A review of the past, present, and future directions of neoplasia.

This past year, we have seen a phenomenal growth in the number of articles submitted to Neoplasia, breaking all previous records. While the number of submitted articles continues to rise on an annual basis, the editorial office continues to maintain a very high standard of scientific quality, which has been consistently maintained over the last 7 years. Since its inception back in 1999, Neoplasia has been a trend-setting, broad-based cancer journal and was, in fact, the first journal to offer online web-based manuscript submission and peer review using our custom-designed application JournalSoft. Although the use of web-based manuscript processing is becoming more of a standard rather than the exception, the process utilized by Neoplasia offers many unique features, which were developed by scientists to facilitate the scientific process. One of these features, which authors who have had works published in Neoplasia are familiar with, is that, during the peer review process, JournalSoft offers authors the ability to read reviewers’ comments as they are submitted. This provides the authors with the opportunity to think about the comments and even begin to address the concerns prior to the receipt of additional reviewers’ comments. JournalSoft also provides an opportunity for the authors to reply to the anonymous reviewer(s) in a point-by-point fashion prior to editorial decision. This provides for a critical dialogue exchange, with the net benefit of improving the quality of the science and the speed of the review process. It is these types of innovations which make Neoplasia the first choice of a growing list of authors. During the past 3 years,Neoplasia has published consistent, broad-based articles from diverse areas of cancer research, as shown in Table 1. This table lists articles by general topic area for publication years 2003–2005. Readily apparent from Table 1 is the fact that the number of articles in each category has been growing over the past 3 years. Moreover, the number of published articles increased by 21% in 2004 and increased again by 38% in 2005, revealing the rapid growth and impact Neoplasia has had in the research community. In the upcoming year (volume 8, 2006), we will be initiating a new open access policy forNeoplasia, wherein all published manuscripts will be made rapidly available online for worldwide readership. This will provide authors the widest possible readership, ensuring that articles published in Neoplasia will have the largest impact possible on the cancer research community. Neoplasia is committed to meeting the changing concerns and needs of cancer investigators, and this is why we believe that open access for all published articles will be greatly beneficial.