Abstract
Unfortunately, the ISBER annual meeting in Anaheim was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, ISBER has embarked on a highly successful series of online town halls and informative webinars. During May I participated in ISBER's online Annual General Meeting, giving my usual update concerning the journal. In May, I also provided ISBER with an update for the society's upcoming annual report. This editorial combines elements of those two reports, to give you an idea of the journal's progress and plans, from 2019 and early 2020.
First the best news: the impact factor for Biopreservation and Biobanking as of June 2020 is 1.90, a 40% increase over that of 2019. The 2020 impact factor reflects citations of BIO articles in 2019 for articles published in 2017 and 2018. Thanks to all of our editors, authors, and reviewers for contributing to this excellent news! During the remainder of 2020, we will continue to concentrate on attracting additional high-quality articles, especially review articles.
Full-text downloads of the journal's articles have continued to increase significantly every year. There were 68,000 full-text downloads in 2019, 30,000 more than the prior year; a tremendous increase of 78%! Full-text download statistics are an indication of both the interest of readers in the journal's articles, as well as promising news for our long-term prospects in terms of subscriptions.
For the past few years, we have published a number of special sections and issues that covered a variety of topics: biobanking in emerging countries; economics and sustainability; biobank disaster preparation; biobanking in China; and ethical, legal, and social issues. The editorial board, and ISBER colleagues in particular, has been very proactive in suggesting ideas for special topics. Often such ideas emerge from ISBER annual meeting sessions, and the session chairs will send me a note to suggest a special issue or section.
The June 2019 issue was a special issue about biobank and biospecimen utilization. A special thanks to Bill Grizzle, Marianna Bledsoe, and Peter Watson for organizing the content of the special issue. It is important that we recognize there are a number of factors that affect the utilization of biospecimens. In some cases, a biobank's model for sample usage is inadequate and the biobanks hold too many samples for too long, which is not a good approach in terms of research goals and is not respectful of the patient/donor's expectations when they donate samples.
Two special sections appeared in December 2019 and February 2020, on Biobanking in Qatar and Biobanking Education, respectively. The Qatar biobanking articles were based on a meeting in Doha in February 2019 that focused on Qatar's contributions to biobanking, as well as a general focus on global approaches to quality management. The biobanking education articles outlined several international approaches to providing opportunities to students to obtain degrees or other credentials that will contribute to the continuing professionalization of biobanking.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has become the primary global health concern, we have started to respond with articles in BIO. I wrote an editorial “Biobanking During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which appeared in the June 2020 issue. We are also planning a special COVID-19 issue of BIO, which will likely comprise the December 2020 issue. Articles are being submitted from China, Africa, Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, which will address a variety of technical and medical aspects of biobankers' response to the pandemic. The journal's publisher, Mary Ann Liebert, is also making dozens of COVID-19 articles from its journals freely available. See: https://home.liebertpub.com/lpages/coronavirus-resource-center/254
As always, many thanks to BIO's Deputy Editors Marianna Bledsoe, Dayong Gao, and Peter Watson, and European Editor William Mathieson. A special thanks is in order to Rongxing Gan, who served as the Asian Editor. We welcome the new Asian Editor Dr. Junmei Zhou of Shanghai Children's Hospital. Dr. Zhou is already very busy processing articles from China and other countries in the region. In 2019, article submissions from China were higher than any other country, with articles overall being received from 32 countries. We continue to have significant numbers of articles being submitted from Japan and other countries in the region.
The editorial board members' excellent efforts in selecting reviewers and recommending action for articles are critical to our continued success. Biopreservation and Biobanking's authors, reviewers, and readers of course also are critical elements in the journal's advancement. The feedback the journal is receiving in terms of most-read articles and the unique perspective of the journal in terms of subject matter continue to be critical to the journal's success and support of ISBER's mission.