A new proteomics journal has appeared on the screen: Proteome Science, an all-electronic journal published by BioMed Central, went online at the end of October.
So far, it does not contain a single paper, but Martin Latterich, the journal’s editor-in-chief and director of proteomics at Illumina, said a research paper has been submitted, and he is planning to kick off with a series of review articles at the beginning of next year.
Proteome Science is not the first special journal on the scene, but Latterich and his associate editors, Mark Gerstein from Yale University, Kazuyuki Nakamura from Yamaguchi University School of Medicine in Japan, and Shankar Subramaniam from the San Diego Supercomputing Center, want it to be different. “The other proteomics journals out there, we felt, were relatively focused on mass spectrometry and protein arrays,” Latterich said. Proteome Science, on the other hand, will include emerging high-throughput approaches that involve protein chemistry, for example in the areas of enzyme kinetics, structural biology, and cell biology, as well as articles based entirely on computational approaches.
Latterich promises a speedy, all-electronic review process, and prompt online publication upon acceptance. Also, even elaborate datasets can be published as part of the paper. Finally, the readership is potentially large, since access to the journal is free. To cover its costs, the publisher will charge authors a $500 fee per manuscript after the first six months. The journal will also be archived in the NCBI’s PubMed Central and listed in PubMed.
But other journals have moved partly online as well: Molecular & Cellular Proteomics also offers electronic submission and review of papers, and publishes articles online before they appear in print.
“I think that all of the journals will go in that direction to the extent that they can economically,” said Leigh Anderson, a member of MCP’s editorial board. MCP offers free access to its articles until the end of this year but will be subscription-based after that.
A journal’s reputation, though, also plays a role for authors, and a new journal yet needs to establish one. “It’s a chicken or egg thing, obviously,” commented Anderson. “If you help make the journal, then the journal turns out to have a good reputation.”
— JK