A few weeks ago, we published a series of articles (Edwards NJ, Feala et al, Lu et al, McCord et al, Shlomi et al, Ulitsky and Shamir, Zhou X et al, 2007) that were initially presented at the RECOMB Workshop on Systems Biology . According to the publication model agreed upon, peer-reviewed articles were presented orally at the conference and a subset of those were invited for revision and ultimately published in Molecular Systems Biology. Publication of research paper at a conference is very popular in computer sciences and bioinformatics, but it is a rarely applied model in biology (Ideker et al, 2007).
I see several several major incentives for this type of collaboration between a conference and a journal, particularly for an emerging field like systems biology. First, it may help the journal to stay more in sync with a rapidly evolving community. Second, it may well stimulate presentation of novel and exciting research at the conference (and perhaps reduce somewhat the proportion of talks reporting only previously published data...). Finally, the proximity in time between public presentation, direct discussion with peers and ultimately publication in a journal may accelerate the dissemination of results and increase the pace of the field.
We wish now to extend this joint conference/journal presentation model by entering a collaboration this year with the International Conference for Systems Biology, to be held in Long Beach, California, from October 1-6, 2007. Authors of the best abstracts from the conference will be invited to submit the corresponding research articles to Molecular Systems Biology. Manuscripts will go through the standard review procedure of the journal, but if accepted, the publication fees will be paid by ICSB 2007. A special online issue of Molecular Systems Biology devoted to ICSB 2007 will feature the accepted articles.
More information on the precise procedure on the abstract submission page of the Conference. Deadline for submission of the abstracts: July 27th, 2007!
Comments (3)
Posted by IF | June 13, 2007 4:31 AM
“Authors of the best abstracts from the conference will be invited to submit the corresponding research articles to Molecular Systems Biology”.
What a brilliant idea! How in the world one can select the “best” abstracts from several hundreds? Why not say honestly:
“The best friends of the Editor will be invited to submit the corresponding research articles to Molecular Systems Biology”.
Posted by Thomas Lemberger | June 13, 2007 10:25 AM
"The best friends of the Editor will be invited": precisely not. We took in fact great care to separate the decisions made by ICSB from the editorial decision made by Molecular Systems Biology to ensure independence of both parties.
If you have a look at http://www.icsb-2007.org/abst_sub/index.html , you can read in more detail the procedure we will follow: "Extended abstracts submitted by an earlier deadline of July 27, 2007 will be evaluated by a committee consisting of ICSB reviewers. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit full manuscripts for possible publication in Molecular Systems Biology. The full manuscripts will go through the standard review procedure of the journal, but if accepted, the publication fees (USD $3000) will be paid by ICSB 2007. Selections will be announced on August 17, 2007, and authors of selected abstracts will be requested to submit full manuscripts at http://mts-msb.nature.com in the appropriate format ( http://www.nature.com/msb/authors ; "Report" format) by October 1, 2007. Molecular Systems Biology will inform authors of the initial editorial assessment on October 14th. Review results and decisions will be issued by Molecular Systems Biology on or before December 1, 2007. Revised manuscripts will be due from authors in February 2008 and final decisions will be communicated before March 2008."
We also adopted the format of an "Extended Abstract" (500 words, 3 pages, 2 figures) to allow authors to include more information in their summaries and thus enable a more in-depth assessment than with conventional short abstracts.
Posted by Dr. Vikas Sharma | June 21, 2007 5:26 PM
please let us know what would be the judging criteria