Journal Of Cell Biology
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The ''Journal of Cell Biology'' is a
peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...
published by
Rockefeller University Press The Rockefeller University Press (RUP) is a department of The Rockefeller University. Journals Rockefeller University Press publishes three scientific journals: ''Journal of Experimental Medicine'', founded in 1896, '' Journal of General Physiolo ...
.


History

In the early 1950s, a small group of biologists began to explore
intracellular This glossary of biology terms is a list of definitions of fundamental terms and concepts used in biology, the study of life and of living organisms. It is intended as introductory material for novices; for more specific and technical definitions ...
anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...
using the emerging technology of
electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...
. Many of these researchers were at The Rockefeller Institute of Medicine, the predecessor of
The Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...
. As their work progressed to publication, they were disappointed with the limited quality of halftone image reproduction in the printed journals of the time, and frustrated by the narrow editorial policies of existing journals regarding their image-based results. In 1954, the Director of the Rockefeller Institute,
Detlev Bronk Detlev Wulf Bronk (August 13, 1897 – November 17, 1975) was a prominent American scientist, educator, and administrator. He is credited with establishing biophysics as a recognized discipline. Bronk served as president of Johns Hopkins Universi ...
, convened a luncheon to discuss the creation of a new journal as a venue for publication of this type of work. The first issue of ''The Journal of Biophysical and Biochemical Cytology'' was published less than a year later on January 25, 1955. A subscription cost $15 per year. The list of editors comprised Richard S. Bear, H. Stanley Bennett,
Albert L. Lehninger Albert Lester Lehninger (February 17, 1917 – March 4, 1986) was an American biochemist in the field of bioenergetics. He made fundamental contributions to the current understanding of metabolism at a molecular level. In 1948, he discovered, wit ...
, George E. Palade, Keith R. Porter,
Francis O. Schmitt Francis Otto Schmitt (November 23, 1903 – October 3, 1995) was an American biologist and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Schmitt was born November 23, 1903 to Otto and Clara Schmitt, in South St. Louis, Missou ...
, Franz Schrader, and Arnold M. Seligman. The instructions to authors described the scope of the journal, "''The Journal of Biophysical and Biochemical Cytology'' is designed to provide a common medium for the publication of morphological,
biophysical Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. Bi ...
, and
biochemical Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology an ...
investigations on cells, their components, and their products. It will give special attention to reports on cellular organization at the
colloidal A colloid is a mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance. Some definitions specify that the particles must be dispersed in a liquid, while others extend ...
and
molecular A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioche ...
levels and to studies integrating cytological information derived from various technical approaches." Recognizing that they needed a catchier title, the editors changed the name to ''The Journal of Cell Biology'' ("JCB") in 1962. Many seminal discoveries have been published in the journal, including the first descriptions of numerous cellular functions and structures, such as the
secretory pathway 440px Secretion is the movement of material from one point to another, such as a secreted chemical substance from a cell or gland. In contrast, excretion is the removal of certain substances or waste products from a cell or organism. The classica ...
, mitochondrial and
chloroplast A chloroplast () is a type of membrane-bound organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant and algal cells. The photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll captures the energy from sunlight, converts it, and stores it in ...
DNA,
microtubules Microtubules are polymers of tubulin that form part of the cytoskeleton and provide structure and shape to eukaryotic cells. Microtubules can be as long as 50 micrometres, as wide as 23 to 27  nm and have an inner diameter between 11 an ...
,
intermediate filaments Intermediate filaments (IFs) are cytoskeletal structural components found in the cells of vertebrates, and many invertebrates. Homologues of the IF protein have been noted in an invertebrate, the cephalochordate '' Branchiostoma''. Intermedi ...
,
tight junctions Tight junctions, also known as occluding junctions or ''zonulae occludentes'' (singular, ''zonula occludens''), are multiprotein junctional complexes whose canonical function is to prevent leakage of solutes and water and seals between the epith ...
(including
occludin Occludin is an enzyme ( EC 1.6) that oxidizes NADH. It was first identified in epithelial cells as a 65 kDa integral plasma-membrane protein localized at the tight junctions. Together with Claudins, and zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1), occludin has bee ...
s and
claudins Claudins are a family of proteins which, along with occludin, are the most important components of the tight junctions ( zonulae occludentes). Tight junctions establish the paracellular barrier that controls the flow of molecules in the intercel ...
),
adherens junctions Adherens junctions (or zonula adherens, intermediate junction, or "belt desmosome") are protein complexes that occur at cell–cell junctions, cell–matrix junctions in epithelial and endothelial tissues, usually more basal than tight junctions. ...
, and
cadherins Cadherins (named for "calcium-dependent adhesion") are a type of cell adhesion molecule (CAM) that is important in the formation of adherens junctions to allow cells to adhere to each other . Cadherins are a class of type-1 transmembrane proteins, ...
.


Key dates

*''January 25, 1955:'' Publication of the first issue of ''The Journal of Biophysical and Biochemical Cytology.'' *''January 1961 – December 1983:'' Raymond Griffiths is Executive Editor. *''January 1962:'' Journal name changed to ''The Journal of Cell Biology''. *''January 1984 – December 1998'': Bernie Gilula is Editor in Chief. *''January 13, 1997:'' First issue of JCB is published online. *''April 1997 – April 2007:''
Mike Rossner Mike Rossner is a United States-based advocate for academic journal publishing reform and open access. He was the director of the Rockefeller University Press from December 2006 to May 2013. Background In 1997, Rossner became editor of the ''Jo ...
is Managing Editor. *''January 1999 – December 2008:''
Ira Mellman Ira Mellman is an American cell biologist who discovered endosomes. He serves as Vice President of Research Oncology at Genentech in South San Francisco, California. Research Mellman's work has examined the role of endocytosis in cell metabol ...
is Editor in Chief. *''July 2000:'' Authors allowed to post the final, published
pdf Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
file of their articles on their own websites. *''January 2001:'' JCB begins to make its online content free to the public six months after publication. *''July 2002:'' JCB adopts completely electronic workflow. *''September 2002:'' JCB begins screening all digital images for evidence of manipulation. *''January 2003:'' JCB pioneers
RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three addi ...
workflow for color digital images. *''June 2003:'' JCB releases all of its back content older than six months for free to the public back to volume 1, issue 1. *''May 2007 – July 2010:'' Emma Hill is Executive Editor. *''November 2007:'' JCB begins posting all of its content on
PubMed Central PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center f ...
, where it is available for free to the public six months after publication. *''May 1, 2008:'' New
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
policy allows authors to retain copyright to their own works and third parties to reuse JCB content under a
Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...
. *''December 2008:'' JCB launches Dataviewer *''January 2009 – September 2014:''
Tom Misteli Tom Misteli, Ph.D. is a Swiss-born (Solothurn) cell biologist and pioneer in the field of genome cell biology. Tom Misteli is best known for his work on elucidation of how genomes function in living cells. While a post-doc at the Cold Spring Harbo ...
is Editor in Chief. *''September 2010 – December 2014:'' Elizabeth H. Williams is Executive Editor. *''October 2014 – May 2015:''
Alan Hall Alan Hall FRS (19 May 1952 – 3 May 2015) was a British cell biologist and a biology professor at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, where he was chair of the Cell Biology program. Hall was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. Early li ...
is Editor in Chief. *''April 2015 - August 2019:''
Rebecca Alvania Rebecca, ; Syriac: , ) from the Hebrew (lit., 'connection'), from Semitic root , 'to tie, couple or join', 'to secure', or 'to snare') () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical ...
is Executive Editor. *''August 2015 – present:''
Jodi Nunnari Jodi Nunnari, Ph.D. is an American cell biologist and pioneer in the field of mitochondrial biology. She is currently an investigator at the biotechnology company Altos, and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biolo ...
is Editor in Chief. *''November 2019 - present'': Tim Spencer is Executive Editor


Abstracting and indexing

According to the ''
Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Collect ...
'', the journal has a 2021
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
of 8.077, ranking it 28th out of 201 journals in the category "Cell Biology".


Online access

The journal was first published online on January 13, 1997. All content was free to the public during that first year of online publication. In January 1998, all primary research content was placed under access controls, but all news and review content remained free to the public immediately after publication. In January 2001, in response to calls from the research community to provide free access to the results of publicly funded research, the journal was one of the first to release its primary research content to the public 6 months after publication. In June 2003, all content, starting from volume 1, issue 1, was posted online and provided for free. In November 2007, in anticipation of the
National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...
mandate on public access to the results of NIH-funded research, the journal began depositing all of its content in
PubMed Central PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center f ...
, where the final, published version is released to the public 6 months after publication.


Copyright and third party use

In July 2000, the journal was one of the first to allow authors to post the final, published
pdf Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
file of their articles on their own websites. On May 1, 2008, the
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
policy was changed, allowing authors to retain copyright to their own works. At the same time, the content of the journal was opened up to use by third parties under a
Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...
. The only restriction on this use by third parties is that they cannot create a free mirror site within the first six months after publication.


Data integrity


Origins of image screening

In 2002, the journal adopted a completely electronic production workflow. This means that all text is submitted as electronic document files and all figures are submitted as electronic image files. While formatting figure files for an accepted manuscript,
Mike Rossner Mike Rossner is a United States-based advocate for academic journal publishing reform and open access. He was the director of the Rockefeller University Press from December 2006 to May 2013. Background In 1997, Rossner became editor of the ''Jo ...
, who was then the
managing editor A managing editor (ME) is a senior member of a publication's management team. Typically, the managing editor reports directly to the editor-in-chief and oversees all aspects of the publication. United States In the United States, a managing edito ...
, discovered a
Western blot The western blot (sometimes called the protein immunoblot), or western blotting, is a widely used analytical technique in molecular biology and immunogenetics to detect specific proteins in a sample of tissue homogenate or extract. Besides detect ...
in which the intensity of a single band had been selectively adjusted relative to the other bands. The original data were obtained from the authors, and it was evident that the manipulation affected the interpretation of the data. The editorial acceptance of the manuscript was revoked, and the journal immediately initiated a policy to screen all images in all accepted papers for evidence of image manipulation.


Guidelines for handling digital images

In consultation with practicing scientists on the
editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, a ...
, guidelines were developed for handling digital images, which were first published in June 2003.


Publicity about image manipulation and image screening

The journal's image screening program was publicized in an article in ''
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'' in April 2005, entitled "CSI Cell Biology". On Christmas Day, 2005, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' published an article showing that image manipulation was part of the scientific fraud perpetrated by
Hwang Woo-Suk Hwang Woo-suk ( ko, 황우석, born January 29, 1953)Sources disagree on the birthdate due to confusion between different calendar systems. Hwang was born on January 29, 1953 in the Gregorian calendar. However, older Koreans often list their bir ...
and colleagues. When it became apparent that the ''Journal of Cell Biologys screening program would have detected the image manipulation before publication, the ''New York Times'' highlighted the journal's process on the cover page of its Science Times section on January 24, 2006. This raised awareness among the public and among other biomedical journals of the potential value of image screening by journal editors.


Response of National Academy of Sciences

In February 2006, the editors voiced the need for community-sanctioned standards for maintaining data integrity in a letter to
United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
president Ralph Cicerone. The letter, along with subsequent concerns about digital data raised by other scientific publishers, provided the impetus for a study by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (a joint unit of the academy, the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
, and the
Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...
) to examine the issue of data integrity. The study was commissioned in May 2006. Mike Rossner presented a talk to the Committee at an open meeting in April 2007, in which he described the experience of JCB and the other Rockefeller University Press journals in handling image manipulation. He noted that it should be the responsibility of the research community to develop standards of data integrity, but JCB had taken on this role because no such standards existed when JCB first confronted the problem in 2002. The Committee released its report, entitled "Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age, in July 2009. The NAS announcement specifically cited JCB for its proactive steps in establishing specific guidelines for "acceptable and unacceptable ways to alter images". The report approached the problem of data integrity from the perspective of both truth and accuracy in data acquisition and reporting, and from the perspective of accessibility of data over time. It provided no specific standards for maintaining data integrity and no recommendations for enforcing those standards once established. The report reached the broad conclusion that "researchers themselves are responsible for ensuring the integrity of their research data".


Technical innovations


The RGB standard

JCB was the first journal to adopt the "RGB Standard" for reproduction of color images. To maximize the quality of color image reproduction, JCB declared in January 2004 that the online version of the journal is the "journal of record", and images would be reproduced online using authors' files in the same color scheme (Red, Green, Blue) in which they are acquired by digital cameras, and which is used to display them on a computer monitor. Previously, authors were asked to convert their
RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three addi ...
files to the
CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...
color scheme necessary for printing on paper, which results in a substantial loss of image luster. Those CMYK files were then converted back to RGB by the publisher to post online, resulting in a second round of alteration to the original colors. The advent of the RGB workflow allowed colors to be displayed in the online publication exactly as they appeared in the authors' original files.


The JCB DataViewer

On December 1, 2008, the JCB launched the JCB DataViewer – the first browser-based application for viewing original, multi-dimensional image data. This application was built in conjunction with Glencoe Software using a data management engine based on the OMERO software developed by the Open Microscopy Environment. Glencoe Software also developed a "Rollup" application for uploading original image files to the DataViewer. The DataViewer supports numerous proprietary files types from various microscopes and gel documentation systems. This revolutionary application allows JCB authors to present multidimensional image data as they were acquired, giving them the opportunity to share data that were not possible to share previously. JCB readers get to see original data supporting a published paper, and they can interact with those data by scrolling through a z stack or a stack of time-lapse images. Users can select individual channels to view or view all channels separately on the same screen. They can also produce line plots of pixel intensities along any horizontal or vertical axis. An update to the software in August 2012 allows the user to smoothly transition from 1 millimeter to 1 micrometer magnification of images assembled from optical and electron microscopes. As an example, they provide a complete image of a zebrafish embryo.


References


External links

* {{official website, http://www.jcb.org Publications established in 1955 Delayed open access journals Creative Commons-licensed journals Molecular and cellular biology journals Rockefeller University Press academic journals 1955 establishments in New York City