PTPBio journal relaunched, first articles

Dear colleagues,

We're excited to announce that first articles of the new volume of Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology - its first volume under the new title - are published. They're listed below, and the volume is still growing. Visit the journal at its new URL: http://ptpbio.org.

Our main goal in relaunching the journal was to jump-start its publishing rate without compromising on quality. The higher publishing rate will make PTPBio eligible for inclusion in more indexes. At the same time, we have expanded its scope to explicitly include scientific practice, added new publication-types, made submitting manuscripts easier, enhanced transparency, and updated the article-design.

One of PTPBio's new publication-types is Position Papers: statements and positive defenses of positions with less background than research articles normally provide. Also, every article in PTPBio is now a "target article"; the journal now considers short Comment pieces replying to any of its published articles, at any time. Expressing a view or responding to a paper doesn't always require a research article; sometimes you want to cut to the chase. Our format enables us to entertain a wide range of lengths.

What hasn't changed is that PTPBio remains a high-quality, fully open-access publication, freely accessible to readers worldwide. It also remains free to authors, eschewing the "article processing charges" and submission fees imposed by some OA journals and for OA publishing in commercial journals. PTPBio continues to be published and archived on the stable platform of University of Michigan Library. We prioritize efficient review, and we publish continuously.

I believe that a functional, thriving journal with these features represents an asset for our intellectual community worth building and maintaining. The editors (Joanna, Roberta, Jonathan, and I) hope you will consider PTPBio a possible home for your work.

Best, Christopher H. Eliot