BioMed Central announcement
12 April 2010
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BioMed Central establishes new flagship biology journal
* BMC Biology and Journal of Biology 'fusion' creates single high-impact journal
* New BMC Biology journal to publish high quality commissioned content and research articles of exceptional importance
BioMed Central today announces that its flagship biology journals, BMC Biology and Journal of Biology are being fused to create a single high-impact title. The amalgamated journal will operate under the name BMC Biology , reflecting the strong relationship with the subject-specific BMC-series journals, with sharing of referees' reports allowing rapid transfer of submitted manuscripts in either direction.
The fused journal will be edited by Miranda Robertson and will incorporate and expand on the high-profile commissioned content of the well-regarded Journal of Biology, as well as publishing research and methodology articles of special importance and broad interest across all areas of biology and biomedical sciences.
BMC Biology is already listed in Web of Science, tracked by ISI and ranked within the top 2% of all journals listed in Scopus (212 of 17,124*). The journal has close to 50,000 registrants and research published in the journal regularly features in the scientific and mainstream press**. Highly-cited articles often received upwards of 50 citations and highly-accessed articles receive over 15,000 unique downloads from the journal website.
As Miranda Robertson explains in an inaugural editorial, the fused journal will continue the re-review opt-out experiment***, introduced by Journal of Biology to answer the widespread frustration of researchers with standard peer review procedures.
The journal fusion is marked by a special launch issue, which introduces a new feature Video Q&A articles with prominent scientists. These video interviews provide a platform for leading researchers to express a personal perspective on a variety of scientific topics. The first Video Q&A features Martin Raff from University College London, who explains, as a grandfather and a neuroscientist, his interest in what goes wrong in autism, and how he thinks genomic and stem cell technology may lead to answers.
Also in the launch issue, Alan Ashworth and Christopher Lord describe what fundamental research in biology has done for cancer therapy, and look to the targeted and personalized therapeutic strategies that they expect to emerge from the better understanding achieved through advances in genomics.
* Source: SCImago Journal Ranking 2008 http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
** BMC Biology: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/16
The IGF1 small dog haplotype is derived from Middle Eastern grey wolves
Science (http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/02/small-dogs-evolved-in-middle-eas.html)
BMC Biology: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/7/74
A remarkable diversity of bone-eating worms (Osedax; Siboglinidae; Annelida)
Science (http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/11/13-02.html)
Nature (http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/11/tracing_boneeating_deep_sea_wo.html)
BMC Biology: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/30/abstract
The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions
Wired (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/anoxic-animals/)
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8609246.stm)
*** What are journals for? http://jbiol.com/content/8/1/1
Robertson M
Journal of Biology 2009, 8:1doi:10.1186/jbiol11
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