The HFSP Journal one year on: moving forward with a new feature

Abstract

The first issue of the HFSP Journal appeared one year ago, too short a time for a realistic assessment, but sufficient, we think, to allow for an optimistic glimpse of what lies ahead. The launch of the journal, as indicated in our first editorial [HFSP Journal1, 1–3 (2007)], might have seemed ambitious in view of the abundance of high-quality established or new journals in the life sciences, but our (admittedly still too short) experience has reinforced our conviction that the HFSP Journal, coherently with the tradition of our “mother” organization, is offering a unique arena where the interaction of different disciplines does not simply pile up knowledge but, rather, multiplies it. We hope, therefore, that our readers share our impression that, in its first year of existence, the HFSP Journal has established itself as an international journal, publishing articles from across continents, and as a truly interdisciplinary journal. Articles have been published in the areas of imaging, single molecule manipulation, modeling and simulation, theoretical and experimental biology, biomagnetism, chemical genetics and chemical biology, computational neuroscience and theoretical neuroscience, evolution, the origin of life, systems biology, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, physical biology, and bioinformatics. Special attention is paid to provide a fair review of interdisciplinary articles by involving scientists from across disciplines. The gratifying experience of the last year in receiving, evaluating, and stimulating contributions, coupled to an increasing general sensitivity for prompt diffusion of significant, exciting novel findings, has suggested to us the usefulness of adding a new feature to the Commentaries, Perspective review articles, and research Articles that we’ve been publishing since the launch of the journal in May 2007; we decided, therefore, to celebrate the first anniversary of the HFSP Journal by adding a new type of article, consisting of short reports of original findings on an innovative topic of interdisciplinary research. This format is particularly appropriate for striking observations, unexpected, sound results that might initiate new fields of research or useful new technical developments. Since “qubit” stands for a unit of quantum information, it was spontaneous to call these articles Qubits. Qubits must be less than 3–4 pages long (less than 25,000 characters including spaces, with no more than three figures). Publication and review of these short reports will be fast tracked; furthermore, as an additional benefit to the authors and to our readers, immediate open access of Qubits will be free of charge and no production charges will be required. Qubits, like all our Articles, can be submitted online at http:∕∕www.editorialmanager.com∕hfspj. We look forward to receiving exciting manuscripts in this format in addition to the more extensive studies to be published as Articles. Our articles are usually ten pages long and, while we are flexible about the length of the articles, we encourage our authors to be concise and to make thoughtful use of space and of color for their figures by waving page charges for the first ten pages and color charges for the first three color figures of an article. At the HFSP Journal, careful attention is made to provide a fair review of interdisciplinary articles by involving scientists from across disciplines and a panel of Editorial Board Members who are each involved in interdisciplinary research themselves: the same care will apply to Qubits as to Articles. Timeliness also matters to us as much as to our authors. The reviewing process usually takes about 20 days and articles are published online about 20 days after they are accepted; the format of Qubits should permit even faster reviews. We hope our readers have enjoyed the breadth and quality of our content in our first year of life, and we look forward to a positive response to the addition of Qubits to our other article formats.