Editorial: Looking back and looking forward – 2014 and 2015 in Biotechnology Journal

Abstract

Biotechnology Journal experienced a successful year in 2014. Our Impact Factor has increased to 3.708 and we have covered a breath of topics in our regular Special issues. Sadly Judy (Dr. Judy Peng) has left Wiley last November [1]. We all appreciate what Judy had contributed to BTJ, and wish her all the best in her future career! Now the two of us, Jing Zhu and Uta Göbel are taking care of Biotechnology Journal and together with our Editors-in-Chief, Prof. Alois Jungbauer and Prof. Sang Yup Lee, we are looking forward to an exciting year 2015. Read also the Editorial by both Editors-in-Chief on the highlights of this Methods and Advances Special issue [2].

First of all, we would like to announce the winner of the 2014 cover contest. As every year we have asked our authors, reviewers and supporters of the journal to vote for their favorite cover. The best cover this year is from issue 4, Biomolecular Technology of Proteins – BioToP, and was provided by the students of the BioTOP PhD program, dea: Andreas Maccani, Dagmar Brugger, Stefan Hofbauer, Vaibhav Jadhav, Gerald Klanert, Daniel Kracher, Iris Krondorfer, Irene Schaffner. Image: Dagmar Brugger [3].

With continued support from the ESBES and the AFOB, BTJ successfully published three Special issues in 2014 in collaboration with both societies. The issue on Industrial Biotechnology, edited by Dr. Jarka Glassey and Dr. Marcel Ottens [4] includes highlights on the ECAB conference, co-organized by the ESBES. The Stem cells and regenerative medicine issue (edited by Prof. Byung-Soo Kim and Prof. Jiandong Ding) [5], and the just published ACB2013 issue (edited by Prof. Akihiko Kondo and Prof. Virendra S. Bisaria) [6] were published in collaboration with the AFOB. Also in 2015, the ESBES and AFOB are continuing bring outstanding research from their society members, we are planning two AFOB Special issues: on Bioenergy and biorefinery (edited by Prof. Yinbo Qu and Prof. Wen-Teng Wu) and Bioprocessing and bioseparation (edited by Prof. Yoon-Mo Koo and Prof. Penjit Srinophakun), as well as another ESBES special issue, with the best contributions from the ESBES conference in Summer 2014 (edited by Prof. Philippe Jacques and Prof. Guilherme Ferreira). Furthermore, there are other exciting forthcoming Special issues you can look forward to:

• Synthetic biology (edited by Prof. Roland Eils and Prof. Wolfgang Wiechert)

• Protein stabilization (edited by Profs. Marina Lotti and Francesco Secundo)

• Renewable energy crops (edited by Profs. Margit Laimer, Johann Vollmann, Fatemeh Maghuly and Nicolas Carels)

• Vaccine Biotechnology (edited by Profs. Reingard Grabherr and Udo Reichl)

And more to come..

As you already seen from the list of Guest Editors above, the success of the Journal would not be possible without the support of many people, often working in the background. We would like to welcome Prof. Nicole Borth, Prof. Wilfred Chen, Prof. Jiri Damborsky, Prof. Ali Khademhosseini, and Prof. Eva Stöger as Editors who joined in 2014 and just recently. They are already and will by taking care of articles on mammalian biotechnology, nanobiotechnology, biocatalysis, and plant biotechnology, respectively. In addition, we have appointed a number of new Editorial Board members in 2014: Francois Baneyx, Joaquim Cabral, Matthew Chang, Matt DeLisa, Ramon Gonzalez, Mike Jewett, Gyun Min Lee, Diethard Mattanovich, Bill Miller, Sean Palecek, Je-Kyun Park and Heike Walles. Some of them have already agreed to work on Special issues in 2015 and 2016. We thank our current and new board advance for their support to BTJ.

Finally, we would like to mention the most read articles in 2014, which highlight the important topics in biotechnology last year. By far the most read article was the Review by Prof. Luke Lee's group focusing on microengineered physiological systems, also known as “organs-on-chips” [7]. In addition, an article on algae biotechnology by Harun et al. brought attention to developments in bioethanol production [8]. Moreover, a review on prokaryotic genome engineering by Zhu et al. [9] and an article on blood cells production from stem cells by Rousseau et al. [10] has won a wide readership in 2014.

Also in 2015, BTJ will continue to publish breakthrough technologies, cover key topics in the field for meeting the challenges of the changing world [11]. We are looking forward to publishing your work!

Jing Zhu, Ph.D.

Assistant Editor, Biotechnology Journal

Dr. Uta Göbel

Managing Editor, Biotechnology Journal