Biopreservation and Biobanking Mid-Year Report

In June, Biopreservation and Biobanking reached an important milestone that should provide momentum for the last half of 2016. Our impact factor increased by 35% to 1.804. The new impact factor is based on articles published in 2013 and 2014, and cited during 2015. More recently, in 2015, three articles were published that are among the journal's most cited: “Quality Management of Biorepositories” by W. Grizzle; “A Novel Approach to High-Quality Postmortem Tissue Procurement: The GTEx Project” by L. Carithers; and “Turning point: Biobanking in China and the Future of Translational Research” by Y.W. Song. In addition, in March 2014 we gained PubMed and Medline indexing, which was at least partially responsible for the submission of more and higher quality articles.

Another indicator of our progress is the year-to-year change in full-text downloads. We have seen more than 3000 full-text downloads per month this year—up 66% from the same timeframe last year.

We have devoted considerable effort during the past 2 years to developing concepts and publishing special sections and issues. In February 2015, the Biobanking in China special issue coordinated by Dr. Rongxing Gan introduced the biobanking community to the emerging biobanks and networks in China. We have also published special sections (October and December 2014) and a special issue (December 2015) on biobank sustainability. Another issue on sustainability is in the works for late 2016. Our special sections on disaster planning (August 2013) and special issue on ethical, legal, and social issues “Towards Harmonization of the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Mosaic? An International Consortia Experience” (June 2016) have attracted a lot of positive attention and have expanded our scope into areas that are not matched by other journals. We offered a platform for “Biobanks in Emerging Countries” in a special section (February 2014). The latter topic is also reflected in the composition of our Editorial Board, where all parts of the globe are well represented.

We continue to publish an excellent mix of biobanking and biopreservation articles, as evidenced by the contents of this August issue. With the overall increase in submissions in the past 2 years, we are being more selective in the articles we accept, and encourage the submission of high-quality original articles. We are especially interested in receiving review articles in the biobanking and biopreservation areas. Among the excellent review articles published in the past 2 years are “Storage of Human Biospecimens: Selection of the Optimal Storage Temperature” by A. Hubel et al.; “The Bank of Biological Samples Representing Individuals Exposed to Long-Term Ionizing Radiation at Various Doses” by N. Litviakov et al.; “Cryopreservation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Clinical Applications: Current Methods and Challenges” by K.W. Yong; “Biobank Finances: A Socio-Economic Analysis” by M. Yuille; “Preservation of Biospecimens at Ambient Temperatures: Special Focus on Nucleic Acids and Opportunities for the Biobanking Community” by R. Muller et al.; and “Fundamental Considerations for Biobank Legacy Planning” by L. Matske et al.

Finally, as always, many thanks to our Deputy Editors Marianna Bledsoe, Dayong Gao, and Peter Watson, and European Editor William Mathieson. Their excellent efforts in selecting reviewers and recommending action for articles are critical to our continued success. Our authors, reviewers, and readers of course also are critical elements in the journal's advancement. The feedback we are getting in terms of most-read articles and the upward movement in the impact factor tell us that we are on the right track!