A new journal is born
In 2010, Iain (John) Mowbray, then FEBS Treasurer, suggested FEBS start a new fully open access journal. This was motivated by the strengthening of the open access movement among scientists and science publishing. Within a year, this new journal, named FEBS Open Bio, had its first paper in proof on 23rd of October 2011 and the first volume was later published with four articles, under Mary Purton, the journal’s original Executive Editor. Miguel A. De la Rosa commenced his term as the journal’s Editor-in-Chief in 2020, and over the last ten years, the journal has published over 1500 articles.
What is FEBS Open Bio about?
Although new journals often have to invite review content to fill the first issues, this was not the case for FEBS Open Bio which could receive manuscript transfers from the other FEBS journals (The FEBS Journal, FEBS Letters and Molecular Oncology).
“… authors were delighted to see the interest their work received when they published open access for the first time.” Mary Purton, FEBS Press Publisher, 2021
FEBS Open Bio primarily publishes research and review articles on biochemistry, biophysics, and cell & molecular biology, but in 2017 introduced a section on biochemistry education, under the editorship of Angel Herraez and Luciane V Mello. This section was introduced to encourage research into innovative teaching methods for biochemistry and the dissemination of best practice. Education articles tend to be extremely well read and FEBS Open Bio takes pride in being the catalyst for effective training of the next generation of biochemists and molecular biologists.
Ready for the future
As the push towards open science continues to gain momentum, FEBS Open Bio remains committed to maintaining high standards in open access science publishing. We are committed to ensuring rigorous and rapid peer review, which focusses on the technical and ethical quality of papers rather than subjective assessments of impact.
“For FEBS Open Bio, I envision continued growth and increase in impact as a premier open access journal.” - Professor Johannes Buchner, Chair of the FEBS Publication Committee since 2020
For now, we hope you find the articles in the anniversary issue to be of interest, and we invite you to consider FEBS Open Bio for publication of your work in the future!
You can read the interviews in full in the new editorial https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2211-5463.13326
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