Previous News
- New Deputy Chair for BJ ChemBio
- 'High fives' all round as the Biochemical Journal breaks the Impact Factor 5 barrier!
- 'The Semantic Biochemical Journal: a journey into Utopia documents'
- BJ Structure announces two new Deputy Chairs
- Experimental Biology 2010 - Semantic BJ Product Workshop
- New Editor for BJ Classics
- BJ paper in the spotlight
- 4000th My BJ Registrant
- Cell Signalling Biology now freely available to all
- Semantic BJ
- BJ paper tops most-cited list
- BJ Editors elected to EMBO
- Call for Nominations
- BJ Editor is elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences
- BJ Editor of the Year
- Follow Portland Press now on Twitter
- 3000th My BJ Registrant Winner
- BJ Editors win awards
- BJ Deputy Chair is recipient of prestigious award in plant biology
- 2000th My BJ Registrant
- Biochemical Journal wins the ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Best Online Journal
- Meetings and awards
- Biochemical Journal Editor awarded prestigious Lister Research Prize
- Biochemical Journal video webcast available free to subscribers
- BJ Editor awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
- Launch of the Biochemical Journal Digital Archive
- Centenary Celebrations in 2006
- Customized searching and alerting facility
- Updates to Instructions for Authors
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- Latest News
New Deputy Chair for BJ ChemBio
BJ ChemBio welcomes Daan van Aalten (Dundee), who has joined Bart Vanhaesebroeck (London) as a Deputy Chair.
'High fives' all round as the Biochemical Journal breaks the Impact Factor 5 barrier!
In the latest data released by ISI (2009 Journal Citation Reports © Thomson Reuters) the Biochemical Journal's Impact Factor has increased to 5.155.
This moves the Journal up by 16 places in the JCR Biochemistry and Molecular Biology category. Many other general journals in this category saw their Impact Factors fall. The Cited Half-Life for the Biochemical Journal was maintained at > 10 years, reflecting the enduring importance and relevance of the papers.
Commenting on the latest ISI data, Professor Peter Shepherd, Chair of the Editorial Board of the Biochemical Journal, said, "I am really delighted with the news as 5 is a magical barrier in Impact Factor terms. The new Impact Factor is testament to the hard work of our excellent Editorial Board and the journal staff in London and La Jolla, who have been led by Rhonda Oliver in recent years. We believe that this will encourage even better submissions to the Biochemical Journal." Peter further added, "I am sure it is also a reflection of improvements in the Journal such as rapid review times, lack of page charges, the new Knowledge Environment system, the high-quality Editorial Board and our recent "Painless Publishing" strategy. This strategy acknowledges that many journals impose burdensome requirements on authors which often don't add much to the paper. Biochemical Journal Editors and reviewers are asked to judge papers on their novelty and importance in the field but are instructed to only ask for extra experiments if they are absolutely necessary to justify the conclusions made by the authors."
Professor Tom Blundell, President of the Biochemical Society, said, "This is a wonderful achievement for the Biochemical Journal and will make it a very attractive journal for authors in which to publish their exciting new findings".
The increase in Impact Factor comes at the same time as strategic development of the Journal with the launch of the Semantic Biochemical Journal to critical acclaim at the beginning of 2010 using a new tool Utopia Documents developed in conjunction with the University of Manchester. This innovation allows readers of Biochemical Journal PDFs to directly interact with the semantic web and so access huge amounts of information in real time.
High Resolution Image of JCR Biochemistry and Molecular Biology journal impact factors available; click here.
'The Semantic Biochemical Journal: a journey into Utopia documents'
Adam Marshall, Group Head of Marketing and Customer Services, will be presenting at the SSP Annual Conference in San Francisco, from 2-4th June 2010.
'The Semantic Biochemical Journal: a journey into Utopia documents' will outline our recent collaboration with the University of Manchester to excavate the knowledge buried within the Biochemical Journal
If you are unable to make the conference, then Calling International Rescue: knowledge lost in literature and data landslide! explains why we embarked on this experiment and invites you to take part.
BJ Structure announces two new Deputy Chairs
BJ Structure is pleased to announce the addition of two new Deputy Chairs:
Malcolm White (St Andrews) and Mark Lemmon (U Penn) join John Ladbury (M D Anderson Cancer Center, Houston)
Experimental Biology 2010 - Semantic BJ Product Workshop
"Calling International Rescue: Knowledge Lost in Literature and Data
Landslide"
Presented by Professor Teresa Attwood and Dr Stephen Pettifer (Manchester, UK).
Not to be missed! Meet the team behind the Semantic Biochemical Journal and discover how the journal brings life sciences to life with data-enriched, interactive PDFs that provide a gateway to a world of information.
Join us at 4pm on Sunday April 25, room 201 B, at the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA. Alternatively visit booth #468 for a live demo anytime, plus there will be a chance to meet the authors on Monday April 26.
New Editor for BJ Classics
Professor Robert Freedman (Warwick) has succeeded Professor Dick Denton as Classics Editor for the Biochemical Journal. If you have any suggestions for papers or authors to be featured in the Classics section please contact Robert at editorial@portlandpress.com
BJ paper in the spotlight
A paper by Professor Laura Machesky and colleagues (CRUK Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Glasgow) “Myopathy-causing actin mutations promote defects in serum-response factor signalling” in the latest issue of the Journal sheds light on how genetic damage to muscle proteins can lead to the development of the rare muscle-wasting disease, nemaline myopathy. A press release on this paper is available here
4,000th MyBJ registrant wins camcorder!
The Biochemical Journal is pleased to announce that Dr Andreas Meinke from Vienna (Austria), is our 4,000th registrant to MyBJ . Dr Meinke is the lucky winner of a pocket digital camcorder - congratulations, we hope that you enjoy your prize and continue to take advantage of all the personalization features that MyBJ offers to Biochemical Journal readers.
Cell Signalling Biology now freely available to all
Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Biochemical Journal, the acclaimed online signalling resource by Professor Sir Michael Berridge (Cambridge), is now freely available online via the BJ Signal knowledge environment.
Cell Signalling Biology provides comprehensive coverage of cell signalling processes and new updates for 2010 covering cytokines and their receptors; virus recognition; transcriptional co-regulators/co-activators/co-repressors; checkpoint signalling; DNA damage; neuron subtypes; hypothalamic regulation; tumour suppressors; tumour metastasis and inflammation and cancer; Alzheimer's disease are now included.
User-friendly teaching features include Portland Press' innovative online format EESI-View, and the ability to download figures into PowerPoint. In addition, the use of PDFs in course packs, e-reserves and VLEs are permitted.
Visit BJ Signal to find out more.
Bringing life science to life with semantic publishing - a new direction for the Biochemical Journal
“Pdfs paralyse the proper and efficient use of scientific knowledge. By burying information in static, unconnected journal articles, scientists waste countless hours either repeating experiments that they didn't know had been performed before, or worse, trying to verify facts that they didn't know had been shown to be false.”
Says Professor Terri Attwood, whose Manchester University team, with the help of funding from Portland Press Limited, have developed new and powerful publishing software that will help life scientists work more efficiently.
Launched by Portland Press Limited, this software, called Utopia Documents, has been used to transform the latest edition of the Biochemical Journal, by dynamically linking documents to research data, enabling readers to interact with and manipulate the information in the journal's scientific papers more effectively.
The new software will turn static images, tables and text into objects that can be linked, annotated, visualized and analysed interactively.
To celebrate the launch, the Semantic Biochemical Journal will be freely available until 31 January 2010 – discover this revolution in scholarly scientific publishing for yourself.
BJ paper tops most-cited list
A paper from Sir Philip Cohen and his co-workers in Dundee was recently named as the most-cited article in cell biology by a European research group over the period 1996-2007 in the September issue of Lab Times. The paper "Specificity and mechanism of action of some commonly used protein kinase inhibitors" had been cited 2,199 times (Web of Science, Thomson Scientific) by the end of May 2009. To date, there have been over 40,000 download requests for this paper from the Biochemical Journal website. Read the BJ Classic article by Alex Toker describing the importance of this paper and its companion papers to the cell signalling community.
BJ Editors elected to EMBO
Dr Simon Boulton (Cancer Research UK, London Research Institute, South Mimms) and Professor Jim Naismith (University of St Andrews) are among 66 leading molecular life scientists who have been elected to membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2009. Dr Boulton is currently an Editor for the BJ Gene Knowledge Environment, and Professor Naismith is an Editor for the new BJ ChemBio Knowledge Environment.
Call for Nominations
To celebrate the Biochemical Society's centenary in 2011, you are invited to nominate a colleague for the prestigious Centenary Awards.
All of the award prize and medal lectureships carry an honorarium and lectures will be published in Biochemical Society Transactions.
Take this unique opportunity and click here to nominate an eminently successful colleague online now - nominations close 14 December 2009.
BJ Editor is elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences
Professor Shizuo Akira (Director, Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University,Osaka, Japan) has been elected as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Akira is currently an Editor for the BJ Signal Knowledge Environment. Read his review on Pathogen recognition and the innate immune response.
New!
Our Online Comment facility for users enables you to post a comment on a paper.
Simply select the "Add a comment" link from the box in the top right-hand corner of the paper, log in to My BJ, then submit the Comment form.
BJ Editor of the Year
At the recent 2009 Editorial Board Meeting, Professor Juan Bolanos (University of Salamanca, Spain) was awarded the Editor of the Year trophy for handling the most papers in 2008.
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3000th My BJ Registrant Winner
The Biochemical Journal are pleased to announce that Pallavi Rajashekar (St.John's National Academy of Health Sciences, India) was the 3000th registrant for My BJ - Pallavi won a Portable DVD Player!
Have you set up your My BJ profile...?
My BJ enables you to set up search strategies and content alerts to suit you. It also allows you to store links to all your favourite articles in your personal filing cabinet and see the last 10 papers you viewed.
For more information on what My BJ can do for you download the My BJ User Guide.
BJ Editors win awards
BJ Editor Sarah Spiegel (Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, VA) is the 2009 recipient of the Avanti Award in Lipids, which recognizes outstanding research contributions in the area of lipids, and will give her Award Lecture at the 2009 ASBMB Annual Meeting in New Orleans.
BJ Editor Neil Perkins (University of Bristol) is the 2009 recipient of The Tenovus Medal, awarded to a young investigator who has made a major impact in the field of gene biology, and will give his Award Lecture at the 13th Tenovus Scotland Symposium in Glasgow, April 2009
BJ Deputy Chair is recipient of prestigious award in plant biology
Steve Huber (USDA-ARS, University of Illinois) is the 2008 recipient of the Lawrence Bogorad Award for Excellence in Plant Biology Research from the American Society of Plant Biologists. Steve is currently a Deputy Chair for the BJ Plant Knowledge Environment. He will be presented with his award during the Plant Biology Awards Ceremony at Plant Biology 2008 on Friday 27 June in Mérida, Mexico
2000th My BJ Registrant
The Biochemical Journal are pleased to announce that Sari Vanhatupa (University of Tampere, Finland) was the 2000th registrant for My BJ - Sari won a Nintendo Wii!
Have you set up your My BJ profile...?
My BJ enables you to set up search strategies and content alerts to suit you. It also allows you to store links to all your favourite articles in your personal filing cabinet and see the last 10 papers you viewed.
For more information on what My BJ can do for you download the My BJ User Guide.
Biochemical Journal wins the ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Best Online Journal
Portland Press Ltd is delighted to announce that the Biochemical Journal has won the ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Best Online Journal. This new award focusing on the effective use of the digital environment to serve the needs of both authors and readers, was presented to Professor George Banting, Chair of the Editorial Board, at the ALPSP Annual Awards Dinner held at the Stationers' Hall in London on 13 September 2007.
The journal beat off strong competition from bmj.com (BMJ Publishing) and the New England Journal of Medicine published by the Massachusetts Medical Society, who were given a special mention by the judges. In their report the judges commended the Biochemical Journal as being both visually attractive and easy to use. They felt that the content is clearly displayed and information for authors, readers and librarians is easily available. For more details of the event, see Biochemical Journal hits the heights.
Portland Press has overcome the limitations of print and exploited the flexibility of the digital environment to re-purpose the Biochemical Journal online. The journal has been re-mastered for the digital age to offer readers and authors an enhanced platform in which to build online communities within selected knowledge environments. 'MyBJ' has been developed as an online area where users can create their own personal space including customized searching and alerting, and access to a personal filing cabinet to store favourite articles.
After celebrating it's Centenary in 2006, this transformation will allow the Biochemical Journal to look forward to the next 100 years.
Biochemical Journal Editor awarded prestigious Lister Research Prize
Professor Daan van Aalten (36) is one of only three scientists in the UK this year to be awarded a prestigious Lister Research Prize, which is made to young scientists to help them pursue their personal research interests in biomedical sciences.
Biochemical Journal video webcast available free to subscribers
Portland Press and the Biochemical Journal are pleased to announce that the video webcast of the Biochemical Journal Centenary Symposium which took place in July 2006 is now available as part of the online journal. Access to over five and a half hours of video is available to institutional subscribers to the Biochemical Journal and members of the Biochemical Society providing a valuable teaching resource on key areas of biochemistry and cell and molecular biology.
BJ Editor awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
Michael R. Blatt, Regius Professor of Botany and Head of Plant Sciences, University of Glasgow, has been made a Guggenheim Fellow for 2006.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provides fellowships for advanced professionals in all fields (except the performing arts).
Professor Blatt's speciality is ion channel structure and function in plant cell signalling, and the mechanisms and roles of membrane trafficking proteins in cellular homeostasis. He wrote a book on membrane transport in plants in 2004.
Launch of the Biochemical Journal Digital Archive
16 February 2006, British Library, London
The BJ Centenary events started with a reception for 130 invited VIP guests from the biosciences community on the evening of Thursday 16 February 2006, when the newly digitized complete back archive (from 1906 to the present day) was presented by Professor Sir Philip Cohen, President of the Biochemical Society to Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library.
The presentation in the auditorium of the British Library's Conference Centre was followed by a champagne and canapé reception. Guests included six of the seven surviving past Chairs of the Editorial Board spanning 37 years of the Journal.
The complete archive covering 100 years of research in 340, 000 pages, 392 volumes and 1340 issues of the Biochemical Journal is freely available online at /bj/toc.htm
Centenary Celebrations in 2006
The Biochemical Journal will celebrate its centenary in 2006 with a programme of events designed to celebrate its past, present and future influence on scholarly publishing in the cellular and molecular life sciences. Visit http://www.BJCentenary.com for details of forthcoming Centenary events and sponsorship opportunities.
The events will begin with the launch of the newly digitized complete journal back archive at The British Library on 16 February 2006. The archive - over 340,000 pages of research - will be freely available online.
The celebrations will continue at the Biochemical Society Annual Symposium: The Cell Biology of Inositol Lipids and Phosphates organized by Mike Wakelam (University of Birmingham, UK), 29-31 March 2006, Birmingham, UK. The Biochemical Journal will be sponsoring Katsuhiko Mikoshiba (University of Tokyo, Japan) who will be speaking about IP3 receptor/ Ca2+ channel and its cell function.
There will also be a Biochemical Journal sponsored drinks reception and an award for the best poster presented by a young researcher at the meeting. The prize will be judged by Chris Kirk, Mike Berridge and Steve Shears, and will be awarded by Bob Michell.
The principal event will be the BJ Centenary Symposium "Literature, Legacy, Life...Biochemistry for the 21 Century" on 24 July 2006, the first full day of science at BioScience2006 (23-27 July 2006). Talks by an impressive line up of international experts (Mina Bissell, Fred Goldberg, Steve Huber, Louise Johnson, Stephen O'Rahilly, Donny Strosberg, Mike Waterfield and Lewis Wolpert) will demonstrate how an understanding of biochemical processes and/or molecular interactions has led to novel opportunities for the treatment of disease, as part of a wider programme of medal-winning lectures and mini-symposia.
Portland Press Ltd will also use this occasion to launch a major online resource, Cell Signalling Biology by Michael J Berridge (Cambridge, UK). Emerging information on cell signalling pathways will be integrated and presented within the context of specific cell types and processes. For further information and to register for updates please visit http://www.cellsignallingbiology.org.
Customized searching and alerting facility
The Biochemical Journal now offers a customized searching and alerting service. You can build and save your own customized searches (based on keywords, subjects of interest, authors) and can also choose to be alerted by email whenever new content (including Immediate Publications) is published that matches your search criteria. Make sure that you are kept up to date with the very latest research published in the Journal.
Set up your user profile now at /bj/mybj/
Updates to Instructions for Authors
Reporting enzyme kinetic activity
The Biochemical Journal requires that SI units are used.
Units of the amount of enzyme activity should be defined in each paper, and this may be done in terms of the rate of reaction catalysed under conditions specified. The conditions, such as temperature, pH, buffer composition and pressure (if not atmospheric), as well as the origin of the enzyme (natural purified, recombinant, any known post-translational modifications), must all be specified.
Steady-state, first-order enzyme and nucleic acids activity should be reported in terms of Vmax (nmol or μmol of product formed per amount of enzyme per time) or, when the active enzyme concentration is known, as kcat (Vmax divided by molar enzyme concentration) in units of s-1. Second-order rate constants should be reported as Vmax/Km or, when the active enzyme concentration is known, as kcat/Km in units of M-1 · s-1. Equilibrium binding constants (Km, Ki, Kd) should be reported as dissociation constants with units of concentration (M, mM, μM, or M-1, mM-1, μM-1 etc. as appropriate). Whenever possible, for reversible reactions Ki values should be determined in place of IC50.
All indirect measures of activity (change in absorbance, % change, etc.) should be converted into units of molarity to express kcat or Vmax. The use of linear transformation for Michaelis–Menten parameters is recognized to be inaccurate and therefore values of kcat (Vmax) and Km should be estimated using non-linear fitting and the software system used must be cited. Experimental confidence should include estimates of error (e.g. S.E.M.). In addition, by way of demonstrating data quality, inclusion of examples of some of the raw data is encouraged, at least as part of a Supplemental Data section.
A lack of activity should be defined in terms of a limit of detection taking into account the sensitivity of the assay, not as “not determined” or “not cleaved”.
See the Beilstein Institut/STRENDA (Standards for Reporting Enzymology Data) commission website (http://www.beilstein-institut.de/en/projekte/strenda/guidelines/) for additional suggestions of how to report and interpret kinetic data.
Plagiarism
The Biochemical Journal will not tolerate plagiarism in submitted manuscripts. Passages quoted or closely paraphrased from other authors (or from the submitting authors' own published work) must be identified as quotations or paraphrases, and the sources of the quoted or paraphrased material must be acknowledged. Use of unacknowledged sources will be construed as plagiarism. If any manuscript is found to contain plagiarized material the review process will be halted immediately.
Array data
The Biochemical Journal recommends that authors adhere to the MIAME guidelines for the submission of gene chip array data (see http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame.html)
Studies looking at large-scale gene expression across a range of different tissues that do not provide insights into mechanisms are unlikely to be accepted.
Structural data
Papers reporting structure determinations must carry a footnote stating that all relevant structural data (both X-ray amplitudes and phases or NMR constraints as well as the derived atomic coordinates) have been deposited with the Protein Data Bank at the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics http://www.rcsb.org/pdb). Such data must be available upon publication of the paper; papers will not be accepted for publication without confirmation from the author that the data have been deposited and have HPUB status.
Enzymes
The Biochemical Journal recommends that authors use the new nomenclature for restriction enzymes, DNA, methyltransterases, homing endonucleases (and their genes) that has been proposed by Roberts et al. [(2003) Nucleic Acids Research 31 1805 - 1812].
