I am pleased to announce that the Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO) will be increasing its publication frequency from quarterly to bimonthly beginning in 2004.
JBO began publication in 1996 with the goal of becoming the repository for peer-reviewed papers that utilize modern optical technology for improved health care and biomedical research. When I became Editor-in-Chief in 1999, my goal was to provide our field with a high-impact, widely available, archival journal. Because of your tremendous support, our community now has a dedicated journal that is well on its way toward achieving this goal.
The JBO was accepted into Index Medicus/MEDLINE in 2000 and is also indexed in several other databases including Science Citation Index and Current Contents. Our first “impact factor” was released by the Institute for Scientific Information in 2001, ranking JBO fifth out of 54 optics publications with an impact factor of 2.292. The impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular period. In 2002, the JBO impact factor improved to 2.709, placing us fifth out of 54 journals in the subject category of Optics, twelfth out of 81 in Radiology, and ninth out of 47 in Biochemical Research Methods.
The quality and impact of our journal continues to progress. By committing to greater publication frequency in 2004, SPIE has made a strong statement of support for our community’s demand to reduce the time from submission to print. Additional features that will make JBO more responsive to authors will be introduced, including author options for “color online only,” web-based submission, and perhaps early web-postings of our manuscripts.
In order to facilitate the growth of the journal, special sections are scheduled for each of the six issues to be published in 2004, covering the following topics: Ophthalmic Diagnostics, Optics of Human Skin, Biomedical Optics and Women’s Health, Pioneers in Biomedical Optics: Watt Webb, Optics in Breast Cancer, and Optics in Neuroscience. See the Calls for Papers in this issue, or visit our website at www.spie.org/jbo for author information.
The success of the journal is an accomplishment that we all share as a community. In many ways, this is just the beginning: with continued support, JBO can improve in impact and publication frequency. I look forward to continuing our partnership to enhance the visibility and role of optics in biomedical research. Thank you for your support of the JBO, and good luck with your manuscripts!
