Elsevier Announces the Launch of Open Access Journal: Current Plant Biology

AMSTERDAM, December 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the launch of a new open access journal: Current Plant Biology.

The field of fundamental plant science is increasingly becoming an interdisciplinary domain of research, now including physics, mathematics and chemistry disciplines. This trend is largely fuelled by the last decade's technical advances and discoveries which have created new challenges, such as data storage, analysis and prediction. Current Plant Biology will publish articles that focus on this newly emerged interdisciplinary research domain.

"The development of technologies that can simultaneously measure many thousands of plant molecules has created a natural union between plant science and the physical sciences. With this union come many challenges including difficulty in finding an ideal venue for publishing results in this emerging interdisciplinary research domain," said Editor-in-Chief, Steven P. Briggs, Ph. D., University of California San Diego. "To facilitate the growth of quantitative, interdisciplinary plant biology, together with Elsevier, we have therefore launched Current Plant Biology."

"Apart from publishing their work open access, authors of accepted papers will be asked to submit their research datasets to an open data repository," said Kathleen Marchal, Ph. D. of Ghent University, Associate Editor of the journal. "I strongly believe that publishing data open access is the way forward to the future in the field of molecular biology. It will allow for more complete data-interpretation and hypothesis testing and generation. In addition, being able to use meta-data will allow for developing novel research questions that could never have been tackled by individual labs."

Emma Granqvist, publisher for Plant Sciences at Elsevier, added, "Interdisciplinary research is growing in importance, and Elsevier looks forward to further develop Current Plant Biology after its launch in continued support of data sharing. This includes working together with and linking to data repositories such as TAIR. In addition to publishing standard research articles the journal welcomes new datasets, methodologies, models and tools - all contributing to an integrative approach to plant science."

The first issue of Current Plant Biology is a Special Issue with selected papers from the Second Current Opinion Conference on Plant Genome Evolution held in September 2013 in the Netherlands.

Articles will appear online directly after acceptance and proofing. For more information or to submit an article, go to: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/current-plant-biology.

About Open Access Publishing at Elsevier

Elsevier has been providing open access publishing options since 2005. Today, researchers can choose to publish open access in over 1,600 established peer-reviewed journals as well as 71 full open access journals and these numbers will continue to grow rapidly. All of Elsevier's open access publications have been peer reviewed, ensuring that the broader community not only reads the latest research but that it is factual, original and of the highest quality and ethical standards. For more information about Elsevier's open access program, visit http://www.elsevier.com/openaccess

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group PLC is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.

Media contact

Marije Hoogstrate
Elsevier
+31-20-485-2744
m.hoogstrate@elsevier.com