{ C O N T E N T S }
Volume 9, Issue 2
President's Letter
Welcome to ISMB 2006!
Student Council Events
Mathieu Blanchette
Overton Prize
Michael Waterman
Senior Scientist
Accomplishment Award
One Year of
PLoS Computational Biology
PLoS CB Education
Column
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BioLINK and BioCreAtIvE:
Linking Text to Biological Resources
ISCB Officer and Student
Council Leadership Elections
MentorNet News
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Announcing ISMB/ECCB
2007
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Copyright © 2006 International Society
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One Year of PLoS
Computational Biology
Submitted by Philip E. Bourne, Editor in Chief
The
Public Library of Science (PLoS) open access community journal Computational
Biology is
published in partnership with the International Society for Computational
Biology (ISCB). As this is written there have been twelve monthly
issues of this new journal published. How is the journal doing and
what does this mean to the Society?
While it is too early to formally assess the impact
of the journal, it is worth reflecting on what has been achieved
in the first year of publication. Twelve monthly issues actually
reflects eighteen months of submissions, given that we have been
considering papers since January of 2005. At the end of June 2006,
631 research articles have been submitted to the journal, 110 have
been published and 64 (48 new submissions and 16 revisions) are
currently under review. We estimate that our acceptance rate is
currently around 30%, increasing in recent months from less than
20% as authors become more familiar with the expectations of the
journal and do not submit papers that have little chance of being
published. We are now publishing about 15 research articles per
month. Accompanying these research articles over the year have been
3 editorials,
6 reviews, 5 perspectives, and the Education Section just published
its first tutorial. From acceptance to publication is 5-6 weeks,
although authors have the option of having their manuscripts posted
as soon as they are accepted. Submissions have been received from
41 countries (based on the location of the corresponding author).
Interest in the journal can be gauged by the number
of people who have signed up to receive an electronic alert of journal
contents (eTOC) and by the number of downloads of journal articles.
Currently 7,125 people are signed up to receive an eTOC, a number
that grows by several hundred each month and since the launch, there
has been a total of 262,268 articles download. Two of the top ten
papers are in the area of neuroscience and two others form part
of the on-going "Ten Rules" series of editorials to aid
our less experienced readers. Of the Remainder, one is a perspective
discussing team versus individual science and the rest are in the
realm of computational molecular biology. Demographics of materials
downloaded show North America and Europe account for 60-70% of the
usage of the site, but there is significant usage from the developing
world, a testament to open access.
Overall, we are well on the way to meeting the
original editorial goal of the journal -- to establish a high-quality
knowledge resource serving a community interested in advancing our
understanding of living systems through the use of computational
techniques. While reported advances have been predominantly at the
molecular level, there is a growing body of work being submitted
that covers different levels of biological organization. This reflects
our goal to publish great work involving computational analyses
at all biological scales. We want to make the connections between
researchers who are using conceptually related approaches to tackle
diverse issues in biology.
What does this first successful year mean to the
Society? There is a healthy and growing relationship between the
two organizations. A number of ISCB Directors are members of the
journal's Editorial Board, Fran Lewitter, the journal's Education
Editor, is part of the ISCB Education Committee which has led to,
for example, solicitation of ISMB tutorials for publication by the
journal. ISCB representatives, including the Chair of the ISCB Publications
Committee, are invited to weekly PLoS teleconferences and PLoS reports
to the ISCB on journal matters relating to the Society. One author
of each accepted paper gets a free one year membership to the Society
and hopefully will renew their membership in later years. Finally,
articles about ISCB activities are a regular feature of the journal.
There is clearly great interest from other scientific communities
in how the relationship between a scientific society and an open
access journal develops. I am proud to report that after one year
the relationship is strong and mutually beneficial. I am hopeful
that next year I will be able to report that we have proven ourselves
an exemplar and groundbreaker for such society-journal relationships.
None of this would be possible with out highly dedicated staff in
both organizations. I thank the staff at PLoS, notably Catherine
Nancarrow and Emily Stevenson, and BJ Morrison McKay, the Executive
Officer of ISCB for getting us this far. The rest is up to you.
Please submit your best work and continue to make PLoS Computational
Biology a showcase for our science.
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