Editor’s Message for 2014 Sudhir Kumar1,2 1

School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University Center for Evolutionary Medicine and Informatics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University

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Editorial

The New Year brings many exciting developments to Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE). The first is the release of a new list of MBE citation classics for 2014. Only 1% of more than 5,000 articles published in MBE are given the citation classic designation. In the 2014 edition, there are seven new entrants in the Recent Classics category, which have the highest number of citations per year among the articles published in the last 5 years. There are four new entrants in the Early Classics category, which have the highest number of citations per year among the articles published before 2009. Congratulations to all the authors for achieving this distinction. Another development is the highlighting of research published in MBE through press releases with an aim to make your discoveries more widely disseminated. With the help of an experienced scientific writer, we are developing press releases that are provided to news outlets, trade publications, and news media blogs. As new manuscripts are accepted by the editorial board, I identify candidate articles for developing press releases, which emphasize one or two main discoveries of note that can be of general interest to the broader scientific community and the public at large. Authors are given an opportunity to provide feedback on all stories. We plan to develop 50 press releases each year, which will serve as tips for other writers and editors to develop their own news stories. We also publish press releases along with the source article in MBE, some of which appear in this issue. Our initial batch of press releases has been well received and resulted in extensive coverage of MBE articles by the news media and other journals. You can find some of them by searching for “Molecular Biology and Evolution” in your search engine and going to the “News” categories. We would like to encourage all MBE authors to develop press releases, as appropriate, and we stand ready to help you in preparing your own press releases to raise a greater awareness of your research. This year, we expect to receive many more manuscript submissions, because MBE’s 2-year impact factor increased significantly due to large numbers of citations received by several articles describing research resources. Overall, MBE is ranked 2 in Evolutionary Biology, 5 in Genetics and Heredity, and 13 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology among nonreview journals, which are the three primary subject categories assigned to MBE in the Journal Citation Reports. Our rankings based on the 5-year impact factor are similarly high. However, it is important to note that we are working closely with our publisher (Oxford University Press) to disseminate articlelevel metrics of impact, which are more appropriate to judge the relative influence of research.

Like last year, I have issued many calls for papers this year, including Tree of Life (June 15 and December 15), Evolution in Medicine (January 15 and July 15), Evolutionary Genomics (February 1 and August 1), Software and Database Updates (February 15, June 15, and October 15), and Experimental Evolution (March 1 and September 1). I plan to issue more calls based on the suggestions from other MBE editors and the members of the molecular evolutionary community. Please send your suggestions to [email protected] and provide a brief paragraph justifying the need for the special solicitation. I would like to note that a vast majority of manuscripts received and published by MBE are those submitted without any special calls. In fact, I simply increase the number of papers published in MBE to accommodate manuscripts received in response to special calls for papers. Therefore, MBE is committed to serving the needs of the community by publishing all original reports of significant discoveries, methods, and resources. As outlined in my editorial message in 2013, MBE will publish all contributions that receive high ratings from reviewers and editors. That is, the acceptance of your work for publication in MBE is no longer limited by the number of print pages, as they will be expanded as needed. This year, I also expect to develop a memorandum of understanding between MBE and GBE (Genome Biology and Evolution), both of which are published by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. Both journals plan to provide a service to authors where they can request direct transfer of the manuscript, reviews, and reviewer identities from one journal to another. Although MBE and GBE are editorially independent, the editor of one journal will consider manuscripts and reviews from the other journal upon authors’ requests. We envision that the receiving editor will often make a decision based on the original reviews or after seeking additional reviews. Of course, authors are free to submit their work to either journal without disclosing the decision rendered by the other journal. We hope that our new service to authors will help reduce publication time of worthy submissions. Finally, I am pleased to announce an arXiv-friendly policy for MBE, which applies to manuscripts distributed via all other public preprint servers as well. MBE now considers all preprints available on public servers (e.g., arXiv) to be unpublished. Therefore, you may make your manuscripts available on public preprint servers, if you 1) declare the intent to disseminate the initial or the revised manuscript on public preprint servers at the time of submission to MBE, and 2) select the Open-Access option in the event the manuscript is

Published by Oxford University Press 2013

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Mol. Biol. Evol. 31(1):4–5 doi:10.1093/molbev/mst216 Advance Access publication November 22, 2013

Editor’s Message for 2014 . doi:10.1093/molbev/mst216

accepted in MBE. The latter is required because the deposition of a manuscript on public preprint servers makes its content available free of charge to everyone, which corresponds to our Open-Access option. Our new policy will enable you to disseminate your findings immediately upon

MBE the completion of the manuscript to the community and to receive feedback to improve the manuscript. I look forward to receiving your manuscripts and deeply appreciate the support of all authors, reviewers, and editors.

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Editor's message for 2014.

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