All materials, data, and tools, etc. reported and archived to IBC are made freely accessible to public under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL). Under CCAL, the authors, not the publisher, retain the copyright for their materials in IBC, but freely allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles without permission from authors or publishers, as long as a proper citation is given to the original authors and sources.

Pre-peer review and post-publication public peer review system

This policy is adopted to ensure the integrity and rapid publication of the reports yet to ensure fairness and freedom in reporting intellectual efforts with a minimal subjective decision that may occur during the current peer review processes (See section 7 below).

In IBC, the manuscript is first submitted with pre-peer reviews from two experts in the field whom the authors choose. The pre-reviewers include the editorial review members listed by the publishers. One of the editors then determines the acceptance of the manuscript based mostly on the reviews but also on the editor’s opinion. The pre-reviewers’ names and reports and the name of the handling editor will be opened as an attachment to the manuscript upon acceptance of the manuscript.
The manuscript is then subjected to post-publication appraisal by registered readers for three month period.

This policy is adopted to provide an arena to publish various types of intellectual efforts to be properly disseminated and credited. The manuscripts are in two categories; IBC journal articles and IBC e-Depot. IBC journal articles would include various types of intellectual efforts such as Research articles, Rapid reports, Hypotheses/Ideas, Experimental methods, Reviews, Prospects, News and Views, Tutorials,  Essays, and Addenda, etc.

The research articles in IBC include Reports on negative result and Rapid reports as well as regular research articles. Reports on negative results will be considered for publication, if they contain information or knowledge that can significantly promote intellectual efforts of other scientists and engineers and leads to a new discovery based on the negative results. Rapid Reports provide results that are not complete but offer insights into further advancements. Preliminary results may be submitted for consideration of possible publication as long as they contain information of significant value.

Materials that contain results at the early stage of a discovery and negative results of less significance may be archived in the e-Depot. They may later be added as a formal report if qualified (see 6 below). Reporting in e-Depot does not affect later publication as a formal report.

More flexibility and freedom of presentation: The current standard formats of manuscript may not be best applicable to present various types of intellectual efforts. IBC accepts manuscript prepared in various formats, in addition to the standard format given in the appendix. IBC also allow more intellectual freedom to authors. Authors’ prospects may be written at the end of research manuscript to provide readers with future directions on the study, and/or opinions. These should be based on the data presented but not necessarily confined to them. The authors may utilize existing knowledge and his/her insight in providing and suggesting a prospects for the readers. Possible suggestions for interdisciplinary collaboration may be described here, too.  

IBC, as an electronic medium, will be include any types of data that can be processed and archived in the electronic format, including texts, movies, sounds, databases, and images, etc.

Language: The official language is English. However, supplementary materials can have other languages if a certain data type is better presented in other language and is explained in English. Authors have further options to attach abstract or an extensive content in other languages if it helps a better dissemination of the report.  

Any scientific report should convey the best truth at the time of publication. To ensure the reliability of submissions, IBC adopts the following policies.

e-Depot is intended to archive various types of research and scholarly activity materials for long-term preservation of, providing proper credit to, and free public access to formally unpublished research findings. This is a citable archive with DOI designations.

Materials that contain results at the early stage of discovery and reports on negative results would be archived in this category. Publication of preliminary results with a less significance and short ideas are encouraged in this category for rapid dissemination of knowledge and for ensuring the credit of discovery. Posters, presentations, and proceedings would be archived in this category.
e-Depot would also include contents such as dissertations, inaugural and special lectures, and other digital assets generated by academic activities, such as reports, administrative documents, course notes, or learning objects.

e-Depot does not perform peer-review. The editorial office assigns an appropriate editor for the materials submitted for e-Depot. The editor makes the final decision within 7 business days upon receiving the materials. The authors take full responsibility for the ownership and copyright for any of the materials they deposit in the e-Depot.

The materials in the e-Depot can be converted to a formal report, if they prove to have a quality and significance that may be seen from by citation record, interactive discussion, and visit numbers. Reporting in e-Depot does not affect later publication as a formal report. The authors may ask for inclusion if they consider the manuscript meets the criteria as a formal report.

The following societies and organizations are the founding members of IBC. IBC is continuously seeking the joining societies or organizations.

Korean Society for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (KSBSB) and Association of the National Core Research Centers of Korea (NCRC).
IBC is operated by the Korean Biological Research Information Center (BRIC).