Diagnostic Pathology, BioMed Central’s independent pathology journal, is now offering authors the option to include virtual versions of their figures alongside their articles. Traditionally, pathology figures rely on tissue staining, and reproducing these images faithfully in journal articles can be challenging, leading to some loss of resolution. Including virtual versions of these figures is a major step forward in pathology research publishing and will allow for greater analysis of the article figures.

Led by Editor-in-Chief Klaus Kayser, Diagnostic Pathology publishes research in surgical and clinical pathology, immunology, and biology, with a special focus on cutting-edge approaches in diagnostic pathology and tissue-based therapy. The new addition of an option to publish virtual slides alongside the journal articles promises to move the journal to the forefront of pathology research publishing: these virtual slides will provide and allow for an innovative, detailed, and in-depth further analysis of the figures published with the article.

Instrumental in making this opportunity possible are the companies Leica Microsystems, Slidepath, and DiagnomX, who are responsible for scanning and creating the virtual slides from the initial glass slides and providing a viewer platform for readers to be able to access and study them.

The opportunity to publish virtual slides is optional and authors will be contacted upon submission to Diagnostic Pathology to ask them whether they would like to include virtual slides in their article. Interested authors should also indicate in their cover letter on submission that they would like to take advantage of this option. The service is completely free and aims to highlight key features of the glass slides which are better illustrated in the virtual format.

The aim of Diagnostic Pathology is to provide an integrative journal for molecular pathology (biology) and digital pathology (virtual pathology), creating an open case discussion platform to be used during daily diagnostic work, and with the virtual slide opportunity now available to all authors the journal does exactly this.

To see an example of a virtual slide please see here and to read more about the journal and its scope please see here.