Letter to the Editorial Board

Abstract

Dear Editorial Board Members:I am writing to wish you a happy new year as Cancer Biology & Therapy enters its third year of publication with a steadily growing subscription base including both on-line subscriptions as well as subscriptions to the print version. I also note a significant number of papers have been frequently cited. At present, all articles published on-line are immediately accessible for down-loading through the journal’s web site once proofs have been reviewed by authors. In the near future, articles will appear in PubMed within a few days of being posted on-line (during the phase prior to print publication when the papers are accessible through the journal web site). This is expected to increase visibility of the papers we publish.With the new year Cancer Biology & Therapy is publishing every month and so the opportunity to publish your exciting results in a timely fashion has just doubled. The opportunity for cover images that feature some of the visually striking results has also increased. We will continue publishing Commentaries written by leading experts on the novel results of many of the papers we publish. All other Departments will continue and in this regard I wish to remind the translational researchers to put together Bedside-to-Bench reports that describe clinical features and molecular biology. Research Philosophy and Profiles and Legacies will continue. For the Profiles and Legacies, we will continue to invite prominent scientists and clinicians to write about their careers and experiences and will publish their photo on the cover. In addition, we invite groups of authors to pay tribute to outstanding individuals who have had major impact on the field of cancer research. We also invite submissions featuring new centers or major expansions at well-established institutions (new institutes or centers). This is a great way to share the excitement and attract attention to what’s happening.Please invite colleagues to submit original manuscripts and reviews to CB&T (and consider such submissions from your own labs). CB&T will continue to make a rapid turn-around time for the peer review process a very high priority. We consider for Editorial Decision manuscripts that may have been previously submitted to other journals. If you wish to send us such a manuscript, please forward the prior reviews as well as a cover letter indicating how you have modified the results and/or text of the manuscript in response to such reviews or issues raised. CB&T considers the arguments made by authors and considers the timely publication of results as a high priority. We understand that most good papers will lead to follow-up studies and future publications that will likely address issues raised and pursue interesting new directions based on the work. Please also contact CB&T on behalf of your colleagues to recommend our consideration of their papers in a similar situation.I wish to extend an open invitation to Editorial Board members to consider topics of interest to our readers and to organize small series of focused reviews in particular areas. This will involve proposing a topic of interest, contacting potential authors for two – four or more reviews and providing the titles of the reviews, the authors, and when they would be ready. Feel free to author a review in such focused series as well. We want to publish outstanding reviews by accomplished authors. Please also note in writing reviews that we are most interested in content and that there is flexibility in word count, number of references or number of figures. With the new year we will start a new section called “Journal Club” where we plan to include descriptions and critiques of major advances published in other leading journals. This will be modeled after and driven by journal club presentations held in most institutions around the country and would be a good opportunity for Cancer Biology students of all ages (faculty, post-docs, and graduate students) to share their critiques with a wider audience. This is therefore an open invitation to suggest specific papers to be featured and critiqued. We look forward to your participation in the “Journal Club.” We will continue the section “Exegeses and Views” and reserve it for more theoretical arguments and ideas that are not necessarily published, or views based on a body of work rather than a specific publication.Thank you for your efforts to make Cancer Biology & Therapy an outstanding journal and send twice as many original papers in 2004!Sincerely,W. El-DeiryEditor, CB&T12/13/03