People in most countries can change their names not only via a court proceeding but also through common usage: use the name often enough and the legal system will recognize it. The JCB is still very much the Journal of Cell Biology, the original and preeminent journal in its discipline, but the shorter “JCB” is so commonly used in the community that we thought it was time to recognize this fact and incorporate it into the design of the journal. The new cover introduced with this issue is a reflection of that process.
Three years ago, we introduced a redesign that reorganized some sections and added others. The new design retains the essentials of this organization but, thanks to the talents of our designer Mark Yeo, introduces some graphic elements that tie in with the new JCB logo and help make the journal even easier to read and digest.
The current redesign uses the print journal as its starting point, with the most significant change for online users being the new look of PDFs. Though the core design changes are in print, the electronic version remains the focus of our publishing efforts and is the journal of record. Visual and functional enhancements have been made to the online version in other ways, as can be seen in the bright colors of our recently introduced RGB production process (see http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/164/1/11), in the download date stamp on PDFs, and automatic attachment of any corrections to the downloaded article PDF.
We continue to introduce other online innovations and functional improvements, particularly in ways to reach content faster and more efficiently. From our contents pages, readers can access selected articles of cell biological interest emerging in the fields of immunology, human disease, and microbial pathogenesis that appear in our sister journal the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Readers can now use our search engine to query either just the JCB or all of PubMed, and can browse a topic map that leads them to a particular area of specialization. A search result that yields multiple results now gives not only a list of articles but an “Instant Index” that categorizes these results by subtopic. Once within an article, readers can search outwards by clicking on the “Citation Map” link to get the major articles that cite or are cited by the current article.
Of course, we are also linking (directly or via CrossRef and PubMed) to all references that are available online, including those that only include digital object identifiers (DOIs) rather than traditional volume and page numbers. All links to other HighWire Press–hosted articles remain free even to those without subscriptions to those other journals.
All content older than 6 months and news items remain free to the world; moreover, 142 developing countries have free access to the JCB's complete content from the moment of publication. Our content now includes an archive that is complete back to volume 1, issue 1. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Journal we will be initiating a “From the Archive” series in January 2005, and we will soon be updating our annotated video collection (http://www.jcb.org/misc/annotatedvideo.shtml), which has proven to be invaluable for undergraduate and graduate teachers.
The JCB relies on the cell biology community for its editors, readers, contributors, and referees. We thank you for your support and welcome any feedback on how we can best serve you—the community that does so much to keep this journal the best forum for the best in cell biology.
