Nature Publishing Group (NPG) with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) today announce a new online-only open-access journal, npj Biofilms and Microbiomes. Leading NTU’s effort in this new initiative is its Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), a national research institute that aims to harness the powers of micro-organisms for environmental and water sustainability. npj Biofilms and Microbiomes is one of the first three journals to launch as part of the ‘Nature Partner Journal’ series.
The editorial team will be led by Editor in Chief Staffan Normark, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Professor of Medical Microbiology at Karolinska Institutet.
Launching in Q2 2014, npj Biofilms and Microbiomes will promote biofilm research across a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines. The journal will establish a platform for cross-disciplinary discussions and allow for the understanding of the biology and ecology of biofilm populations and communities, as well as applications so derived across medical, environmental and engineering domains.
“The study of complex microbial populations, such as those appearing in biofilms, leads to novel insights on how communities evolve and how individual participants benefit from another. The tools to understand the underlying mechanisms behind these microbial societies and how they interact with the environment are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Microbes, as part of biofilms and/or present in complex microbiomes, play an increasingly appreciated role in many engineered, as well as natural processes, including the physiology of all living organisms. It is an extremely satisfying moment to be part of a new journal capturing the best of this exciting science. I feel that the best is yet to come,” said Professor Staffan Normark, Editor in Chief.
“NTU is going big on life sciences with the formation of a compelling Life Sciences and Biomedical Cluster comprising our School of Biological Sciences, the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), our new medical school set up in partnership with Imperial College London and a new structural biology lab led by Prof Daniela Rhodes FRS,” said NTU President Professor Bertil Andersson. “NTU’s collaboration with NPG to establish a new open access journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes is therefore timely, providing a new publication platform for our scientists as we push the research frontiers in the study of complex microbial communities across a wide disciplinary spectrum and covering natural, medical and industrial settings.”
“NPG is dedicated to both publishing the world’s leading research and to furthering open science,” says Martin Delahunty, Global Head of Partnership Journals, Open Research, NPG. “The Nature Partner Journal portfolio enables us to share with our partners our strengths as a publisher of high-impact scientific research, and to increase the open access options we can make available to researchers.”
The Nature Partner Journals bring Nature’s reputation for impact and excellence to open access and publishing partnerships. The Nature Partner Journals are characterized by landmark partnerships with institutions, foundations and academic societies. The home for Nature Partner Journals is atwww.nature.com/npj.
Nature Partner Journals feature a modified set of Nature editorial standards, with rigorous requirements for the training and appointment of Editors-in-Chief and continuous assessment of editorial quality against agreed key performance indicators.
NPG, with strategic partner Frontiers, is a leading open access publisher. Together, they published 10,500 open access research papers in 2013, 51% of their combined research publication output for the year. All 63 NPG academic, society and partner publications have introduced open access options or are open access journals. For more information see URL (http://www.nature.com/libraries/open_access/index.html”).
