The beginning of the new year is a natural time for reflections and resolutions. As such, we share the achievements FEBS Open Bio has made in 2024 and offer a glimpse into the exciting new initiatives planned for 2025. For a more detailed look at FEBS Open Bio’s progress in 2024 and plans for 2025, be sure to read the full editorial.

2024 Highlights

Empowering Early-Career Scientists

FEBS Open Bio remains committed to supporting young scientists. Last year, we:

• Awarded 38 poster prizes at various scientific meetings, including at the 48^th FEBS Congress.

• Presented the ‘FEBS Open Bio Article Prize’ to Klaudia Jączyńska for her outstanding paper on the “Analysis of tripartite Synaptotagmin-1-SNARE-complexin-1 complexes in solution”.

• Engaged with PhD students and postdocs at several FEBS Advanced Courses and introduced them to the benefits of publishing in FEBS Open Bio.

• Published all poster and talk abstracts from the 48^th FEBS Congress, providing early-career researchers a platform to showcase their work.

Driving Open Access

As a fully open-access journal, we believe research findings should be made accessible to all. As part of FEBS Press, we:

• Partnered with Dryad - a community-based data publishing platform that allows authors to deposit datasets linked to their article.

• Joined Review Commons to streamline the peer review process. Authors of Review Commons manuscripts benefit from receiving a refereed preprint which they can choose to transfer to any of the affiliated journals for an expedited decision.

Upholding Ethics in Publishing

FEBS Open Bio takes pride in maintaining the highest standards of ethics in publishing and in 2024, as part of FEBS Press, we: 

• Updated our AI disclosure policy to guide authors on the permissible use of GenAI.
• Implemented several new tools to detect AI-related errors and misconduct, which, together with our in-house Image Integrity Analyst, places us in a strong position to safeguard research integrity. 

Highlighting Hot Topics

Our ‘In the Limelight’ special issues -a curated collection of timely review articles on topics of crucial interest - brought attention to three different emerging areas of research:

• Alzheimer's Disease –highlighting the recent advances in AD research, including tau biology, structural diversity of tauopathy, brain lipid metabolism, and heterogeneity of microglia in disease. 

• Toxicology - exploring the environmental toxicity of organic pollutants and their impact on ecosystems and human health and disease.

• Mitochondrial Biogenesis – focusing on the molecular mechanisms underlying the different biogenesis pathways of mitochondrial proteins. This special issue was accompanied by a free webinar hosted by guest editor, Prof. Johannes Herrmann.

Expanding our Boards

Last year, we expanded our boards to maintain fast, fair and thorough peer review process. We:

• Welcomed 9 new editors to our Editorial Board.
• Added 15 new members to our Editorial Advisory Board.

What to look out for in 2025

New ‘In the Limelight’ issues

We begin the year with a special issue on Education, guest-edited by Luciane V. Mello and Ferhan Sagin. Our upcoming special issues will explore exciting topics such as bioinformatics, research protocols, tumour-stroma interactions and more!

Publishing Liaison Officers

We introduce the new role of Publishing Liaison Officer, aimed at bridging the gap between FEBS Open Bio and the scientific community.

Editorial Steering Committee

To stay agile in the ever-changing open access publishing landscape, FEBS Open Bio will set up an Editorial Steering Committee, consisting of a small number of Editors who will provide regular input to the journal.

Cross-Journal Virtual Issue

This year, we are also proud to present a cross-journal virtual issue (with content from all 4 FEBS Press journals) to celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science, taking place on 11^th February.

Ending with Gratitude

Finally, we’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all our authors, reviewers, editors and readers for their ongoing support and service throughout 2024. We look forward to having you be part of our journey in 2025!