Becoming Established: Advanced Biosystems Enters its Third Year of Publication.

Abstract

As we enter our third year of publication we can again look back on another successful year at Advanced Biosystems. Compared to 2017, we have seen an increase in submissions from 155 to almost 200 by the end of November, i.e., at the time of writing this editorial. One ‘source’ of these manuscripts is transfers from other journals in our portfolio. Being part of such a successful transfer program within the ‘Advanced family’ of journals allows high-quality manuscripts that are not suitable for publication in one journal–often as they are not well-matched to the scope of that journal–to be seamlessly redirected within the group. Especially when the transferred articles are associated with peer review reports from the transferring journal, our authors often profit from shortened manuscript handling times. In addition, with Advanced Biosystems we can now offer authors a publication venue that is specifically tailored towards the life science community. Besides receiving transfers from other journals in our portfolio, Advanced Biosystems has also seen an increase in spontaneous submissions over the past year. Furthermore, in 2018 we were able to welcome back some authors who had already published in the journal. Not only have our submissions increased in 2018, but so has the number of articles published. While Advanced Biosystems published 66 articles in 2017, this number rose to 109 last year. As can be seen in Figure 1, the authors that have published with us in these first two years are globally distributed, with USA and China taking the lead. These past two years were also exciting with regards to the topics we have covered so far. In line with the journal's broad scope, we have published articles on a range of diverse topics from 3D cell culture techniques and tissue engineering to cancer immunotherapy, microfluidics, and metabolic engineering. Moreover, like the previous year, one of the issues published in 2018 was a special issue: The November issue featured articles on the topic of ‘Gene Editing and Synthetic Biology’ and was guest-edited by Guo-Qiang Chen. Further special issues are already planned for 2019, so we will continue to present you with high quality content in current research areas. The year 2018 also was successful with regards to indexing: Advanced Biosystems is now indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). This indexing not only allows for better discoverability of our content, but also provides additional functionality, for example, making it easier to look at citations to our content. The citations received so far already look promising, and we are confident that the number of citations will steadily grow as Advanced Biosystems becomes more recognized and established. Being indexed in the ESCI will hopefully also be a first step towards inclusion in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and thus towards receiving the first impact factor. Furthermore, Advanced Biosystems was just accepted for indexing in Scopus, and steps have been taken to ensure indexing in PubMed as well. The first issue of 2019 starts off with a collection of review articles that discuss advancements in the field of biomedical research, from the fabrication and use of brain organoids in drug development (10.1002/adbi.201800174), near-infrared manipulation of membrane ion channels via upconversion optogenetics (10.1002/adbi.201800233), and nanomaterial-induced/inhibited autophagy (10.1002/adbi.201800259) to anticancer nanovaccines (10.1002/adbi.201800219). We are pleased to share impactful cancer research that showcases nanocrystals developed for enhanced imaging of subcutaneous melanomas (10.1002/adbi.201800127), the role of boron in tumor vascularization, cell sprouting, and angiogenesis (10.1002/adbi.201800220), and a microfluidic platform to evaluate the effect of hydrodynamic shear stress on epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and drug response in nonsmall cell lung carcinoma (10.1002/adbi.201800223). Continuing along the theme of nanotechnology, we have articles in this issue that describe anisotropic ferromagnetic nanorod clusters developed to manipulate cells (10.1002/adbi.201800246) and a nanotechnology-inspired method to immobilize membrane-bound enzymes (10.1002/adbi.201800245). Covering in vivo/in vitro systems are articles that detail the life-cycle of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus via phase-contrast and helium-ion microscopy (10.1002/adbi.201800250) and the generation of 3D soluble signal gradients in cell-laden hydrogels (10.1002/adbi.201800237). The issue ends with an engaging description of human skin equivalents (10.1002/adbi.201800283). We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you. On that note, we would like to thank you, the readers, authors, reviewers, and editorial board members for the invaluable support and contribution extended over the past year. We hope you will join us on our journey into what we expect to be an exciting third volume.