Growth in Bioinformatics

In 2002, the journal Bioinformatics continued to grow with a significant increase in submissions to over 700 manuscripts for the year, from more than 1000 active authors around the globe.We anticipated this a year ago (Sander, 2002), but the 80% growth in one year is extraordinary and reflects the increased importance of the field of computational biology, both as an area of active research and of widespread application, in academia and industry.How did the journal cope?The editorial team, with Barbara Cox as Head of the Editorial Office at the European Bioinformatics Institute, and the Associate Editors, with Martin Bishop as most active contributor, as well as an active community of volunteer reviewers, many of them members of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), have worked very hard and added tremendous information value during the selection process for publication.They deserve our gratitude and admiration.The result is an increased quality of information available to many thousands of researchers.Of the 2002 submissions, about 56% were articles and 41% Application Notes.The current acceptance rate is about 44%.Most papers come from North America and Europe (about 40% each), and there is a growing number of submissions from Asia, particularly China.Asian bioinformatics researchers, by the way, have had an active organization (APBioNet.org,the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network) since 1998, not unlike EMBnet in Europe, which I was glad to support in its early stages.The people of the Science Citation Index had the journal Bioinformatics ranked highly in the field of computer science and called it one of the 'most improved journals' for two bi-monthly periods in 2002.Just look at those impressive growth curves on www.in-cites.com/journals/bioinformatics.html!The impact factor remains high, at 3.4, not bad at all, but I think it could and should go higher -as a consequence of increased quality of papers, not as a goal in itself.Accordingly, Oxford University Press is increasing the frequency of the printed issues of Bioinformatics to 18 issues in 2003, with a corresponding ∼50% increase in the number of pages published.The editorial team is being expanded (see below) and we will need more reviewers in the field to donate their precious time.Do send email to bioinformatics@ebi.ac.