• Ragothaman Yennamalli

• Thomas Lengauer, Max Planck Institute for Informatics; Bioinformatics Advances, Germany

I am one of the two Editors-in-Chief of the ISCB Society Journal Bioinformatics Advances that is published jointly with Oxford University Press. After giving a short introduction into the profile of the journal I will describe the process of editorial paper handling by our journal and the recommendation that can be derived from that about preparing a submission such as to most clearly place the contribution made by the authors. Careful placement of the original contribution is especially critical for topics in research areas that gather a large number of publications.

• Laura Mesquita, Elsevier

There are many factors that authors may take into account when submitting to a journal: scope fit, journal metrics, speed, names on the editorial board, business model (e.g. Open Access) and a journal's reputation. With the number of journals increasing at a rapid pace and the increasing prevalence of broad-scope journals, how authors make decisions about where to publish becomes increasingly complex. This presentation will cover successful strategies for choosing the right journal, and ways to pivot if a manuscript is rejected by the first-choice journal.

• Feilim Mac Gabhann, Johns Hopkins University & PLOS Computational Biology, USA

• Michael J E Sternberg, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, UK

I will base my talk on my experience of being an Editor for Journal of Molecular Biology focussing on computational biology. In particular, every year we publish a special issue entitled

• Michael Markie, eLife

eLife is working to promote a culture in which the actual content of a paper is more important than the name of the journal in which it is published. A culture in which scientific research is first disseminated as a preprint and then assessed and evaluated in depth by experts. By making the views of expert editors and reviewers an integral part of the published paper, we hope to improve the way that scientific research is assessed and evaluated. Where readers are experts, they can assess the work for themselves. If not, they can rely on our Public Reviews, which go into the strengths and weaknesses of the paper in detail. And if they require a concise critique, they can read the eLife assessment, which summarises the significance of the findings reported in the paper (on a scale ranging from useful to landmark) and the strength of the evidence (inadequate to exceptional). This approach enables the rapid and scholarly dissemination of new scientific knowledge in a way that permits the views and constructive criticisms of expert reviewers to be openly considered by both authors and readers. If this is what we want, why do we only review some papers and not others? This presentation will explain how and why eLife selects submissions to prioritise for in-depth review