EMBO Annual Report 04

preface
Susan Gasser
Chair of the EMBO Council
EMBO & EMBC 2004
As I look back over last year’s activities and
forward to the next, I am struck by EMBO’s
increasing involvement in the world of electronic
publishing, data management and
electronic information. This is an evolution
that many would claim inevitable, yet each
step must be taken with care to ensure quality
and avoid unwelcome results. Reversals
in evolutions of this kind are often extremely
hard to achieve.
The most notable addition to EMBO’s
current activities is Europe’s first electronic
journal on systems biology, Molecular Systems
Biology. The journal will be launched
by EMBO and Nature Publishing Group (NPG)
in March 2005 appearing in electronic version
only. This represents a first step for
EMBO and NPG into open-access or authorpays
publishing. For EMBO, this is an exciting
new expansion into a field that is currently
blossoming worldwide and provides
an opportunity to represent and structure a
research area well suited to the electronic
publication mode.
What is the goal of Molecular Systems
Biology? Over the last few years, EMBO has
discussed the possibility of converting The
EMBO Journal to open access. However, it is
still unclear whether this will be the ideal
publishing paradigm and it seemed unwise
www.embo.org
to test the water with our flagship publication.
We had also discussed the option of
expanding EMBO’s publishing efforts into
themes that are less widely represented in
The EMBO Journal. However, we wanted to
avoid the proliferation of specialised EMBO
“offspring”. It was under this backdrop and
in the hope that Europe might take the lead
in systems biology, that Molecular Systems
Biology was conceived.
In some ways, systems biology was an
obvious choice for an electronic publishing
venture, as it relies heavily on computational
and high-throughput technologies. The
new journal will publish full-length papers
with a focus on systematic or large-scale
analyses that aim to integrate and model
molecular and cellular phenomena. Guiding
the journal are five stellar editors (Ruedi
Aebersold, Peer Bork, George Church, Leroy
Hood and Edison Liu), supported by an onsite
editor at the EMBO office. Molecular
Systems Biology represents a major effort,
but EMBO is confident that the paradigm is
appropriate and the moment is ripe.
There are also changes at The EMBO
Journal. Iain Mattaj will take over as Director
General of EMBL and step down as Executive
Editor of The EMBO Journal. We are
greatly indebted to Iain for his commitment
to the journal; he has been instrumental to
its success. The EMBO Council and the
EMBO Publication Committee agreed unanimously
that Pernille Rørth of EMBL should
be appointed as the new Executive Editor
with the aim of having a leading scientist
working closely with the in-house editorial
staff. This should ensure strong scientific
input into the decision-making process. The
participation of the Advisory Editorial Board
in the review process is also highly valued.
In addition, a new layer of four external
senior editors has been incorporated into
the editorial structure of The EMBO Journal
with the aim of broadening the journal’s
reach even further. The EMBO Journal has
always been deeply rooted in the scientific
community and it is hoped that the new
senior editors will attract further high quality
papers and identify novel, ground-breaking
ideas in submitted manuscripts.The senior
scientists accepting this position are
David Baulcombe, Ari Helenius, Tim Hunt
and Tony Hunter.The senior editors will meet
with the editorial staff at least once per year
to help guide The EMBO Journal in its decisions.
Another electronic direction that will
bear fruit in the coming months is the
E-BioSci project, guided by EMBO manager,
Les Grivell, who has also been an important
contributor to the start-up of Molecular
Systems Biology. E-BioSci aims to improve
electronic data searches of published literature
and other data storage sites. It will be
tested in the coming year to determine how
it can help molecular biologists deal with an
ever-expanding digital database of information.
Besides expansion into electronic areas,
continued efforts are being made to expand
EMBO’s activities in central and eastern
European countries. Last but certainly not
least, the European Research Council (ERC)
moves ever closer on the horizon promising
to be a significant new source of funding for
research in Europe. These are projects in
which EMBO has played a major role, contributing
on many levels – above all by providing
a standard for efficient, sciencebased
management.
We thank the entire EMBO staff in Heidelberg
for their continued dedication to
making EMBO the success that it is today.
I further thank all the EMBO members who
generously contribute their time and judgement
to help shape the ever-evolving EMBO
programme, as we continue to promote
molecular biology throughout Europe and
the rest of the world.