Arrigo Benedetti
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Louisiana State University
Main Interests: Post-transcriptional gene expression; Protein synthesis; DNA repair, Tousle Kinases; Chromatin organization; Asf1-mediated chromatin remodeling; Rad9-Rad1-Hus1-mediated DNA repair and damage signaling; mechanisms of oncogenesis; breast and prostate cancer.
Personal views of open access and BMC Journals in particular. Future of scientific publishing will rely heavily on open access journals. Since BMC Journals were among the first to adopt this form, they are clearly ahead of other Journals that are now adopting the model, and their quality is consistently improving. There is also no doubt that this is one of the most effective ways to create a forum for open discussion of research findings, which is essential for rapid scientific progress and is readily achievable with today’s communication technologies. It is therefore a bit disappointing that some of the BMC Journals, even those that have been active for a few years, do not receive higher Impact Factors yet. Sometime they are not reputed as high as other more traditional Journals – at least not by some of my colleagues. I will point to BMC Molecular Biology as an example. It has essentially the same Editorial Board as more traditional Journals, like MCB or EMBO, and publishes articles of the same quality, but does not receive the same Impact Factor or notoriety. I am not sure how to change this trend and/or perception. I believe it is more a political stand than anything else, since some BMC Journals like Genome Biology, which fills a specific gap in subject matter, has a high IF. Undoubtedly, Genome Biology has an eminent Editorial Board, but as I mentioned before, so does BMC Molecular Biology. Perhaps, one way to attract more submissions by outstanding investigators could be take advantage of real strength of open comments. Although the capability exists now for appending comments to the articles, I have not seen it used often. An editorial commentary (e.g., from the EBM or reviewers) could be appended for at least some articles to increase visibility, much as is done in Cell for example.
