BMC series blog

BMC-series journals on track for Impact Factor

BMC Biophysics, BMC Ecology and BMC Endocrine Disorders have all recently been accepted for indexing by Thomson Reuters and are on course to receive their first Impact Factors. We are delighted that these journals have been selected for indexing, joining the many other journals in the BMC series  to have an Impact Factor.

BMC Endocrine Disorders has been tracked from publications in 2009 and is due to receive its first Impact Factor in 2012. A recent blog post discusses one of the special thematic collections in BMC Ecology, which has likely contributed to the increased visibility and recognition of the journal.

This is great news too for BMC Biophysics, considering it is less than a year since the journal re-launched on the BioMed Central platform. Since re-launch the journal has recruited a new Editorial Board consisting of world-renowned experts in the field.

In 2011 we published many interesting articles, including one from our Section Editor, Gerhard Gompper, which is an important theoretical contribution to the field. In it, the authors introduce and analyze a discrete filament-motor protein model of subcellular microtubule self-assembly in fission yeast, which demonstrates spontaneous generation of a number of steady states, including spindles, nematics, and asters. We think this study highlights the power and flexibility of online open access publishing in biophysics, as the authors were able to directly link the article’s text to their video figures. View their hypnotic animations of microtubule vortices here. 

The journal has already had a strong start to 2012 by publishing an exciting article by Qin et al. describing the structural determination of the EphA4 ligand binding domain, providing the first experimental and computational evidence that intrinsic dynamics are most likely to be responsible for the observed high conformational diversity that mediates binding affinity and specificity. An accompanying commentary by Ruth Nussinov and Buyong Ma in our flagship biology journal BMC Biology says: “These snapshots of multiple conformations of the free EphA4 LDB provide a unique insight into the conformational dynamics of EphA4 and the Eph-ephrin signaling pathways.”

After such a great start we are looking forward to what 2012 has in store for these journals and would invite you to submit your next research article to BMC Biophysics, BMC Ecology and BMC Endocrine Disorders.

Shane Canning

Journal Development Editor

Simon Harold

Executive Editor

Posted by Shane Canning at 10:00    Comments (0)

Bacterial symbionts – the key to fighting pests and diseases?

Arthropods such as insects can be devastatingly efficient pests and disease vectors, posing significant challenges to the agricultural and medical communities. Pesticides used to be a common solution to dealing with pests but, with more stringent environmental regulations on pesticides and increasing pest resistance to the chemicals, new solutions are required.

Many arthropods have evolved a symbiotic relationship with bacteria and this association could potentially be exploited to control pests and disease  vectors. This biological control approach, called symbiont-based control strategies, would be preferable to chemical controls due to their lower environmental impact.

In order to exploit the arthropod- bacterial symbiosis, more knowledge of the relationship is required. BMC Microbiology has published a supplement – Arthropod symbiosis: from fundamental studies to pest and disease management consisting of the latest interdisciplinary research in this field. The articles in the supplement look at bacterial symbiosis with pests such as the Anopheles mosquito that spreads malaria, tsetse fly that spreads sleeping sickness and the cereal weevil that devastates cereal crops.

Currently in their initial stages of development, symbiont-based control strategies have the potential to increase global health and food resources by removing arthropod disease vectors and agricultural pests.

Posted by Srimathy Sriskantharajah at 16:03    Comments (0)

BMC Ecology starts 2012 on a high!

The year 2011 was a successful one for BMC Ecology and 2012 is off to an excellent start with the news that the journal has been accepted for tracking by Thomson Reuters and will receive its first Impact Factor in 2015. We are delighted with this result as it reflects the growth and increased visibility of the journal in its field and the hard work and support given by our Editorial Board and in-house team.

To support and drive the further growth of BMC Ecology, we are now working with external Section Editors on the journal and are pleased to welcome Nick Royle, Josef Settele, Jean Clobert, Michel Baguette, and Mike Bonsall to the journal in these roles. We look forward to working with them on developing their sections in the future and benefiting from their experience and expertise.

In addition to these successes BMC Ecology celebrated the 2011 UN Year of Forests with the publication of a thematic series entitled ‘Forests: Looking to the Future’ in conjunction with another of BioMed Central’s open access journals, Carbon Balance and Management. The series published a number of articles, including a review by Raf Aerts and one of BMC Ecology’s Associate Editors Olivier Honnay on forest restoration, which has been highly accessed, and an article by Tiina Sarkinen and colleagues on the effective mapping of dry forest biomes. The series has generated a lot of interest and we are pleased with the promotion that has given the journal, in particular the coverage on Twitter at the Forests 2011 conference in Belgium which was happening at the same time.

We are looking forward to what the rest of 2012 brings. 

Posted by Genevieve Horne at 15:38    Comments (0)