Journal of Circadian Rhythms: 10th anniversary

The year in which this editorial is being published (2013) marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Journal of Circadian Rhythms. Back in 2003, I wrote that “various researchers in the United States, Europe, and developing countries believe that scientific publishing in the 21st century will be characterized by open access to (peer-reviewed) articles, freely and universally available on-line to readers worldwide”. Since the launch of the journal, electronic publishing has gone from a rarity to commonplace – and, although there are still many subscription based journals, the success of open access and the “author pays” model is becoming more and more evident. Many large publishers today include fully open access titles within their journal portfolios, and submissions to BioMed Central (the publisher of the Journal of Circadian Rhythms) have increased from under 5000 in 2003 to over 40,000 in 2011 [1]. In recognition of the fact that new research must not lose sight of the fundamentals established in the past, I invited Professor Franz Halberg to write the very first article published in the journal [2]. Halberg, the creator of the term circadian and foremost advocate of the discipline of chronobiology, had been a leading figure in biological rhythm research for over 50 years and is still very active today, a few years shy of his 100th birthday. The article recounted his trajectory from the discovery of circadian rhythms to the development of the notion of the chronome, a notion that he continues to advocate with great enthusiasm through numerous theoretical articles and internationally collaborative medical research. His article elicited great interest in readers, who have so far downloaded it over 40,000 times (the highest number of downloads of any article published in the journal to date). Many articles have been published since the publication of Halberg’s inaugural article. Of all articles published in the Journal of Circadian Rhythms to date, 10% were literature reviews, 57% were basic-science research articles, and 33% were clinical/applied articles. The