With this issue, mAbs has completed two years of publication at a rate of six issues per year. On behalf of Associate Editor Alain Beck and mAbs' 76 editorial board members (www.landesbioscience.com/journals/mabs/editorialboard), I'd like to thank the antibody community, as well as the broader scientific research community, for their strong support of the journal. Our goal is to provide readers with outstanding content and authors with wide distribution of their important research results. To achieve the former, we engage in extensive outreach to potential authors involved in antibody research and development at top academic institutions, government organizations and companies. We also actively network at many antibody-focused conferences. To address the latter, we gained acceptance in PubMed/MEDLINE in record time (10 months from publication of the first issue to acceptance for indexing), and mAbs is now also included in Science Citation Index (SCI) Expanded, Biological Abstracts, Biosis Previews and Biotechnology Citation Index.
Inclusion of mAbs in PubMed/MEDLINE, a service of the United States National Library of Medicine, and SCI Expanded, owned by Thomson Scientific, is especially notable because these indexing services have rigorous selection processes. In the case of PubMed/MEDLINE, the application for review by the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee was accompanied by three letters of recommendation from leading researchers who were not editorial board members and a letter of support from me as mAbs' Editor-in-Chief. mAbs was selected for inclusion based on its scientific merit, outstanding editorial board, high-quality production and overall importance to researchers, clinicians, educators and policy makers. We are extremely pleased and honored to now be counted among the world's leading science and technology-focused journals that are indexed by these services.
We are looking forward to receiving mAbs' first Impact Factor (IF) because this is an important step in the evolution of the journal. An IF is a metric based on citation rates that is used to rank journals, but calculation of an IF requires three years of publication data. mAbs' 2011 IF will be calculated by dividing the number of citations of papers published in mAbs during 2009 and 2010 that appear in any publication in 2011 by the total number of citable papers published in mAbs during 2009 and 2010. This value will be calculated for mAbs by Thomson Scientific in 2012.
To date, over 110 articles have been published in mAbs by authors from 17 countries. The journal averaged approximately 100 and 120 pages per issue in 2009 and 2010, respectively. I am grateful for the thoughtful comments and suggestions for improvement of the manuscripts offered by reviewers who kindly shared their expertise and experience in antibody research and development. mAbs reviewers are also timely—the average interval from initial submission of a manuscript to issuance of a first decision letter is in the range of 17–20 days for review articles and research reports. If the decision is favorable, i.e., that a manuscript may be accepted pending revisions, the decision letter is accompanied by a copy-edited version of the manuscript. Review periods rarely extend past three weeks, but on these occasions I apprise the corresponding author of the expected time line. Authors are also welcome to contact me for an update on the status of their manuscripts.
An important feature of mAbs is our preview of articles that will be included in upcoming issues. After acceptance, PDFs produced from the revised manuscripts are proofed by the authors and posted promptly in the Forthcoming section of the mAbs website (www.landesbioscience.com/journals/mabs/forthcoming/). In this way, articles are made available to readers as quickly as possible, which may be 1–2 months prior to official publication.
With publication of mAbs, we provide a forum for communication on all topics relevant to antibody research and development, with a focus on therapeutics. The core of the journal comprises the research reports and review articles, with context added in the form of authoritative perspectives, commentary and point-of-view articles. Readers are kept informed of the latest developments through our comprehensive meeting reports. In addition, I report on the latest trends in antibody therapeutics development in my Editor's Corner articles, which provide current information on antibodies in development, regulatory review or the market. These updates, which include metrics such as approval success rates and clinical and approval phase lengths, will continue to appear on a regular basis.
mAbs will expand to 12 issues per year in the near future. Antibody research and development is an exciting and dynamic area with a constant output of new discoveries and results that mAbs is pleased to present to readers. We look forward to featuring new data and thoughtful commentary on hot topics such as immunogenicity, biosimilar products, alternative antibody formats and scaffolds and antibody interactions with Fc receptors, as well as preclinical and clinical results. Please consider submitting your work to mAbs in 2011.