Cell Press, an imprint of STM publisher Elsevier, will take over from Oxford University Press as publisher of Molecular Plant, an international society journal that publishes important advances in plant biology, in January 2015. The journal is led by a global team of academic editors, with the editor-in-chief and executive editor in California, supported by an international editorial board and a group of professional editors in Shanghai. Molecular Plant will be the 31st journal published by Cell Press and its fourth society journal.
The agreement was recently signed in Shanghai by Dr. Emilie Marcus, CEO of Cell Press, and Dr. Lin Li, President of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences.
Molecular Plant was launched in 2008 under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences and the Chinese Society of Plant Biology. It has quickly grown in size and impact, moving from bi-monthly to monthly, with its Impact Factor climbing from 2.784 in 2009 to 6.126 in 2012. With an international editorial board, authorship and readership, it is a global journal highlighting the growing societal impact of advances in plant science.
In partnership with Cell Press, Molecular Plant will continue to publish papers that represent a broad range of topics affecting the plant biology field - including cellular biology, physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and molecular evolution among others. These topics represent the diversity of research stemming from plant biologists.
While Cell Press currently publishes a review journal focused on plant sciences (Trends in Plant Science), we do not publish a research journal that focuses exclusively on plant sciences. Publishing research articles in Molecular Plant will thus deepen our understanding of the work being done in the plant research field. In six years, Molecular Plant has proven itself as a fast-rising star in the field of plant sciences, making it a natural springboard for us to publish our first research journal focused on plant sciences.
