The Journal of Biological Chemistry: 2016 Onward.

Scientific publishing has undergone massive change in the past two decades, and the landscape is shifting. The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) must respond to this changing landscape, weighing what to preserve, what to emphasize, and how to be the best journal for a broad authorship/readership from across the globe. Simultaneously, we are witnessing truly stunning scientific advances and discoveries related to the fundamental molecular mechanisms of life processes. Given its scientific coverage, the JBC has unprecedented opportunities to play a central role in life sciences publishing. It is this exciting combination of challenges and opportunities that led me to join the JBC team as Editor-in-Chief. Throughout my career from undergraduate days onward, my scientific focus has been the intersection of biology, chemistry, and physics, and how this intersection reveals the underpinnings of biology. The JBC embraces this intersection. Moreover, I appreciate that JBC papers are judged based on the biological significance of the questions posed as well as the rigor and data-driven nature of the conclusions drawn. Indeed, JBC adheres to the importance of providing the full detail of a scientific study: the design of experiments, the data supporting the conclusions, and the critical interpretation. These practices have stood the test of time: the JBC is a long-standing and highly respected journal that has launched many successful careers and reported many critical new insights to the scientific community. And it continues to capture and celebrate scientific results that both satisfy our thirst for knowledge and fuel advances in medicine and biotechnology. For example, more NIH-funded research is published in the JBC than in any other journal (1), illustrating the penetration and importance of the JBC to the community of NIH-supported biomedical researchers. In addition, the JBC has spearheaded major changes in science publishing. It was the first journal to go online in 1995, and among the earliest to become online-only in 2012. Finally, JBC is a society-published journal: As such, its profits are returned to the American Society for Biochemistry andMolecular Biology (ASBMB) and used for activities that benefit ASBMB members and the broader life sciences community. Thus, the JBC in 2016 can look back and be proud of its accomplishments and its reputation. But wemust also look forward. As science publishing has evolved, journals face the temptation to place more emphasis on the cartoon or model emerging from a study than on the “beef”— the data and experimental observations, with statistical significance. The JBC has resisted. And while the journal’s Eigenfactor , a metric that is designed to measure total importance to the scientific community (2), is twelfth across all life sciences journals and second amongst biochemistry and molecular biology journals (3), the oft-used Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factors for JBC and many of its sister journals have fallen (3). How can the JBC preserve its venerable stature as a home to critically interpreted, biologically important, data-driven research while increasing its impact and appeal for both authors and readers in the highly competitive arena of life sciences publishing? Now is the time to put our heads together and make choices that will enable the JBC to flourish and continue to serve the biological chemistry community—defined broadly—through wide dissemination of scientific advances and effective communication. THE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY VOL. 291, NO. 27, pp. 15406 –15407, July 1, 2016 © 2016 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc. Published in the U.S.A.