Change and continuity

Abstract

When you open The EMBO Journal—online or in print—you can usually get down to the business of reading about the latest scientific developments without delay. But this issue requires an editorial commentary. Having quietly celebrated its 21st anniversary last year (the old ‘coming of age' birthday), some changes have taken place at The EMBO Journal as it enters 2004. One of these is that we have now completed our change of publisher to Nature Publishing Group (NPG), a move that was initiated last year with EMBO Reports. Coinciding with this, The EMBO Journal will have a more extensive web presence, papers will be published online ahead of print, and there are subtle changes to the layout and cover. You will also notice that papers are now categorized according to subject, which will allow those who do not wish to browse through the entire journal to quickly identify papers relevant to their interest. Each paper is assigned one or two of the 18 categories, indicating their relevance to different communities. In an ongoing process, articles published in back issues of the journal from 1997 onwards are also being categorized, and a fully categorized archive will be available from mid-2004. Given that articles in The EMBO Journal have a particularly long half-life compared with most other journals (as judged by citations outside the period used for the Citation Index), this is an important addition.