Saturday, October 1, 2011

Biology Direct offers a novel system of peer review, allowing authors to select suitable reviewers from the journal's Editorial Board


http://www.biology-direct.com/about/edboard

Biology Direct offers a novel system of peer review, allowing authors to select suitable reviewers from the journal's Editorial Board; making the peer-review process open rather than anonymous; and making the reviewers' reports public, thus increasing the responsibility of the referees and eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing process.


Biology Direct serves the life science research community as an open access, peer-reviewed online journal, providing authors and readers with an alternative to the traditional model of peer review.Biology Direct considers original research articles, hypotheses, comments, discovery notes and reviews in selected subject areas, and will eventually cover the full spectrum of biology.
Subject areas already launched include:
  •  Genomics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology - Edited by Eugene Koonin, Laura Landweber, & David Lipman.
  •  Immunology - Edited by Neil S Greenspan & David R Kaplan.
  •  Mathematical Biology - Edited by Marek Kimmel.
The key aim of Biology Direct is to provide authors and readers with a novel system of peer review. This includes making the author responsible for selecting potentially suitable reviewers for their manuscript, from the journal's Editorial Board; making the peer review process open rather than anonymous; and making the reviewers' reports public, thus increasing the responsibility of the referees and eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing process.
Edited by Eugene V Koonin, Laura F Landweber and David J Lipman, Biology Direct is supported by an international Editorial Board.

Open access

All articles published by Biology Direct are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.
Authors of articles published in Biology Direct are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Biology Direct therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1210/$1865/€1385 for each article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a Memberthe cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. For further details, see our article-processing charge page. A limited number of waivers for article-processing charges are also available at the editors' discretion, and authors wishing to apply for these waivers should contact the editors.

Indexing services

Following publication in Biology Direct, the full-text of each article is deposited immediately and permanently archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of electronic publications. Biology Direct is included in PubMed and all major bibliographic databases. A complete list of indexing web services that include BioMed Central's journals can be found here.
Biology Direct is tracked by Thomson Reuters (ISI) and has an impact factor of 3.74

Publication and peer-review process

Content overview

Biology Direct aims to publish original research articles, hypotheses, and reviews from the full spectrum of biology; the first subject areas launched are Genomics, Bioinformatics, Systems Biology and Immunology and Mathematical Biology. Further subject areas will be launched from time to time until the full spectrum of biology is covered. Subjects covered will include any aspect of molecular, cellular, organismal or population biology, as well as methods, theoretical and computational biology, comparative biology, and evolution. The journal aims to publish primarily articles that address salient aspects of fundamental problems in biology and, ideally, offer new perspectives on such problems.
Biology Direct considers the following types of articles:
Research: reports of data from original research.
Reviews: authoritative, critical discussions of any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually written by opinion leaders that have been invited by the Editorial Board, but proposals (directed to one of the Editors in Chief) are welcome.
Hypotheses: short articles presenting an untested original hypothesis backed solely by previously published results rather than any new evidence.
Opinions: brief articles that express expert opinions and new views on major subjects within the scope of the journal.
Discovery notes: brief reports of specific discoveries made by computational analysis of nucleic acid and/or protein sequences, structures or other data, with novel observations and conclusions about the function, organization, or evolution of proteins, genes or genomes.

Editorial Board

Discovery notes

  • M Madan Babu LMB, United Kingdom
  • Sanathanam Balaji NIH, United States of America
  • Valerian Dolja Oregon State University, United States of America
  • Frank Eisenhaber Bioinformatic Institute, Singapore
  • Michael Galperin NCBI, NLM, NIH, United States of America
  • J Peter Gogarten University of Connecticut, United States of America
  • Dan Graur University of Houston, United States of America
  • Martijn Huynen Nijmegen Center for Molecular Life Sciences & Center for Molecul, Netherlands
  • Lakshminarayan Iyer NIH, United States of America
  • I King Jordan Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
  • Jerzy Jurka Genetic Information Research Institute
  • Gáspár Jékely Max Planck Institute, Germany
  • Fyodor Kondrashov Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain
  • John Logsdon University of Iowa, United States of America
  • Manyuan Long University of Chicago, United States of America
  • Purificacion Lopez-Garcia Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
  • Kira S Makarova NLM, NIH, United States of America
  • Katerina D Makova Pennsylvania State University, United States of America
  • William Martin University of Duesseldorf, Germany
  • Sergei Maslov Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States of America
  • Robert Murphy Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America
  • Arcady Mushegian Stowers Institute for Medical Research, United States of America
  • Anton Nekrutenko Penn State University, United States of America
  • Andrei Osterman Burnham Institute, United States of America
  • Pav Pevzner UCSD, United States of America
  • Sandor Pongor International Centre for Genetic Engineering and biotechnology, Italy
  • Mark Ragan University of Queensland, Australia
  • Andrey Rzhetsky University of Chicago, United States of America
  • Chris Sander Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, United States of America
  • Janet Siefert Rice University, United States of America
  • Shamil R Sunyaev Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, United States of America
  • Sarah A Teichmann MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom
  • Erik van Nimwegen Universtity of Basel, Switzerland
  • Itai Yanai Harvard University, United States of America
  • Igor Zhulin University of Tennessee, United States of America

Genomics, bioinformatics and systems biology

  • Ruben Abagyan Scripps Institute, United States of America
  • Christoph Adami Keck Graduate Institute, United States of America
  • Orly Alter University of Utah, United States of America
  • David Ardell Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Joel Bader Johns Hopkins University, United States of America
  • Vineet V Bafna CSE, United States of America
  • Eric Bapteste Dalhousie University, Canada
  • Stephan Beck University College London, United Kingdom
  • Mikhail Blagosklonny NYMC, United States of America
  • Peer Bork European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany
  • Céline Brochier-Armanet Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I, France
  • Philippe Broet INSERM, France
  • Jürgen Brosius University of Muenster, Germany
  • Cyrus Chothia Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
  • George M Church Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, United States of America
  • Charles DeLisi Boston University, United States of America
  • Valerian Dolja Oregon State University, United States of America
  • W Ford Doolittle Dalhousie University, Canada
  • Sandrine Dudoit University of California, United States of America
  • Richard Durbin The Sanger Institute, United Kingdom
  • Jonathan A Eisen University of California, United States of America
  • Michael B Eisen Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, United States of America
  • Frank Eisenhaber Bioinformatic Institute, Singapore
  • Adam Eyre-Walker University of Sussex, United Kingdom
  • Patrick Forterre University Paris XI, France
  • George Fox University of Houston, United States of America
  • Nicolas Galtier Université Montpellier II, France
  • Mikhail Gelfand Russian Academy of Science, Russian Federation
  • Mark Gerstein Yale University, United States of America
  • J Peter Gogarten University of Connecticut, United States of America
  • Dan Graur University of Houston, United States of America
  • Dr Simonetta Gribaldo Institut Pasteur, France
  • Nick V Grishin University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, United States of America
  • Yuriy Gusev Georgetown University Medical Center, United States of America
  • Daniel Haft JCVI, United States of America
  • Laurence Hurst University of Bath, United Kingdom
  • Gavin Huttley John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australia
  • Martijn Huynen Nijmegen Center for Molecular Life Sciences & Center for Molecul, Netherlands
  • Trey Ideker University of California, San Diego, United States of America
  • Etienne Joly CNRS, France
  • I King Jordan Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
  • Jerzy Jurka Genetic Information Research Institute
  • Gáspár Jékely Max Planck Institute, Germany
  • Daniel Kahn Université Lyon 1, France
  • Sunduz Keles University of Wisconsin, United States of America
  • Christina Kendziorski UW-Madison, United States of America
  • Byung-Soo Kim Yonsei University, Korea, South
  • Lev Klebanov Charles University, Czech Republic
  • Rob D Knight CU Boulder, United States of America
  • Alexey Kondrashov University of Michigan, United States of America
  • Fyodor Kondrashov Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain
  • David Krakauer Santa Fe Institute, United States of America
  • Doron Lancet Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
  • Christopher J Lee University of California, United States of America
  • Martin Lercher Heinrich-Heine University, Germany
  • John Logsdon University of Iowa, United States of America
  • Manyuan Long University of Chicago, United States of America
  • Purificacion Lopez-Garcia Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
  • Katerina D Makova Pennsylvania State University, United States of America
  • William Martin University of Duesseldorf, Germany
  • Sergei Maslov Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States of America
  • Geoff J McLachlan University of Queensland, Australia
  • Leonid A Mirny MIT, United States of America
  • Robert Murphy Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America
  • Arcady Mushegian Stowers Institute for Medical Research, United States of America
  • Howard Ochman University of Arizona, United States of America
  • Andrei Osterman Burnham Institute, United States of America
  • Luca Pellegrini Universite' Laval, Canada
  • Pav Pevzner UCSD, United States of America
  • Yitzhak Pilpel Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
  • Sandor Pongor International Centre for Genetic Engineering and biotechnology, Italy
  • Pierre Pontarotti Universite d'Aix Marseille, France
  • Dr Anthony Poole Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Mark Ragan University of Queensland, Australia
  • Andrey Rzhetsky University of Chicago, United States of America
  • Chiara Sabatti UCLA, United States of America
  • Steven Salzberg Johns Hopkins University, United States of America
  • Chris Sander Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, United States of America
  • Michael G. Schimek Medical University of Graz, Austria
  • Jeremy Selengut JCVI, United States of America
  • Eugene I Shakhnovich Harvard University, United States of America
  • George V (Yura) Shpakovski Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Federation
  • Janet Siefert Rice University, United States of America
  • Jeffrey Skolnick Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, United States of America
  • Neil Smalheiser University of Illinois at Chicago, United States of America
  • Shamil R Sunyaev Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, United States of America
  • Sarah A Teichmann MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom
  • Olga Troyanskaya Princeton University, United States of America
  • Mark J van der Laan University of California at Berkeley, United States of America
  • Erik van Nimwegen Universtity of Basel, Switzerland
  • Marc Vidal Dana-Farber Cancer Institute & Harvard University, United States of America
  • Dennis Vitkup Columbia University, United States of America
  • Lutz Walter German Primate Center, Germany
  • Claus Wilke University of Texas at Austin, United States of America
  • Ned S Wingreen Princeton University
  • Dieter Wolf Burnham Institute for Medical Research, United States of America
  • Wing Hung Wong Stanford University, United States of America
  • Itai Yanai Harvard University, United States of America
  • Igor Zhulin University of Tennessee, United States of America

Mathematical Biology

  • Anthony Almudevar University of Rochester, United States of America
  • Adam Bobrowski Lublin University of Technology, Poland
  • Kenneth Boucher Huntsman Cancer Institute, United States of America
  • Chao Chen Environmental Protection Agency, United States of America
  • Dan Coombs UBC, Canada
  • Rob J de Boer Utrecht University, Netherlands
  • Lutz Edler German Cancer Research Center, Germany
  • James R. Faeder Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States of America
  • Michael Gilchrist University of Tennessee, United States of America
  • Peter Glynn Stanford University, United States of America
  • Alexander Gordon University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America
  • Yuriy Gusev Georgetown University Medical Center, United States of America
  • Philip Hahnfeldt Tufts University School of Medicine, United States of America
  • Leonid G Hanin Idaho State Univesrsity, United States of America
  • William Hlavacek Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States of America
  • Ollivier Hyrien University of Rochester, United States of America
  • Christine Jacob INRA, France
  • Peter Jagers Chalmers University of Technology & University of Gothenburg
  • Jeanne Kowalski Johns Hopkins University, United States of America
  • Yang Kuang Arizona State University, United States of America
  • Vladimir Kuznetsov Matrix, Singapore
  • Ha Youn Lee University of Rochester Medical Center, United States of America
  • Tomasz Lipniacki Rice University, United States of America
  • Georg Luebeck Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States of America
  • Anna Marciniak-Czochra Institute of Applied Mathematics, Germany
  • Marianthi Markatou Cornell University and IBM TJ Watson Research Center, United States of America
  • Peter Olofsson Trinity University, United States of America
  • Dennis Pearl Ohio State University, United States of America
  • Tomas Radivoyevitch Case Western Reserve University, United States of America
  • Ruy M Ribeiro Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States of America
  • Rainer Sachs University of California, United States of America
  • Aniko Szabo Medical College of Wisconsin, United States of America
  • Wai-Yuan Tan University of Memphis, United States of America
  • Nikolay Yanev Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
  • Marco Zaider Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, United States of America