A Call for Articles: Internet of Things,Artificial Intelligence,Sensors and Omics Convergence

O MICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology is the first and original Omics journal with more than two decades of legacy in advancing systems sciences theory and applications in health, ecology, and beyond. Please allow me to highlight some of the significant advances made over the past year and emerging knowledge frontiers in the field.

Gone are the days when Omics meant only genomics. The Omics technology base has expanded—dramatically—well beyond genomics in 2018. Multi-Omics research and development (R&D) now represent almost half the journal contents in 2018, building on genomics, proteomics and metabolomics technology platforms, and much more. Such integrated deployment of multi-Omics science publications enables and scales biomedical discoveries from genes to cell biology to the whole human organism context.

As a pioneer of multi-Omics scholarship and postgenomic medicine, the journal has pushed the envelope on diagnostics, therapeutics, and precision medicine innovations in common complex diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancers, HIV and other infectious diseases impacting on global health, and rare diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Moreover, microbiome research, a new subspecialty of Omics science, has firmly shown that nonhuman cells resident on our skin, gut, mouth, and elsewhere, play important roles in health and disease. In fact, emerging findings and reviews published in OMICS suggest that the gut microbiome may relate to certain mental health conditions such as anxiety and trauma-related brain disorders, thus emerging as a critical player in mental illness and maintenance of mental health.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Knowledge on person-to-person variations in microbiome is increasingly helpful to explain why individuals respond differently to drugs, vaccines, food, medical devices, and other health interventions.

I should emphasize that the journal sets itself apart as a journal of both Omics and integrative biology. This two-pronged editorial focus has allowed the journal to integrate human, animal, plant, and ecological health. That is, OMICS' broad and integrated focus at once affirms that human, animal, plant, and environmental health are continuous and integrative. Health can no longer be understood narrowly as human health.

I welcome your articles in all Omics fields and, in particular, those on multi-Omics R&D, microbiome science, and new technologies impacting on Omics system sciences—the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and sensors.

As a reminder, the benefits of publishing in OMICS include:

Rapid, high-quality peer review and editorial attention, including independent presubmission editorial feedback and constructive critique on research and review article proposals.

Consideration for original scholarly ideas, data, reviews, and analyses that fall within the editorial scope and mandate.

Readership distributed in >170 countries.

Maximum visibility for worldwide readership, citations, and downloads.

As Editor-in-Chief, I thank the authors, readers, editorial board, reviewers, and our publisher for their contributions, commitment, and advocacy. I look forward to reading your new articles.