Discovery Immunology 2023. Highlights from our first full year

It has been an exciting year for Discovery Immunology [1], the newest member of the British Society for Immunology’s family of journals. We are a fully Open Access journal, with a broad scope, dedicated to publishing high-quality manuscripts describing the mechanisms of the immune response. Articles focussed on clinical immunology or immune therapy are published in our sister journals, Clinical & Experimental Immunology [2], and Immunotherapy Advances [3].

As we are approaching the first anniversary of the first articles published, this provides us a chance to reflect on some highlights from the past year. As a new journal we are highly reliant on our authors and readers to support us by submitting high quality articles whilst we grow our international visibility through the major global indexing services. Our relationships with the immunology community are critical for developing the journal’s reputation. We are very pleased to have received many high-quality manuscripts, from an international pool of authors. This has enabled us to meet our initial indexing milestones. We are now included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and are applying for indexing in PubMed Central and Scopus, which will enable us to bring our content to the wider global immunology community.

Our continued success depends on our authors, and on our readers. For our authors, we aim to provide a quick and accountable service. Articles sent for peer review should receive comments from appropriately qualified experts, who will provide constructive comments to help improve the manuscript. We have a fantastic team on our growing Editorial Board [4], who are often called on to contribute to this process. We aim not to ask for substantial new experiments. Our Senior Editors, Philip Ahern, Emily Gwyer-Findlay, Awen Gallimore, Florent Ginhoux, Laiguan Ng, Fran Quintana, and Meera Ramanujam, who are highly experienced in their fields, are empowered to make decisions. They are looking for high-quality immunology, where clear conclusions are supported by persuasive results. We require manuscripts to make contributions to their field, but we are not chasing immunological fashion!

For our readers, we aim to be a reputable repository of quality-assured and interesting immunology. When readers see work in Discovery Immunology, they should expect the article to deliver a high level of scientific quality. Original articles should provide novel data with clear methods, and well-balanced analysis. Reviews should be focussed, informative, and interesting. We believe that the model we are developing, which is similar to that followed by many quality Society journals, including our partners at the Australian and New Zealand Society of Immunology [5], will enable us to support the immunology community for many years to come.

Of course, the biggest highlights this year have been provided by our authors. It has been a privilege to be trusted with publishing their exceptional science. Examples include our most-read articles so far this year, which focussed on migration [6] and antigen recognition [7] of T cells in the anti-cancer response; our two most-cited articles, describing a new model for tracking antigen-specific T-cell responses [8], and regulation of gamma delta T-cell functions [9]; and our most popular article on social media, focusing on inflammasomes and hyperinflammation [10]. We are also very pleased to be publishing superb articles from international teams of authors, including beautiful work describing developmental trajectories of monocytes [11], and the involvement of immune cells in brown adipose tissue [12]. One of our papers, describing deadly interactions between NK cells and CD4 T cells [13], has even been cited on the NK cells Wikipedia page [14]!

We are very excited about the future of Discovery Immunology. We have exciting plans for lots of new content, including a number of thematic article collections in the coming year. We have already published the first articles in our Ecoimmunology [15] collection, describing the immunological features of wild mice [16], and in our mononuclear cell collection [11]. We are also looking for additional articles for our checkpoint molecules, and our T cells at barrier sites [15] collections for 2024. The recently launched cross-journal collection Advances in Tissue Immunology [17] also promises to feature some fantastic content.

Finally, 2023 has been a great success for Discovery Immunology, thanks to the support of our editors, authors, and readers. Together, we have built strong foundations. I am very much looking forward to a bright future for the newest BSI journal!

Conflict of interest: Simon Milling is Editor-in-Chief of Discovery Immunology.