About Electronic Journal of Biotechnology

Electronic Journal of Biotechnology is an international scientific electronic journal which publishes papers from all areas related to Biotechnology. It covers from molecular biology and the chemistry of biological process to aquatic and earth environmental aspects, as well as computational applications, policy and ethical issues directly related to Biotechnology. Molecular biology, genetic engineering, microbial biotechnology, plant biotechnology, animal biotechnology, marine biotechnology, environmental biotechnology, biological processes, industrial applications, bioinformatics and others are some of the main subjects considered. Papers concerning multidisciplinary research are particularly welcomed. This journal will be constrained to ethic canons.

Electronic Journal of Biotechnology provides an effective way to publish research papers and review articles. Also short communications are welcomed. Publication is free of charge. The articles will be managed electronically, examined by a scientific committee and anonymous evaluators and published triannual in HTML and PDF formats. The journal will maintain the essential characteristics of scientific publications: to have an Editorial Board that evaluates the quality of the article contents, to reflect the state of the art in sciences provided that they make an important contribution to the wealth of knowledge in the subject. The electronic media allows us to overcome the deficiencies of paper editions in terms of its immediateness and the incorporation of multimedia and hypertext.

Why an electronic journal?

The world has been globalized. The digitilization of communications have made it possible. The way of communicating, storing and processing scientific knowledge is also changing. The scientific journal in paper edition has been for a long time the most important media of communication of the internacional scientific community. Information networks, multimedia developments and other technological advancements lead us to think about the formats of the scientific publications, rescuing those essential aspects to guarantee the seriousness and reliability of the process and incorporating the facilities that an electronic, tridimensional, instantaneous and animated media offers.

Universidad Católica de Valparaíso and CONICYT have decided in 1997 to create a new scientific journal in electronic format. A new publication has been created (not by transforming a pre existing journal), in order to overcome the limitations of the paper editions. The idea is to explore the possibilities that this new type of format offers and maintaining all those essential elements that made the scientific journal an efficient means dissemination of the scientific knowledge. It pretends to incorporate the new facilities offered by a digital world and it has, by no means, been an easy task.

The experience gathered will permit us to improve this media. Our interest is to share this experience with other editors and to have an impact on the way that scientists prepare scientific communications, as well as in their way of updating, reading and studying.

This new format to publish journals can be evaluated in different ways, being some tools supplied by scientiometrics. We ask ourselves if the traditional indicators, impact and relevance, can be applied to an electronic journal. We also want to know to what extent the reluctancy to change will produce a tardy reaction in the production of reference data bases and on the subsequent indexing process of this type of journal. Another interesting question is whether the big editorial houses, that in many cases administer these abstracts are going to permit the proliferation of serious publications in media not controlled by them, with low costs and a faster capacity to publish.

The questions are many. The media is a challenge. The opportunity is ours.

Further information about the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology can be found in the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology FAQ.