The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is pleased to announce the launch of the fourth journal in its Science Partner Journal program, BioDesign Research, published in affiliation with Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU). The journal will be distributed by AAAS in association with NAU, institutions that have partnered previously to publish the Science Partner Journal Plant Phenomics.
The mission of BioDesign Research is to provide a platform for information exchange in the interdisciplinary field of biosystems design. Studies published in the journal should pave the way towards the predictable de novo design of engineered and reengineered living organisms to address global challenges in health, agriculture, and the environment.
BioDesign Research will publish high-quality, innovative research, reviews, editorials, and perspectives focusing on in silico biosystems design, genetic or epigenetic modifications, and genome writing or rewriting. This work could be done in any model organism.
Serving as co-Editors in Chief of BioDesign Research will be Professor Xiaohan Yang, Senior Staff Scientist of the Plant Systems Biology Group in the Biosciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Professor Stanley Qi (Lei S. Qi), Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Bioengineering, the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, and the Stanford ChEM-H Institute; and Professor Alfonso Jaramillo, Chair of Synthetic Biology at the University of Warwick and Research Professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Joint Professor Zong-Ming (Max) Cheng of the University of Tennessee and Nanjing Agricultural University will serve as the Executive Editor. Huan Yin, at Nanjing Agricultural University, will serve as the Managing Editor, leveraging her experience as Managing Editor of Horticulture Research and Plant Phenomics.
BioDesign Research will open for submissions in September 2019 and the journal hopes to begin publishing at the end of 2019. BioDesign Research will publish under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).
"Launching BioDesign Research is a continuous integral effort to build NAU into a global comprehensive university with a focus on agricultural and life sciences," said Professor Yanfeng Ding, Vice President for Research at NAU. "BioDesign Research will help NAU to expand academic disciplines from traditional agricultural and life sciences to emerging fields, such as synthetic biology, and to new areas like medical and health-related fields," continued Ding. "We are excited about partnering with AAAS again in launching BioDesign Research, our third academic journal after Horticulture Research and Plant Phenomics. I am confident that the entire BioDesign Research team will successfully launch and build BioDesign Research into a global top-tier journal in publishing and will lead the cutting-edge biological science research, contributing to global food, health, environment and bioenergy security and safety."
"We are very excited to partner again with NAU on an additional Science Partner Journal. BioDesign Research will be an important title in the program as we continue to expand upon our goal of partnering with associations that share the AAAS vision of publishing high-quality research," said Bill Moran, Publisher of the Science family of journals at AAAS. "With NAU's guidance and the editorial oversight of Drs. Xiaohan Yang, Stanley Qi and Alfonso Jaramillo, we expect this journal to reach great heights and be an important addition to the Science Partner Journal program."
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New titles participating in the Science Partner Journal program will launch on a regular basis and participation in the program is kept to English-language publications. AAAS is actively seeking new partners across scientific disciplines. Organizations participating in the Science Partner Journal program will be editorially independent and responsible for the content published in each journal. Partner organizations are responsible for establishing editorial boards committed to best practices in peer review and author service. For more information about the Science Partner Journal program, please visit the Science Partner Journal homepage at: http://www.sciencepartnerjournals.org. For questions regarding the program and inquiries about the application process for becoming a partner organization, contact spj@aaas.org.
About the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine; Science Signaling; a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances; Science Immunology; and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes more than 260 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement and more.
About Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU)
As one of China's oldest and most prestigious universities of agricultural sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) is a pioneer of modern agricultural education, research, and the four-year bachelor program in higher agricultural education in China. NAU now has expanded to a comprehensive university, offering BS, MS and PhD degrees in agriculture, arts, social and natural sciences, engineering, and business and management. Over the course of its century-long history, NAU has committed to the values of "integrity, simplicity, diligence and benevolence" and pursued the approach of "putting students first, upholding moral standards, promoting scholarship, and contributing to the community." NAU currently maintains partnerships with over 150 universities and research institutes in over 30 countries or territories through joint education programs, academic exchanges and collaborative research programs. See http://english.njau.edu.cn/.