Much has happened since the first issue of EBioMedicine went live in November 2014, but one thing has not changed since our inception: the journal's central mission of serving to bridge basic research and clinical science. Over the past 5 years, EBioMedicine has secured a strong and respected position in the translational research space, covering both established fields (such as cancer, infectious disease, neuroscience, and metabolism) and emerging areas (such as microbiome research and digital health). Working under the auspices of The Lancet has allowed us to remain in close touch with the ever-evolving needs of clinical researchers and the patients they serve, which should be the ultimate objective of all meaningful translational research. The Lancet has also offered us essential guidance in upholding rigorous publication standards rightfully expected by the biomedical community. Importantly, we could not have built this journal without the passion and support of the entire EBioMedicine editorial team who firmly believe in and devote their talent to the journal's translational mission. Last but not least, we would like to extend our gratitude to our authors, reviewers, and Advisory Board members whose expertise and unwavering support in time have continually helped shaping and steering EBioMedicine to the right direction.
Over the years, we have published impactful research work in all biomedical fields—including HIV, Zika virus, the microbiome and health conditions, ageing, and cancer mechanisms—and across the entire biomedical research spectrum. EBioMedicine has published influential work spanning from basic research papers involving only cell lines and animal models with clear human relevance, to clinical studies of large patient cohorts with novel mechanistic insights into pathogenesis or therapeutic actions.
In addition to original research, EBioMedicine also publishes reviews and monthly editorials written by our editors, which reflect the topical interests of our translational research community. Two of our most successful review series were “Aging and Metabolism” and “Microbiome in the Clinic”, and several new series and stand-alone reviews are in the pipeline. Our reviews focus on specific and timely translational topics and are an excellent tool to showcase EBioMedicine’s mission, distilling the often-complex literature, highlighting important questions for future research, and proposing future directions and suggestions on how to move the field of study closer to the clinic.
We continuously monitor research trends and review EBioMedicine’s scope to accurately reflect the changes in the translational research landscape. The growing body of literature on machine learning and digital health signals that these fields might be ready to transition from basic research to the development of applications that can change the clinical practice and benefit patients. The expanding cross-disciplinary collaboration between biomedical and physical scientists means that more cutting-edge technologies in research areas such as nanomaterials and robotics can find their clinical applications at a much faster rate, such as therapeutic nanodelivery and biocompatible prostheses.
As part of The Lancet group of journals, EBioMedicine supports and participates in group-wide projects and advocacy, such as The Lancet’s recent gender equity and diversity pledge. To this end, we have overhauled EBioMedicine’s Advisory Board with new experts from across the world in every subject area. Most of our Advisory Board members are women, and in this issue we are publishing a series of inspiring Letters from some of them, in which they share their personal experience in science, career, and life. We strongly believe increased diversity and inclusion improves the results; having researchers with different backgrounds and genders contribute to EBioMedicine by peer reviewing and authoring research papers and reviews, as well as expressing their opinions and ideas, is valuable for the sustainable development of the journal.
The journal started 5 years ago with a small trans-Atlantic team of only two editors, and our family has now grown to 10, with editors based at three offices in London (UK), Cambridge (MA, USA), and Beijing (China). Our editors are strongly committed to outreach activities—we thrive on face-to-face interactions with our community and welcome the opportunity to discuss science, the challenges faced by translational researchers, strategies to improve the quality of research and scientific publishing, and actions EBioMedicine can take to better serve its community. We also have an active presence on social media (including Twitter, WeChat, and Weibo) and would love to hear from our readers in these spaces to discuss biomedical topics that are important to them. As the journal grows, we remain steadfast on our standards of publishing high-quality, rigorous science. We aim to further strengthen our position in the biomedical research community and stand firmly by our mission to turn scientific knowledge into clinical practice that benefits human health.
EBioMedicine