We are
delighted to announce the launch of a new Discovery
Notes section for Biology Direct, overseen by Section Editor L
Aravind, and Editors-in-Chief David J Lipman, Laura Landweber, and Eugene
Koonin.

Discovery Notes will be brief reports of specific
discoveries made by computational analysis of nucleic acid and/or protein
sequences, structures or other data, with novel observations and conclusions
about the function, organization, or evolution of proteins, genes or genomes. These succinct articles will be an exciting addition to Biology
Direct, as they will allow the rapid communication of key findings, and the novel connections and relationships which they identify will spur experimental investigations in new and unexpected directions.  Full details are available in an Editorial which launches the new section:

Opening Pandora’s Box: making biological discoveries through computational data exploration
L Aravind
Biology Direct 2007, 2:29 (20 November 2007)

Biology
Direct, which was launched in 2006, operates
a unique open peer review system, whereby reviewers’ comments and authors’
responses are published alongside the final article, making the process of peer
review open, rather than anonymous.  The journal has published more than 60
articles; nearly half of which have been accessed more than 2,000 times, and seven
of which have been highlighted on the literature recommendation service Faculty
of 1000 Biology. Biology Direct  is tracked by Thomson Scientific and is due to receive
its first impact factor in 2008. As an open access publication, all
articles are freely and immediately available online, maximising the visibility
of the author’s work, and copyright is retained by the author.