BioMed Central Blog
Building maps of disease biology; Open Network Biology is now accepting submissions
“The failure of biology to identify the molecular causes of disease has led to disappointment in the rate of development of new medicines.” Derry et al. in Nature Precedings
Understanding the complex interactions that underlie human disease is key to developing better targets for new drug discoveries and more personalized healthcare for patients. With the age of blockbuster drugs coming to an end, there is a growing need for open collaboration and data sharing to continue progress in the fight against serious disease. Open Network Biology, a new journal from BioMed Central that is now accepting submissions, aims to facilitate this goal by publishing network-based models of living systems linked to the corresponding coherent datasets upon which the models are based. The models and associated datasets will be fully available to all, allowing a broad readership to expand the models towards a more complete understanding of the complex phenotypes.
These models are a new type of article which describe in short form the vital basis of network biology, which is the integration of a diversity of high-dimensional, large scale data with clinical data that inform on disease. The Editorial Board are building a repository to store the data and code; please contact the Editors if you would like to discuss contributing data to the repository or would like to know more. In addition to articles describing these large data sets, the journal also welcomes submissions of original research, software and methods, along with reviews and commentary, relevant to the emerging field of network biology.
The journal joins the recently-announced GigaScience in providing its authors with a dedicated, open access repository for the data supporting their publications, and complements BioMed Central’s growing portfolio of journals that aim to make supporting data a first class citizen in science publishing.
Open Network Biology is edited by Dr Eric Schadt (Pacific Biosciences) who first announced the journal at this year’s Sage Bionetworks Commons Congress – a conference organized by Sage BioNetworks, a not-for-profit organization that aims to revolutionize research into human disease. Eric is supported by an expert Editorial Board.
Please visit the website for more information and details on how to submit a manuscript. If you would like to make a pre-submission enquiry, please email the Editors.
Posted by Jenny Withers at 12:23 Comments (0)