We welcome you to Cell Genomics, a new open, collaborative, and pioneering forum for genomics.
From reading to writing and editing genomes, the field of genomics has grown and evolved dramatically over the past several decades, transforming the overall enterprise of life sciences in the process. In the early days of the Human Genome Project, genomics brought a new approach to the biological sciences. Large international collaborations brought together experts across disciplines—a partnership that was essential to tackling a bold challenge for which the technology required did not yet exist and the path to success was unclear. It was with this pioneering spirit that the first genome warriors embarked on the shared mission of producing the first draft sequence of the human genome, inspired by the promise that these efforts would lay the foundation for a new era of medicine. Achieving this vision also required new models to enable the rapid and open sharing of data. Although the idea was controversial, the early genome projects and the Bermuda Principles, Fort Lauderdale Agreement, and Toronto Statement ultimately established a framework for open science.
This ethos of pioneering bold scientific challenges, international multi-disciplinary collaborations, and open science continues to inspire us as we launch Cell Genomics, embracing and extending these principles as a service to the scientific community during a critical time for the field. We are poised to realize the promise of genomic medicine more fully but only if we collaborate on research, foundational resources, and technology development.
At Cell Genomics, we take a broad view of genomics, defined by scientific challenges rather than by specific technologies or study designs. We support the full range of research, resources, and technology that contribute to the forefront of genetics and genomics as well as their applications across the biological, translational, clinical, ecological, and global health sciences. We are particularly interested in progress in moving from maps to mechanisms to medicine. We support technology development, the foundation of genomics, with a focus that includes computational and experimental methods, data science, and data-sharing platforms.
We launch as an open access and open science genomics research journal, in recognition of the need to openly share research, methods, and datasets. We embrace open science in our publications and guide our authors with community standards for methods and datasets. We require that all new datasets be deposited in approved public databases, with accession numbers included in the first manuscript submission to the journal. We similarly require that all new code or software be made publicly available with the first manuscript submission. Although convention has, to date, only called for public availability at the time of publication in a journal, we require that this be provided at the time of submission in order to evaluate datasets, code, and software for the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) principles as part of our review process. We believe that encouraging the earlier public sharing of datasets and methods and reviewing these for the FAIR principles will promote more rapid scientific progress.
In support of these open science efforts, we partner with relevant databases and initiatives. As an example, we partnered with the GWAS Catalog in defining standards and community needs, and they have recently enabled dataset submission and assigning accession numbers prior to publication in a journal. This progress has allowed us to require submission to the GWAS Catalog for all manuscripts reporting genome-wide association studies (GWASs) at the time of the first submission to Cell Genomics. We also work with our community to define and publish standards for methods, datasets, and study design, providing leadership to guide future research. In this issue, we publish recommendations from our community workshop on the sharing of GWAS summary statistics and enabling FAIRness (MacArthur et al., 2021), as well as standards for sequencing-based GWAS (McMahon et al., 2021).
We support the rapid and open communication of science. We encourage our authors to discuss and share their research pre-publication, including via posting preprints, as a means to more rapidly disseminate research, encourage feedback and collaborations, and contribute to scientific progress. Authors can directly transfer manuscripts from bioRxiv or medRxiv using the B2J/M2J functions. For our publications, we offer a transparent peer review service to allow readers to follow the editorial, peer review, and revision process from submission through publication.
We are committed to ensuring that genomics is focused on benefiting all of society. We seek out a diversity of perspectives in the editors, advisors, authors, and reviewers that contribute to our journal. We support research and resources that include diverse populations—particularly those that demonstrate the utility of results across populations. We encourage engagement with underrepresented or marginalized communities as equal partners in research. We also champion ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) research to provide new frameworks needed to guide genomics in ever more complex applications in human populations, as these increasingly touch our daily lives and infuse our individual and community identities.
As we move into the next scientific frontiers, we need to embrace new models for collaborations across increasingly multi-disciplinary research. We provide a forum for such collaborations and innovative new scientific approaches that enable the next generation of genomics research. We also provide a venue for scientists to discuss strategic directions and guides to the latest research for our broader public readership. We invite you to join our open, collaborative, and pioneering community at Cell Genomics in transforming genomics for the benefit of science and all of our society.