Researching cells: much history, many frontiers.

THE COMMUNICATION OF RESEARCH results through peer review and publication is an intrinsic and essential part of scientific research. It is a great privilege to be starting the position of Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology. My predecessor, Paul Insel, has effected major advances for the Journal, including reducing the time to first decision on manuscripts and increasing the number of Review articles. As we reach the time of hand-over, it is with humility that I look to the future. The cell is the central unit of life and there are now more tools available than ever before with which to investigate molecular mechanisms of cell function, communication between cells, and the coordination of cell activities in tissues. These are times of great excitement for cell biology: we can spy on cells in situ, in real time, or decode activities with reference to the entire genome down to the single cell level. In beginning my term as Editor-in-Chief, my goal is to promote AJP-Cell as the journal of choice for publication of research studies that advance mechanistic understanding of cellular and molecular processes across the full spectrum of cell physiology. In addition to maintaining the notable current core strengths of AJP-Cell, my goals will be to expand submissions from researchers in areas that are currently less represented (for example, cell biological processes in developmental and reproductive physiology, neurobiology or immune cell functions) and to encourage publications in expanding, nontraditional areas such as stem cell biology, nanoand synthetic biology, and the modeling of cell physiological processes. Recent years have seen increasing publications on “omics” or “cell systems biology” topics in AJP-Cell and this is certainly an area that I would like to see continue to grow. The Associate Editors and I will also continue to promote the Journal as a respected source of scholarship in cell physiology by inviting additional content such as Review articles and Methods surveys. In relation to these goals for Journal content, I plan to take steps to increase international visibility and the scope of international submissions to AJP-Cell. All these endeavors will benefit from the input of the excellent and enthusiastic scientists who have agreed to serve as Associate Editors for AJP-Cell. The Associate Editors from July 2014 will include both continuing and new Associate Editors: Eric Delpire (Vanderbilt University), Sophie Lotersztajn (Centre de Recherches sur l’inflammation, Inserm U1149/ Université Paris-Diderot), Sanjay Pimplikar (Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic), Gregg Semenza (The Johns Hopkins University), and Jason Yuan (University of Arizona). Their collective expertise spans the major areas of submissions to AJP-Cell and will be complementary to the incipient growth areas. With the support of the excellent and knowledgeable Editorial Advisory Board and the highly effective APS Publications Office we will strive to provide authors with a fair, transparent, and timely review process. The current average time to first decision for original research papers is 16 days. While the quality and novelty of papers to be published will be the primary consideration in the review process, we are well aware that timely publication of their results is often the number one consideration for authors. We aim to provide authors with thoughtful editorial decisions without excessive requests for extensive additional experiments. Prospective authors should be aware that papers are listed in PubMed with a doi number, and thus citable, within days of acceptance of the final version. To readers and prospective authors there is one key message: please submit your best research on cellular mechanisms and processes to AJP-Cell! I look forward to hearing from you.