Editorial pubs.acs.org/jpr
Change...
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s I mentioned in my last editorial, you can expect to see some changes to the editorial practices of Journal of Proteome Research. The overarching goal of the proposed changes is to increase the impact of the science published in the journal. We will continue to publish applications and methods papers in the same categories as detailed in the information to authors, but what has changed is our expectations of the content of the papers. Proteomic and metabolomic methods have been widely used to discover the proteins and metabolites expressed in different biological systems, and the development of quantitative methods has allowed the measurement of the differences between systems or the effects of perturbations. While “discovery” studies have shed important light on different biological systems, they do not necessarily result in the robust biological findings that can advance a field. Thus, papers which report further “list building” in biological systems will need strong justification for publication. The data sets produced in these discovery studies often produce many hypotheses, and authors are encouraged to advance select hypotheses with additional data. NIH and other scientific agencies are now concerned about the reproducibility of experiments (see Sweedler, J. V. Anal. Chem., 2015 87 (23), pp 11603− 11604), and replication of experiments will be required with proper controls. It will no longer be acceptable to perform only one experiment. Papers published in Journal of Proteome Research should report sound biological conclusions that are supported by validated data and which will move the field forward. If you think your data would serve as a resource for a field, we will expect a greater effort to make the data useful for others, such as the creation of a database to make mining the data easy. Such a database could be an online, web-based database or a downloadable portable database using a program like Access or Filemaker. The intent is not to simply make the raw data available but to make the processed results available in a form that any scientist can understand, mine, and advance. We are still very interested in methods papers at Journal of Proteome Research and expect that methods papers will have tested at least one result generated by the new method to verify the validity of the method and will have reproduced the results with replicate analyses. It is also important that new methodologies advance measurements in some novel and significant manner. Proteomics and metabolomics methods have advanced significantly over the last 10 years and are capable of generating important new insights into biology. At Journal of Proteome Research we want those insights to advance a field.
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John R. Yates, III, Editor-in-Chief
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
© XXXX American Chemical Society
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.6b00640 J. Proteome Res. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
