Journal of Proteome Research - 10th Anniversary Reflections of the Editor, Bill Hancock he occasion of a 10 year time point offers a time to reflect on the progress of a new journal. To give a broader view of our progress, I have asked the two founding associate editors of the journal, Josh LaBaer and Gyo¨rgy Marko-Varga, to share their memories. From my perspective, I realize that our continued success and growth of the journal is due to many individuals. For example, there is a large support staff at the American Chemical Society. The fact that the production of a journal requires a large team was made clear when I visited Columbus to celebrate our first issue with the production staff. This is in addition to the team in Washington, D.C. who always have given unreserved support for the new journal and allowed us to be the innovator of important developments, such as Just Accepted Manuscripts. Also I want to acknowledge the invaluable and unwavering services of the manager of the head office of the journal, Agnes Hancock, who is well-known to the authors and reviewers as well as the support staff for the associate editors. I will now share some thoughts on my role as founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal. It has been an amazing period of 10-fold growth from 120 to 1200 manuscript submissions per year with a shift from a majority of U.S. manuscripts to less than one-third. It has involved a shift from paper to electronic publication. We are proud of our International focus both in publications and editorial staff (out of a total of 8 editors, 3 are based in the U.S., 1 in South America, 2 in Europe, and 2 in Asia) as well as our broad representation of the field of proteomics, ranging from mass spectrometry to clinical to agricultural proteomics to metabanomics. On the technology front, we have seen tremendous progress in the power of mass spectrometers as well as the important upfront stages of sample preparation and protein/ peptide separations. In fact, we are approaching the point where can see the throughput of a proteomics experiments approaching that of a genomics experiment. Other aspects of proteomics are gaining increasing attention such as the protein location, interactions and pathways, tissue imaging, and the activity/metabolic aspects of protein synthesis. Many challenges remain but we have seen a significant improvement in the quality of proteomic studies and in the resulting publications and we can expect even more in the future. Now we move to the reflections from the two other editors who have been with the journal from the start.
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Josh LaBaer It is hard to believe that JPR has been around 10 years already. It seems as though we only just started yesterday. Bill approached me when I had just founded the Harvard Institute of Proteomics. In those days, we were very focused on figuring out how to create a collection of sequenced clone copies of full length genes so everyone could have access to recombinant proteins representing the entire proteome. There was electricity in the air generated by bringing together 10.1021/pr1012575
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a multidisciplinary team of molecular biologists, biochemists, software developers, bioinformaticists, and automation engineers to solve these problems. This got us thinking of ways to produce these proteins in high throughput, eventually leading to the concept of producing protein microarrays by translating the proteins in situ on the slide at the time of the assay. What was most remarkable for JPR was watching its amazing growth in virtually every domain of proteomics. It seemed that every month we were getting more manuscripts to evaluate, and each issue was getting thicker until we were forced to publish issues more often. I am most proud of Bill’s strict adherence to keeping JPR a peerreviewed publication. I believe that both readers and authors appreciate this aspect the most about the journal. It has been especially rewarding for me to work with both the authors and the reviewers, giving me a strong sense of belonging to a thriving community. Ours is the most exciting endeavor in biology. Proteins provide the verbs to biology. Think of an action in biology and you will find a protein behind it. Think of a disease or its therapy and you’ll find proteins there too. Understanding the roles of all proteins in biology is the next great frontier, and I am looking forward to continuing on this exciting journey in our community. Gyo ¨ rgy Marko-Varga It is close to 10 years ago that I invited Bill Hancock to give a talk at the Swedish Proteomics Society Symposium in Lund. At the time, I worked for AstraZeneca and with the pathologist Tom Fehniger; we had made a breakthrough on isolating the submucosa within lung tissue compartments. In these isolated cells, we identified CLC-1, an ion channel, as a key target in COPD. We developed that further into a Drug Project which at the time was a fantastic achievement. We showed Bill microscope images of pulmonary data sets without mentioning the key finding, and before I knew it, Bill had convinced me to team up with him and to build Journal of Proteome Research as a leading international protein expression journal was the initiative. I quickly established the European JPR Office in Lund, Sweden with engagement and support from the Lund University, which we highly appreciate. The JPR office is located within the BioMedical Center with the highest standards. Looking back a decade, there was a calm and steady flow of papers in the early days, which quickly developed into an ever-increasing number of manuscripts, reaching a printed size of close to 6000 pages that we currently process. The shift from 2D-gel studies to LC-MSbased platforms quickly generated a huge increase in data sets that just kept on growing, which still is the case. We also became part of the development of standardizing the quality of data and the new requirements. A debate came about on what analytical qualities we should require from the research scientist to approve publication. We see the Journal of Proteome Research • Vol. 10, No. 1, 2011 1
results of these changes, where the accessibility as well as quality of data has improved considerably. The interaction with all of you authors about ideas of how to understand and present science has been an exciting and stimulating experience. The move into new directions and openings within the Protein science field has always been a part of the Editorial responsibility that I enjoyed the most. sSo, as we look into our crystal ball, watching for what the future will bring, we still see many Proteomics milestone achievements ahead of us. Among the ones that we certainly have been waiting for a long time is the “MAP of the GeneCoded Proteins”, the HPP initiative, with Chromosomecoded protein deliveries. We see a Global action on this.
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WILLIAM HANCOCK*,†, JOSHUA LABAER‡, and GYO ¨ RGY A. MARKO-VARGA§ Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Proteome Research, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusettes, United States, Associate Editor, Journal of Proteome Research, Center for Personalized Diagnostics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States, and Associate Editor, Journal of Proteome Research, Department of Surgery, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan * Towhomcorrespondenceshouldbeaddressed.E-mail:
[email protected]. † Northeastern University. ‡ Arizona State University. § Tokyo Medical University.
