Biology Direct launches new online submission system

Biology Direct – which operates a novel scheme of open peer review – has launched a new online submission system to make submission to the journal considerably more straightforward.

The journal launched in 2006 as an experiment in open and published peer review; an “unapologetically ambitious” attempt to establish a new system of peer review which, by publishing the comments of the reviewer alongside their name, would reduce abuses in the peer-review process and stimulate productive scientific debate at the same time.

Manuscripts published in the journal appear alongside named reviews, with the authors given the option to provide a public rebuttal.

The introduction of a dedicated in-house team has considerably lessened the workload for authors wishing to submit a manuscript; authors were previously responsible for soliciting the reviews by contacting members of the journal’s Editorial Board directly. The new system allows authors to select potentially suitable reviewers from the Editorial Board at the time of submission; the in-house team then contact the suggested reviewers on the authors behalf.

Biology Direct publishes original research articles, hypotheses, opinions, comments, discovery notes and reviews in three subject areas: Genomics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology; Immunology and Mathematical Biology.

For more information on the journal, and its novel scheme of peer review, please see the journal about page.

Ciaran O’Neill
Senior Journal Development Editor

Liz Bal

Associate Publisher at BioMed Central
Liz completed an MSci in Biology at Imperial College London, before joining BioMed Central in 2010. Now, as an Associate Publisher in the Biological Sciences team, she is responsible for the development of a portfolio of neuroscience, biotechnology and cell biology journals.
Liz Bal

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