Open access publisher BioMed Central, US, has announced the launch of a new journal - PathoGenetics. Stylianos Antonarakis of the University of Geneva Medical School, and Andrea Ballabio, Director, Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine, will serve as co-Editors-in-Chief. They will be supported by an international Editorial Board.
PathoGenetics was created to meet the needs of a rapidly growing scientific community investigating the mechanisms of genetic disease. The journal will publish articles on the discovery of the mechanisms of genetic diseases. It will focus on both in vitro and in vivo studies on the cascade of events leading from genomic lesions (i.e. either a pathogenic mutation on a gene or another functional genomic element or a genomic rearrangement) to disease phenotypes. The use of animal models of human genetic diseases is considered highly relevant to the journal scope and a special emphasis will be given to the discovery of novel molecular and metabolic pathways that are relevant to disease pathogenesis. The journal includes studies on monogenic and polygenic diseases, and genomic disorders of somatic cells (including cancers). By covering the entire spectrum of molecular and metabolic pathways that are disturbed in genetic diseases, the journal seeks to provide an ideal platform for scientists from different backgrounds to publish and read research at the forefront of disease pathogenesis.
All articles published in the journal will be archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. The journal is also participating in the British Library's e-journals pilot project, and plans to deposit copies of all articles with the British Library.
To mark the launch, BioMed Central will be distributing a special inaugural print issue of the journal at the American Society for Human Genetics annual meeting scheduled for November 11-15.
