Perspectives Papers replaces the Background, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussions sections of research articles with content organized into sections and subsections of the authors’ choosing. In this way, Perspectives Papers read more like a magazine article than a scientific research paper.
Acknowledgements (D, L, M, P). This section generally consists of one or two brief paragraphs recognizing individuals and organizations who made the reported study possible through the contribution of knowledge, insights, or material resources.
References (D, L, M, P). This section contains an alphabetized list of every publication cited in the article. Each reference must be cited at least once in the text by author and year, or title, and formatted according to the standards set out in the APA Style Guide. Google Docs has a built-in citation tool, which makes it easy to format and cite your references using the APA style. Every citation is checked against your reference list, and every reference against your citations – please double-check that they match. A citation with no matching reference, or a reference never cited in the text, will be removed if it isn’t resolved by the time your manuscript is finalized for publication.

9. APA Style and Citation Tools

BioTreks articles use the APA Style (7th edition) to reference and cite published sources of information. The official APA Style guide is the authoritative reference for exact formatting rules, but you don’t need to format every citation by hand – the tools below can generate a properly formatted APA citation for you.

Finding an APA-formatted citation for a source:

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). Search for your source, then click the quotation-mark “Cite” icon beneath the result. Copy the citation shown under “APA” into your reference list.
PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), the National Library of Medicine’s database. Open your source’s PubMed page, click “Cite,” and copy the citation shown under “APA.”

Formatting citations and building your reference list in Google Docs: Google Docs has a built-in citation tool, which makes it easy to format, organize, and cite information sources within your manuscript.

To access the citation tool from within Google Docs, select Tools > Citations from the main menu. This opens a panel on the right side of your browser that allows you to add and cite references.

The first thing you’ll need to do after opening this panel is select “APA (7th ed.)” from the dropdown menu.

Next, choose “+ Add citation source” to create a new reference. This opens a dialog that prompts you to enter key pieces of information about your source, depending on whether it’s a book, journal article, or some other type of source.

As you add new references, they’ll be listed in the citations window. To cite any one of these references in your article:

Place your cursor where you want the citation to appear in your manuscript.
Hover over the reference with your mouse.
Select the “Cite” button that appears in the upper right corner of the reference.

Once you’ve finished adding all the references to your document, place your cursor under the References section header of your manuscript and select “Insert Bibliography” at the bottom of the Google Docs Citations window. This inserts a properly formatted list of references into your manuscript.

10. Tables, Figures, and Videos

Authors are encouraged to include tables and figures as a means of directly supporting the points they’re trying to make in the text. All tables and figures must be specifically cited in the text (e.g., “see Table 1,” “see Figure 1”) and should be placed just after the paragraph where they are first referenced. A table or figure that isn’t cited anywhere in the text will be flagged for your team to resolve, and removed if it’s still unresolved by the time your manuscript is finalized for publication.

Tables must be rendered and formatted in Google Docs using the Insert > Table menu. Unfortunately, BioTreks cannot accept images of tables generated in another application and pasted into Google Docs as a graphic. A table’s title and any notes must be included as part of the table itself (for example, in a title row above the data or a note row below it), not typed as a separate, loose paragraph of text before or after the table.

A table must be small enough to fit comfortably on a single printed journal page. BioTreks’ printed layout has no way to continue a table across multiple pages. During layout, our team will do what it can to make a large table fit on one page – adjusting column widths and shrinking the table’s text size, down to a 5-point minimum – but a table with too many rows, or with cell text long enough to wrap across many lines even at that minimum size, will not fit no matter what we do. If your table is large, save your team the back-and-forth and address it before submission: split it into two or more smaller tables, each covering a more focused subset of the same information; shorten especially long cell text (a brief note instead of several sentences); or move detailed supporting information into the body text or an appendix instead of a table cell. This is checked automatically during your manuscript’s completeness review, and if a table still doesn’t fit even after our team’s best effort to shrink it, you will be required to remove it (or replace it with a version split or shortened per the suggestions above) before your manuscript can be finalized for publication.

Figures should be uploaded into your Google Drive directory as high-resolution images. The graphics should also be inserted into your manuscript and accompanied by a descriptive caption, added as inline text immediately following the imported image. Each caption should begin with the figure number (e.g., “Figure 1”) and start with a sentence summarizing the main point of the figure.

Clearly name the graphics files with your manuscript ID (e.g., e202601) followed by the lowercase letter “f” and a two-digit figure number, saved directly in your Supporting Files directory rather than in a subfolder. For example, the first figure in manuscript e202601 must be named exactly e202601f01.png (or .jpg).

Correct: e202601f01.png, e202601f02.jpg
Incorrect: e20260101.png (missing the “f”), e202601F01.png (capital “F”), e202601f1.png (one digit instead of two), e202601f01.PNG (capital file extension), “My Cool Graph.png” (no manuscript ID or figure number at all)

If a figure has multiple parts, add a lowercase letter suffix – “a,” “b,” “c,” etc. – immediately after the two-digit number, not a word like “(top)” or “(bottom).” For example: e202601f01a.png and e202601f01b.png, not e202601f01(top).png.

All figures must adhere to the following standards for a manuscript to be published in BioTreks:

Graphics must generally be your own original work. BioTreks does not accept figures reproduced from other published sources except in the limited cases below.
You may reproduce a figure from another source only if:
- it is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY or CC BY-NC license, or
- you have the copyright holder’s express written permission to reproduce it.
“Open access” or “free to read” is not the same as permission. Many articles are free to read online but still reserve all copyright over their figures – reusing one of these figures requires the publisher’s written permission, regardless of how freely the article itself can be read. Even among Creative Commons licenses, a figure marked CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC-ND (“No Derivatives”) may not be adapted or incorporated into your manuscript. Check the license on the original source – usually shown as an icon, in the PDF footer, or in a “Rights and Permissions” section – before assuming you can reuse a figure.
Always credit the original source in the figure’s caption when reproducing a permitted figure: cite the original author(s), journal, and year, and state the specific license under which it’s used (for example, “Reprinted from [Journal Name], [Author(s)], [Title], [Year], under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license.”).
Figures created with a tool like BioRender aren’t “reproduced” from another publication, but still require a right-of-use statement from the tool (BioRender provides these upon request) confirming you’re licensed to use the generated image in your publication.
Graphics must be rendered as PNG or JPEG files. Other file types, such as TIFF, PDF, and PPT, are not acceptable.
Do not submit figures as PowerPoint or Google Slides files.
Graphics must have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi when rendered on the printed page. Tightly crop each graphic so there is minimal surrounding white space.
All text contained in a graphic must remain legible when the image is rendered on a printed page.
Figure captions must completely describe the figure and its contents to the reader, so they can understand the graphic without reading the surrounding text.

A video is optional – you’re not required to submit one. If your team does make one, upload it directly into your Supporting Files directory, in a format YouTube supports (MOV, MPEG4/MP4, AVI, WMV, MPEGPS, or FLV).

Clearly name the video file with your manuscript ID (e.g., e202601) followed by the lowercase letter “v” and a two-digit video number, saved directly in your Supporting Files directory rather than in a subfolder. For example, the first video in manuscript e202601 must be named exactly e202601v01.mp4. Most teams only submit one video, so this will almost always be “v01” – the two-digit number only increases if your team submits more than one.

Correct: e202601v01.mp4
Incorrect: e202601v1.mp4 (one digit instead of two), e202601V01.mp4 (capital “V”), “Our Team Video.mp4” (no manuscript ID or video number at all)

A link to your video in the manuscript’s Video section is helpful for peer reviewers, but the file itself in your Supporting Files directory, correctly named, is what’s required for publication – a link alone, without the file uploaded and named correctly, is not sufficient.

Once your video is uploaded and correctly named, it’s automatically posted to the MyBioTreks YouTube channel as an unlisted video (reachable by anyone with the link, but not publicly searchable) during your manuscript’s completeness check, along with a QR code linking to it for the printed journal and a direct link added to your manuscript’s Video section. The editorial team reviews it before deciding to make it public.

11. Before the Conference: A Completeness Checklist

Before the completeness-review deadline each cycle, use this checklist to catch the issues we see most often when finalizing your manuscript. This is exactly what gets checked when your manuscript is reviewed for completeness – catching these yourself now means fewer back-and-forth emails once that review starts.

Every figure cited in your manuscript has a matching file in your Supporting Files directory, named with your manuscript ID, the letter “f,” and a two-digit figure number (e.g., e202601f01.png) – see section 10 for the exact naming rules and common mistakes to avoid.
Every figure file is saved as PNG or JPEG only – not TIFF, PDF, or PowerPoint.
Every figure file in your Supporting Files directory is cited at least once in your manuscript’s text, and every figure cited in the text has a matching file.
If any figure isn’t your own original work, proof of permission or the required Creative Commons license and attribution is included, per section 10 – otherwise it will be deleted before publication.
If your manuscript includes a video, it’s uploaded directly to your Supporting Files directory and named with your manuscript ID, the letter “v,” and a two-digit video number (e.g., e202601v01.mp4) – see section 10. If you also link it in the Video section, double-check that the link actually works.
A fully completed, signed copy of the BioTreks publication agreement is uploaded to your Supporting Files directory.
Every author and every mentor listed has an affiliation filled in.
Your abstract is a single paragraph under 300 words.

12. Conclusion

This guide provides a brief overview of what can be a very confusing process, especially if you’ve never written a scientific paper before or mentored a team through one. We encourage students to search for their favorite synthetic biology topics on pubmed.com to get a better idea of how scientific papers are generally written and organized. Whether you’re a student author or a mentor guiding your team for the first time, please remember that we’re here to help. Good luck and thanks for contributing!