Integrative Biology Editorial 2010

One year and beyond: the excitement continues…

Integrative Biology is now a year old. It is very gratifying to see that the journal is well-received amongst multiple biological disciplines as well as by chemists, physicists and engineers. Many colleagues have acknowledged the need for—and the timeliness of—the journal at various conferences that the editorial board members and the staff attended. Over 800 institutions have already signed up for free access to Integrative Biology and we expect this number to rise steadily throughout 2010.

The journal celebrated its launch event on 19 April of this year with an evening reception at FASEB’s Experimental Biology 2009 meeting in New Orleans, USA and visits to its exhibition booth were excellent. Overall, the feedback and comments have been extremely encouraging and positive. The journal also sponsored its first Integrative Biology lecture by supporting Professor Luis Serrano at the workshop on Evolution and Design of Biomolecular Systems held at Hotel Bonsol, Mallorca Oct. 17–21, 2009.

The journal provides a new venue for full papers and reviews fulfilling the three scope criteria of technological innovation, integration and biological insight. We also seek to publish innovative methods that may not yet have been integrated with critical biological systems, but that clearly have the potential to drive biological insight and thus would be of strong interest to the research community. This category of articles will now be highlighted as “Technical Innovations.” Articles featured in this section must provide a sound utility of the technology in the biological world and have clear potential to enable new insights and to impact biological research.

The calibre of papers accepted for Integrative Biology that address innovation, integration and innovation is extremely high. This solid foundation will be built upon in the next year as visibility and knowledge of the journal expands further. Meeting these criteria has been a major factor in the rejection rate without peer review that stands at almost 50% of the total rejection rate of over 60%. The critical element missing from many of the papers that did not get reviewed is biological innovation, underscoring the need for those who have developed novel technologies and new tools, to work more closely with biologists to realize the full potential of their work. Nevertheless, most of those papers were sound and found a home elsewhere after peer review including over 30 in other RSC journals such as Molecular BioSystems, Lab on a Chip, Analyst and Metallomics.

Usage statistics showed that Integrative Biology articles are accessed frequently with over 26 000 full-text downloads from Jan–July 2009. One review article alone was downloaded nearly 4000 times since publication. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors and referees who have made this journal and its rapid success possible.

The iBiology Editorial Board members have devoted much time and given much support to the journal. They have not only published their own first class research in the journal but have helped also to promote Integrative Biology throughout 2009. A very big thank you goes to all of them, but especially to David Beebe and Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff who pre-screened all the manuscripts upon submission and who have overseen the overall quality and scope of the journal.

Integrative Biology is currently being indexed and abstracted in several databases including Thomson ISI (Web of Science, Web of Knowledge, Science Citation Index, etc.), CABI and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts amongst others, and has been accepted for indexing by the US National Library of Medicine (PubMed, Medline). Thomson ISI data indicate that over a third of the papers published were cited within the first 3 months of publication.

In 2010, we will expand the world class scientific editors from 2 to 6 (renamed Associate Editors), increase the number of international reviewing editors from 6 to 15 (the Board of Reviewing Editors), and create a high profile board of advisors (the Advisory Board) who will not only advise me and the Associate Editors on the future direction of the journal, but also will act as additional Ambassadors for the journal.

We invite all of you to join us in this exciting scientific adventure: Please send us your papers that meet our ‘three i’ criteria and help promote the melding of biology and innovative technologies. It is time ‘to connect’. We are confident that 2010 will see even more exciting developments for the journal and we wish all our authors, referees and readers a very happy and productive new year.

Mina Bissell

Chair, Editorial Board

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

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