Molecular Informatics Going “Fully Online”
Knut Baumann, Gerhard Franz Ecker, Jordi Mestres, Gisbert Schneider · Molecular Informatics · 2014
Increasingly more complex problems are being tackled by computational approaches in biological and medicinal chemistry. Specifically, computational analysis and prediction is no longer limited to single ligand-receptor interactions, but poly-pharmacological and other multi-target effects and their underlying molecular mechanisms have become a focal point of scientific research. Molecular Informatics provides the ideal publication forum for these kinds of studies. This is reflected in the spectrum of topics covered by the journal. In 2013, Molecular Informatics published a total of 82 critically pre-screened and peer-reviewed Full Papers, Communications, Reviews, and Methods Corner articles contributed by authors from across the globe. The published articles originated from Germany (15 % of articles), USA (12 %), China (11 %), as well as 27 further countries. Three timely Special Issues featured Advances in Computational Toxicology (issue 1/2013, guest editor: Thomas Steger-Hartmann), selected highlights of the 19th European Symposium on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (EuroQSAR 2012) focusing on knowledge-enabled ligand design (issue 5–6/2013), and Chemogenomics (issue 11–12/2013, guest editor: Steffen Renner). All Special Issues were very well received by the readers of the journal, and we will continue publishing special topically focused compilations in 2014. After careful and critical review of all Full Papers published in Molecular Informatics in 2013, it is our great pleasure to announce the winners of the Editors’ Choice “2013 Best Paper Award”. The recipients of the 2013 award are Daniel Muthas and Scott Boyer for their original contribution entitled “Exploiting Pharmacological Similarity to Identify Safety Concerns – Listen to What the Data Tells You”.1 The whole editorial team congratulates the authors! At the same time, we look forward to receiving numerous high-quality manuscripts to compete for the “2014 Best Paper Award”. We would like to express our great gratitude to all authors, Editorial Advisory Board members, and peer reviewers for their continuing support. At the same time we bid farewell to some of our Editorial Advisory Board members and welcome the new members: Dmitry A. Konovalov (James Cook University) and Tanja Weil (Universität Ulm) finished their terms at the end of 2013, and Jürgen Bajorath (Universität Bonn), Frank Böckler (Universität Tübingen), Didier Rognan (CNRS UMR), David Winkler (CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering), and Gerhard Wolber (Freie Universität Berlin) join the Board from 2014. The persistent high quality of the contributions published in Molecular Informatics is reflected by its sustained impact factor of 2.34. With full commitment, the editors will continue to consequently strengthen the journal’s position as a premier publication forum at the forefront of cheminformatics and computational medicinal chemistry. As an important and pertinent measure to ensure future success and increase the journal′s visibility Molecular Informatics will be published as a full-fledged online journal starting with its first issue in 2014. The new format will enable access to state-of-the-art electronic publishing and thereby address the requirements of modern scientific exchange and knowledge dissemination within the journal′s scope. All articles will be published without charging authors for manuscript handling and review, color reproduction or per page costs. At the same time the journal′s print production will be stopped, making a relevant contribution to ecologic publishing. Among the exciting new features, Molecular Informatics will offer a Molecular Informatics app for iPads that will provide a powerful new browsing and reading experience of the journal. Another major development will be the Article Anywhere format, which will make the HTML version of each article even more functional, easier to navigate, and more compatible with mobile reading devices. We look forward to receiving your best manuscripts for publication. Molecular Informatics. Going Fully Online …︁ now! 1 1 1 1 Knut Baumann Gerhard Ecker Jordi Mestres Gisbert Schneider The Editors