Welcome to the first issue of Future Drug Discovery

Abstract

Hello and welcome to the inaugural issue of Future Drug Discovery, your new peer-review, open-access journal for drug discovery and development research. We are delighted to be joining forces with our international, expert advisory board [1] to launch this new endeavor, which will seek to drive drug discovery research by taking a multidisciplinary and forward-looking stance.Each of our quarterly issues will bring you research and review articles covering the latest advances and hot topics in the field, in addition to opinion and discussion articles covering topics of relevance to the community -all in a free-to-read format.Our first issue begins with an Editorial by Jürgen Bajorath (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität), aptly discussing the current status of, and future perspectives for, publishing and open access in drug discovery [2]. His article gives a very nice overview of recent trends in the communication of drug discovery research and discusses the increasing importance -yet continuing controversies -surrounding open access and open science in this field. If you are unsure why an open-access drug discovery journal is needed, I recommend reading his article.With Future Drug Discovery, we have created a journal that will allow discussion about the field as a whole, as well as provide a space for publication and discussion of research findings. In addition to research and review articles, we shall be publishing opinion pieces in the form of short editorials (for niche/new topics) and perspectives (for larger topic areas), and short commentaries providing an update on a particular topic. We also have different forms of research articles available -short communications will provide authors the opportunity to publish results that are inconclusive or negative, or to provide updates on previous publications. Methodologies will allow the presentation specifically of a method, and preliminary communications will present early-stage results.Our journal articles will have various metrics available. These will include measures of reads: Altmetrics, which measures the online impact of an article through its mentions on social media and in news outlets; and Dimensions, which track citations. We shall also be partnering with RxNet [12], a community space for discussion of drug R&D, and ScienceOpen [13], a discovery service. This will increase the reach of our articles and also allow readers to delve into reference lists and perform postpublication peer review -I will note here that our articles will be undergoing double-blind prepublication peer review as standard.In addition to the aforementioned article from Bajorath, this first issue includes two articles discussing life in the drug discovery field. The first sees Michael Holzwarth (Actavalon Inc.) comment on the challenges facing biotech start-ups -both for staff and the company as a whole -and how a science incubator can help [3]. The next is an interview with Pauline Lukey, an independent consultant, who discusses moving careers from the pharma industry to co...