BioMed Central launches BMC Systems Biology

Jan 8 2007

BioMed Central has announced the launch of BMC Systems Biology, the first open access journal focussed solely on the entire emerging subject of systems biology.

A peer-reviewed online journal, BMC Systems Biology has just published its first articles online at www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsystbiol.

BMC Systems Biology publishes research articles describing systems-level analysis of biological events, whether experimental or theoretical, at the level of molecules, cells or organisms.

BMC Systems Biology is a new journal in the highly successful BMC-series from BioMed Central, the publisher of journals such as BMC Bioinformatics and Genome Biology. Like the other journals in the series, BMC Systems Biology publishes peer-reviewed research, software, database and methodology articles, all of which are immediately available without charge to any reader with Internet access. BMC Systems Biology encourages use of the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) and, like all of the BMC-series, makes XML of all published articles freely available to download for data and text-mining.

Dr Theodora Bloom, BioMed Central’s Editorial Director for Biology, said of the journal launch, “BioMed Central has a strong track record in this area - Genome Biology and BMC Bioinformatics are amongst the best journals in their fields. This reputation makes BioMed Central well-placed to launch BMC Systems Biology, and we have already seen a very positive response from the research community.”

The post-genomic discipline of ‘systems biology’ is fast growing, with an exponential increase in PubMed abstracts including the term systems biology. The approach taken by systems biologists is qualitatively different to the reductive approach traditional in many fields, and often involves collaboration between biologists, physicists and mathematicians. Reflecting the breadth of this new discipline, BMC Systems Biology aims to publish work ranging in focus from the analysis of metabolic networks, through neuronal networks and physiology, all the way up to analyses of ecosystems.

BMC Systems Biology’s editorial board includes Laurence Hurst, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Bath, UK. Professor Hurst welcomes the launch of BMC Systems Biology, “In systems biology the devil is in the detail and the details are, to say the least, numerous. An open access outlet both with unlimited space, be it in the paper or in the vital supplementary information, and a requirement to provide the necessary detail, is greatly to be welcomed and BMC Systems Biology is an important boost for the field.”

Fellow Editorial Board member Professor Nikolaus Rajewsky, Head of the Division of Systems Biology at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin comments, "Systems biology is developing and expanding at a rapid pace. It also becomes more and more apparent to many biologists that a more profound understanding of biological function can oftentimes only be achieved by integrating disparate datasets in a systems-wide approach.”

Rajewsky continues, “The BMC journals have already proven to be very attractive to many scientists and readers. These journals provide open access, do not restrict manuscript length, and do not insist on publishing only "major" findings, i.e. they do not force scientists to strive for "sensations". Especially in a new field, such as systems biology, it is necessary to work on solid methodology development. Therefore, BMC Systems Biology seems especially suited to become an important and high impact journal."

BMC Systems Biology is edited by an in-house team and supported by an international editorial board. The editorial board is still being recruited, the following people have already agreed to serve: Harmen J Bussemaker (USA), James J Collins (USA), Stephen W Davies (Canada), Michael Elowitz (USA), James E Ferrell Jr. (USA), Laurence D Hurst (UK), Douglas Lauffenburger (USA), Nicolas Le Novère (UK), Nikolaus Rajewsky (Germany), Frederick P Roth (USA), Chris Sander (USA), Pamela Silver (USA), Michael Tyers (Canada), Rebecca Ward (USA).

BMC Systems Biology (ISSN 1752-0509) is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, BIOSIS, CAS, Scopus, EMBASE and Google Scholar.