The ''Journal of Cell Science'' (formerly the ''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'') 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 ...

in the field of

cell biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

. The journal is published by

The Company of Biologists The Company of Biologists is a UK-based charity and not-for-profit publisher that was established in 1925 by George Parker Bidder III with the aim of promoting research and study across all branches of biology. The company publishes currently fiv ...

. The journal is partnered with

Publons Publons was a commercial website that provided a free service for academics to track, verify, and showcase their peer review and editorial contributions for academic journals. It was launched in 2012 and was bought by Clarivate in 2017. It claime ...

, is part of the Review Commons initiative and has two-way integration with

bioRxiv bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). As preprints, papers ...

. ''Journal of Cell Science'' is a hybrid journal and publishes 24 issues a year. Content over 6 months old is free to read.

History

Foundation and early years

The journal was established in 1853 as the ''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'' (''Q. J. Microsc. Sci.'', ). The founding

editors Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, or ...

were

Edwin Lankester Edwin Lankester FRS, FRMS, MRCS (23 April 1814 – 30 October 1874) was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England. Life Edwin Lankester ...

and

George Busk George Busk FRS FRAI (12 August 1807 – 10 August 1886) was a British naval surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist. Early life, family and education Busk was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the son of the merchant Robert Busk and his ...

.''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'' 1(1), front matter
(accessed 18 April 2008) The publisher of the early issues was Samuel Highley of

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, with John Churchill and Sons (later J. & A. Churchill) taking over from 1856. The journal's original aims, as described in a preface to the first issue, were not limited to biology, but encompassed all branches of science related to the

microscope A microscope () is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisibl ...

: Contributors to the first issue include

Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The storie ...

Joseph Lister Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, (5 April 182710 February 1912) was a British surgeon, medical scientist, experimental pathologist and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventative medicine. Joseph Lister revolutionised the craft of s ...

, William Crawford Williamson, and

George Shadbolt George Shadbolt (1817–1901) was a British writer, editor, student of optics and photographer with a strong interest in innovative techniques, who was active during the 1850s-1860s. Reported to have made the first microphotograph, he was also a ...

. The contents of the early issues are diverse, and include original research articles, translations of papers published in other languages, transactions of the meetings of the Microscopical Society of London (later the

Royal Microscopical Society The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) is a learned society for the promotion of microscopy. It was founded in 1839 as the Microscopical Society of London making it the oldest organisation of its kind in the world. In 1866, the society gained it ...

), and book reviews. The journal also published short notes and memoranda, aimed "to gather up fragments of information, which singly might appear to be useless but together are of great importance to science"; the editors encouraged non-specialist submissions to this section, considering that "there are few possessors of a Microscope who have not met with some stray fact or facts which, published in this way, may not lead to important results." The editors also intended "to relieve the graver and more strictly scientific matter of the Journal by lighter contributions, such as will be found useful to the beginner, not uninteresting to the advanced observer, and of interest perhaps to the general reader." Lankester and Busk co-edited the journal until the end of 1868. Lankester continued to edit the journal with his son,

Ray Lankester Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (15 May 1847 – 13 August 1929) was a British zoologist.New International Encyclopaedia. An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was th ...

until the end of 1871.Bourne GC. (1919) Fifty years of the 'Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science' under the editorship of Sir E. Ray Lankester, K.C.B., M.A., D.Sc., LL.D, F.R.S. ''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'' 64: 1–17
(accessed 18 April 2008)

Under Ray Lankester and Edwin Goodrich

After Edwin Lankester's retirement,

remained an editor, with co-editors including E. Klein,

William Archer William or Bill Archer may refer to: * William Archer (British politician) (1677–1739), British politician * William S. Archer (1789–1855), U.S. Senator and Representative from Virginia * William Beatty Archer (1793–1870), Illinois politician ...

Joseph Frank Payne Joseph Frank Payne (1840–1910) was an English physician, known also as a historian of medicine. Life The son of Joseph Payne, a schoolmaster, and his wife Eliza Dyer who was also a teacher, he was born in the parish of St. Giles, Camberwell, ...

, and W. T. Thiselton Dyer. From 1878 until 1920, he served as the sole editor, amassing a total of over fifty years as an editor of the journal.

Bowler, PJ Peter J. Bowler (born 8 October 1944) is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics. His 1984 book, ''Evolution: The His ...

Lankester, Sir (Edwin) Ray (1847–1929)
''

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'' (Oxford University Press; 2004) (accessed 19 April 2008) The journal flourished under his guidance, becoming one of the leading British science journals. His successor,

Edwin Stephen Goodrich Edwin Stephen Goodrich FRS (Weston-super-Mare, 21 June 1868 – Oxford, 6 January 1946), was an English zoologist, specialising in comparative anatomy, embryology, palaeontology, and evolution. He held the Linacre Chair of Zoology in the Univer ...

, served as editor for twenty-five years, from 1920 until his death in 1946.

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

took over as publishers in 1920.

The Company of Biologists and relaunch

In 1946 or 1947,

George Parker Bidder George Parker Bidder (13 June 1806 – 20 September 1878) was an English engineer and calculating prodigy.W. W. Rouse Ball (1960) ''Calculating Prodigies'', in Mathematical Recreations and Essays, Macmillan, New York, chapter 13. Early life B ...

, then the owner, gave the journal to The Company of Biologists, a company he had founded in 1925 in a successful bid to rescue the failing '' British Journal of Experimental Biology''.Skaer R. Scientists as Publishers: The Company of Biologists Ltd. In: ''A Century of Science Publishing'' (Fredriksson EH, ed.) (IOS Press; 2001) (accessed 18 April 2008 a

)Baker JR, Callan HG. (1962) C. F. A. Pantin, Editor 1946 to 1960 ''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'' 103: 1–3
(accessed 18 April 2008) Initially, Oxford University Press remained the publishers on behalf of the Company of Biologists, but production was later transferred to

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

. In 1952, The Company of Biologists became a registered charity, and full editorial control passed to the journal's editor-in-chief. From 1946, the journal was edited jointly by Carl Pantin, an experimental zoologist and

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...

, and John Baker, a

cytologist Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

. Under the latter's influence, the journal accepted a growing number of papers in the relatively new discipline of cytology, now usually termed cell biology.Pantin CFA. (1965) J. R. Baker, Editor 1946 to 1964 ''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'' 106: 1–2
(accessed 18 April 2008) After Pantin's retirement in 1960, the scope of the journal was refocused on the field of cytology, which the editors defined as "Everything that relates directly to the structure, chemical composition, physical nature, and functions of animal and plant cells, or to the techniques that are used in cytological investigations". Subsequent editors include

H. G. Callan Harold Garnet Callan FRS FRSE (15 March 1917, in Maidenhead – 3 November 1993), known as Mick Callan, was an English zoologist and cytologist. He is especially remembered for his work on Lampbrush chromosomes. Life Callan was born in Maid ...

and A. V. Grimstone. In 1966, the journal was redesigned and relaunched under the new title ''Journal of Cell Science'', reflecting its altered scope. It continued to be published broadly quarterly until 1969, when the frequency increased to between six and nine issues per year. In the mid-to-late 1980s, to reduce publication lead times and compete more effectively with ''

Cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...

'' (which had been launched in 1974), The Company of Biologists moved away from Cambridge University Press and set up its own in-house typesetting and printing for its journals, by then three in number, becoming pioneers in using disks from authors. Publication frequency also increased, at first to ten issues in 1987, then monthly between 1988 and 1995, finally becoming fortnightly in December 1996.''Journal of Cell Science'': Archive of All Online Issues
(accessed 17 April 2008) Issues from 1853 are available online via the journal website and

HighWire Press HighWire is an internet hosting service in the United States specialising in academic and scholarly publications. HighWire-hosted publishers collectively make over 2 million articles available (out of 7.5 million articles) freely accessible. His ...

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. ...

s, with a text version additionally available from 2000. Content over 6 months old is freely available, and all articles are available to readers in developing countries via the

Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative Hinari Access to Research for Health Programme was set up by the World Health Organization and major publishers to enable developing countries to access collections of biomedical and health literature. There are up to 15,000 e-journals and up to ...

. Since 2004, authors have retained copyright of their material, licensing their contributions to the journal.

Scope and content

''Journal of Cell Sciences'' publishes original research articles and reports, techniques and resources, reviews, and primers across the full range of topics in cell biology. In addition to research papers and reviews, ''Journal of Cell Science'' includes critical commentaries and an occasional column, "Sticky Wickets", offering "controversial views of life-science research". When appropriate, some articles are grouped into subject collections. Collection topics covered include: *

Adhesion Adhesion is the tendency of dissimilar particles or surfaces to cling to one another ( cohesion refers to the tendency of similar or identical particles/surfaces to cling to one another). The forces that cause adhesion and cohesion can be ...

Autophagy Autophagy (or autophagocytosis; from the Ancient Greek , , meaning "self-devouring" and , , meaning "hollow") is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-dependent re ...

Cell biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

and

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...

Cilia The cilium, plural cilia (), is a membrane-bound organelle found on most types of eukaryotic cell, and certain microorganisms known as ciliates. Cilia are absent in bacteria and archaea. The cilium has the shape of a slender threadlike projecti ...

and

flagella A flagellum (; ) is a hairlike appendage that protrudes from certain plant and animal sperm cells, and from a wide range of microorganisms to provide motility. Many protists with flagella are termed as flagellates. A microorganism may have f ...

* Collective

cell migration Cell migration is a central process in the development and maintenance of multicellular organisms. Tissue formation during embryonic development, wound healing and immune responses all require the orchestrated movement of cells in particular dire ...

* ESCRT machinery * Establishing

polarity Polarity may refer to: Science *Electrical polarity, direction of electrical current *Polarity (mutual inductance), the relationship between components such as transformer windings * Polarity (projective geometry), in mathematics, a duality of ord ...

* Exploring the

nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: *Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucle ...

* Imaging *

Invadopodia Invadopodia are actin-rich protrusions of the plasma membrane that are associated with degradation of the extracellular matrix in cancer invasiveness and metastasis. Very similar to podosomes, invadopodia are found in invasive cancer cells and are ...

and

podosomes Podosomes are conical, actin-rich structures found on the outer surface of the plasma membrane of animal cells. Their size ranges from approximately 0.5 µm to 2.0 µm in diameter. While usually situated on the periphery of the cellular ...

Mechanotransduction In cellular biology, mechanotransduction ('' mechano'' + '' transduction'') is any of various mechanisms by which cells convert mechanical stimulus into electrochemical activity. This form of sensory transduction is responsible for a number of ...

* Microtubule dynamics *

Mitochondria A mitochondrion (; ) is an organelle found in the Cell (biology), cells of most Eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and Fungus, fungi. Mitochondria have a double lipid bilayer, membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosi ...

Stem cells In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type o ...

* Tools in cell biology *

Ubiquitin Ubiquitin is a small (8.6 kDa) regulatory protein found in most tissues of eukaryotic organisms, i.e., it is found ''ubiquitously''. It was discovered in 1975 by Gideon Goldstein and further characterized throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Fo ...

The journal operates on a continuous publication model. The final version of record is released online as soon as it is ready.

Abstracting and indexing

''Journal of Cell Science'' is abstracted and/or indexed by: * BIOBASE * CAM abstracts *

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts CSA (formerly ''Cambridge Scientific Abstracts'') was a division of Cambridge Information Group and provider of online databases, based in Bethesda, Maryland before merging with ProQuest of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2007. CSA hosted databases of ...

* Current Content * EMBASE * Clarivate Web of Science *

Medline MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medic ...

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

''Journal of Cell Science'' is a signatory of the

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) intends to halt the practice of correlating the journal impact factor to the merits of a specific scientist's contributions. Also according to this statement, this practice creates bias ...

(DORA).

Journal management

Michael Way ( Francis Crick Institute, UK) has been the

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

since 2012, when he took over from

Fiona Watt Fiona Watt, (born 28 March 1956) is a British scientist who is internationally known for her contributions to the field of stem cell biology. In the 1980s, when the field was in its infancy, she highlighted key characteristics of stem cells ...

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://jcs.biologists.org/ Delayed open access journals Publications established in 1853 Molecular and cellular biology journals Biweekly journals English-language journals The Company of Biologists academic journals