Good Time for Cell Adhesion and Migration

Our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms controlling cell adhesion and migration has never been so high. The era of ”molecular interactions“ requires an appropriate tool for exchanging views, presenting outstanding results and discussing new concepts in the field. This is why we decided to launch Cell Adhesion and Migration (CAM), a multi-disciplinary journal publishing original research articles and reviews covering the latest aspects of cellular and molecular mechanisms and their regulation both during physiological and pathological processes.

The inaugural issue contains reviews provided by editorial boardmembers wishing to share their perception of key questions and developments in their field of interest. This includes a not so classical description of desmosomes (by Peter Koch and Ansgar Schmidt) and focal points (by Cary Wu), the development of the concept of cell fusion (by John Pawelek), two illustrations of cell adhesion and migration through a detailed analysis of the immune synapse (Antonella Viola and Christina Mazzon) and the intriguing migration of cells from baby to mum (by Gawin Dawe and Zhi-cheng Xiao). Future issues will bring much more and this is a just a bit of the flavor of Cell Adhesion and Migration!

Research papers will be the core of the forum I would like to create with CAM. I want to allow journal subscribers to comment on published papers or to ask specific questions of the authors. We are updating our website to provide the ideal interface for exchanging views and discussing the scientific questions or controversies raised in papers. Indeed, the Extra View section, publishing essentially auto-commentary of the most significant recent and forthcoming papers published elsewhere, will allow authors to provide additional insights, new interpretations or speculation on their own research without censure. This tribune, combined with the ability to post comments at the website by any researcher in or outside the field, will ensure a large diffusion of new ideas and concepts, and will off offer a unique chance to suppress the barriers between the various domains of cell biology to stimulate new collaborations or tool exchanges.

CAM plans to publish high quality science following a very strict, but rapid and fair, peer review process. If you are an author with hot results, I strongly encourage you to contact the editor to discuss the possibility of publishing a short paper containing the most striking result. This rapid publication will allow contributors to conserve the novelty of their discovery. Then we will publish an accompanying paper containing additional and complementary results within six months of the initial short paper. Probably all of us experienced the very frustrating situation of a paper being reviewed, revised and sometimes re-revised for top journals, but finally being rejected. CAM offers a chance for immediate publication if authors provide comments and detailed responses to reviewers or justification for not doing recommended revisions. This is a guarantee to recognize outstanding work on a scientific basis, not on space limitation or trends criteria.

It is definitively a good time for cell adhesion and migration. I hope that the cell biology community, rich in its diversity, will adhere enough to this idea to ensure a rapid migration towards a success story for this new alternative journal with a single motivation: make it possible to share and discuss advances in the field of cell adhesion and migration, from basic research to translational research.