PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY OVERVIEW

The PLOS Computational Biology Translational Bioinformatics collection image. Image Credit: PLOS. www.ploscollections.org/ translationalbioinformatics

In 2012-13 PLOS Computational Biology published 15% more research articles than the previous year, with an average publication volume of 42 per month. While publishing the highest quality research remains the main focus of the journal, PLOS Computational Biology also aims to serve the community by providing shared resources that engage and educate our readership and offering scientists a way of making less traditional contributions.

One such resource is our newest collection of Education articles, Translational Bioinformatics, an online textbook that is intended for use as a reference or tutorial for a graduate level introductory course  on the science of translational bioinformatics. Edited by Maricel Kann and Fran Lewitter, the collection of 14 chapters from leading experts in the field was published in December 2012, along with an introduction by Russ Altman (1). An ebook version (a first for PLOS) was released in January 2013, and 3 new chapters were added in April. Translational Bioinformatics has been well received by the community and the editors are considering proposals for additional chapters.

The PLOS Computational Biology Translational Bioinformatics collection image. Image Credit: PLOS. www.ploscollections.org/ translationalbioinformatics

In November 2012 we pulled our existing Software articles together into a collection, and in recent months PLOS Computational Biology has published four new Topic Pages. (Topic Pages were a new initiative for 2012 aimed at increasing coverage of computational biology in Wikipedia.) Some interesting articles from the ISCB have also featured in the journal over the past year, including Todd Gibson's history of the ISMB as told through interviews with some of the personalities involved in the formation and early years of the meeting (2).

PLOS Computational Biology underwent a leadership change in July 2012, welcoming Ruth Nussinov as our new Editor-in-Chief. Phil Bourne, Editor-in-Chief since the journal's launch, took on the new title of Founding Editor-in-Chief and remains involved in special projects and the journal's non-research section. In October 2012 we announced an expansion of the journal's scope, in response to discussions among the editorial board and the community, to include papers describing outstanding methods of exceptional importance that have been shown to, or have the promise to, provide new biological insights. Methods articles are a distinct category of research articles, and are handled by our Methods Deputy Editor Thomas Lengauer.

PLOS Computational Biology is grateful for the contributions made by many members of the community during 2012-13. To accommodate the high numbers of submissions to the journal and the broad range of topics they cover we have introduced 16 new Associate Editors to the Editorial Board in the last 12 months, and Paul Gardner has joined us as a Software Editor. In addition, Rob de Boer, Arne Elofsson, Bill Noble and Jason Papin all took on more senior roles at the journal as Deputy Editors.

PLOS Computational Biology is a "Community Journal": we value your ideas and comments, so please don't hesitate to come and visit us at Booth 13 at ISMB or contact us via ploscompbiol@plos.org at any time.

Examples of Highly Viewed Articles in 2012 (total no. of views/downloads as of June 1, 2013):

• Google Goes Cancer: Improving Outcome Prediction for Cancer Patients by Network-Based Ranking of Marker Genes.  Winter C, Kristiansen G, Kersting S, Roy J, Aust D, et al. (2012) PLOS Comput Biol 8(5): e1002511. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002511 19,291 views
• The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information. Prabhakar B, Dektar KN, Gordon DM (2012) PLOS Comput Biol 8(8): e1002670. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002670 16,363 views
• Metabolic Reconstruction for Metagenomic Data and Its Application to the Human Microbiome. Abubucker S, Segata N, Goll J, Schubert AM, Izard J, et al. (2012) PLOS Comput Biol 8(6): e1002358. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002358
  13,117 views

References
1. Introduction to Translational Bioinformatics Collection. Altman, R. PLoS Comput Biol, 2012, Vol. 8(12): e1002796. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002796.
2. The Roots of Bioinformatics in ISMB. Gibson, Todd A. PLOS Comput Biol, 2012, Vol. 8(8): e1002679. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002679.