A New Century of GENETICS.

A New Century of GENETICS W hen the great American composer Irving Berlin turned 100, he was near the end of his life. But when the Notre Dame cathedral turned 100—around the beginning of the fourteenth century—it wasn't even completed. And when the Olympics turned 100, it was just at the beginning of its run. A centennial needn't conjure up thoughts of an ending; it can instead evoke excitement and a sense that we're just hitting our stride. Leading geneticists launched GENETICS in January 1916, because they recognized " the need of a journal in America for the publication of the longer and more detailed accounts of genetical investigations, with adequate illustrations " (Shull et al. 1916). With this issue of GENETICS, in January 2016, we launch the journal into its second century. How does the world of genetics today compare to what our founders faced 100 years ago? The journal GENETICS was born in an era of controversy in the field. Contentious debates about the nature of inheritance raged between Mendelists and biometricians (Provine 1971). Debates continue to rage today—such as between those who embrace or eschew genome-wide association studies, and between those who commend or condemn genetically modified organisms, and between those who see the potential of using gene drive for controlling disease spread and those who question its safety (Poston 2015; O'Keeffe 2015; Spradling 2015). Some of these debates will be featured in Commentary articles we will publish over this next year, which will make it clear that our field has remained vibrant. GENETICS was launched in response to a dearth of journals at the time. The journal's founders hoped that launching GENETICS would " obviate the necessity for so large a dependence upon the forbearance and the generosity of European journals. " A lack of publication venues is certainly not a problem at the start of GENETICS' second century. This proliferation of journals presents a challenge, as much to readers as to editors and publishers. How can readers deal with the ever-increasing volume of papers? How can our editors ensure that GENETICS continues to publish our colleagues' best work? We face challenges not encountered by editors and readers of a century ago. We communicate our science with tools, rapidity, and distance undreamt of by our counterparts a century ago. We promote our authors' work through the ever-expanding tools of social media. We link items in our …