A Fresh Team and Scope for the Journal "Marine Genomics"

A new Editorial Team and Scope for Marine Genomics

PDF version of the Editorial

With the beginning of the New Year 2012 the journal Marine Genomics has undergone some changes in personnel and scope. First of all, after four years of dedication to get the Marine Genomics off the ground and having achieved major milestones like receiving its first Impact Factor of 0.84 and indexation by MEDLINE, Professor Giorgio Bernardi has decided to hand over the Editor-in-Chief position of Marine Genomics. We deeply acknowledge his efforts to initiate and grow a new journal from the first day on. He was instrumental for the success of Marine Genomics and he will stay as a member of the Editorial Board. We would also like to thank Cinzia Verde for her continuous efforts as the Managing Editor of Marine Genomics for the last four years. As a new journal, Marine Genomics would never have been successful without her being highly committed to pursue the everyday tasks of dealing with papers and reviewers, growing experiences that are pivotal for us. Therefore we are very happy that Cinzia Verde has agreed to stay for another year as the Managing Editor of the journal.

The new Editorial Team will consist of the Editor-in-Chief Frank Oliver Glöckner (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and Jacobs University Bremen, Germany), a trained microbiologist focusing on the development of enabling technologies to investigate the genetic potential of marine bacteria that makes them so vital in inhabiting and adapting to changing environmental conditions. Besides knowledge on Bacteria and Archaea he will add expertise on bioinformatics, standards development, data management and large scale data integration to the team. He will be assisted by two Assistant Editors with complementary expertise. Maria Ina Arnone (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli, Italy) is an expert on multicellular Eukaryotes with a focus on evolution and development at the gene regulatory network (GRN) and cell type levels. She will add expertise on large scale gene expression analyses and functional genomics in marine Metazoans. Chris Bowler (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, France) is a dedicated expert for microbial Eukaryotes and Diatom comparative and functional genomics, as well as environmental genomics.

The changes in the Editorial Team have been mirrored by some adjustments on the scope of Marine Genomics. The journal will continue to publish papers on all functional and evolutionary aspects of genes, chromatin, chromosomes and genomes of marine and, in special cases, also freshwater organisms. Additionally, we will now also consider manuscripts dealing with metagenomes of bacterial and eukaryotic communities. Main topics within the scope of the journal include: I) population genomics and ecology, II) evolutionary and developmental genomics, III) environmental genomics including metagenomics, IV) comparative genomics of genomes and metagenomes as well as V) systems- and ecosystems biology.

More specifically, we would welcome manuscripts that provide new insights on the geographic distribution and phylogenomic characterisation of aquatic organisms; insights into the metabolic capacities and pathways of marine organisms and communities including studies on biogeochemical cycles of energy and matter in the marine and coastal environment, as well as the tracking of infectious diseases. To align with the rapid development in the field of functional genomics the journal is now ready to accept integrative genomic and ecological studies based on bioinformatic, transcriptomic and metatranscriptomic as well as proteomic and metaproteomic analyses. The democratisation of high throughout approaches in marine sciences ranging from molecular biology to oceanography is paving the road towards a dense network of data across our oceans. Consequently, Marine Genomics is open to consider papers dealing with the effect of global climate change on marine organisms as well as small- and large scale modelling approaches for marine ecosystems.

In summary any submissions of manuscripts that deal with new genome-enabled insights into the broader framework of environmental science will be appreciated.

The following formats are available for publication in Marine Genomics:

Regular research papers: will be considered if they contain high quality, original research data and analyses of high interest to the readers. All reports should explicitly state the biological relevance of the subject of the paper.

Methods papers: will be considered only if they are of general importance with considerable original and useful information. Minor improvements to existing methods are not acceptable.

Letters to the Editor: are selected for publication that are pertinent to material published in Marine Genomics or that discuss problems of general interest. The author of a paper in question is usually given an opportunity to reply.

Reviews or mini-reviews: will be generally solicited by the Editors of the journal. However, prospective authors interested in contributing such a paper are invited to contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Opinion/Commentary/Hypothesis papers: unlike a review paper, an Opinion, Commentary or Hypothesis paper does not need to include a review of all aspects present in the literature. Authors may base their opinion, commentary or hypotheses on previously published data, on new experiments, or on a combination of both old and new data.

Together with the publisher we will continue to serve the scientific community by a fair and rapid peer-review process and high-quality publication of original research.

Maria Ina Arnone, Cinzia Verde,

Chris Bowler, Frank Oliver Glöckner