Thursday, June 30, 2011

Impact Factors of Indian Science Journals in 2011

Year

Impact Factor (IF)

Total Articles

Total Cites

2010

1.826

166

3169

2009

1.516

178

2812

2008

1.883

178

2458

 

                                                                                      Indian Journal of Medical Research

 

Year

Impact Factor (IF)

Total Articles

Total Cites

2010

1.494

77

414

2009

0.813

77

194

2008

0.358

77

58

 

                                                                                      Journal of Genetics

 

Year

Impact Factor (IF)

Total Articles

Total Cites

2010

1.888

60

1630

2009

1.956

82

1274

2008

1.703

82

1045

 

                                                                                      Journal of Biosciences

 

Year

Impact Factor (IF)

Total Articles

Total Cites

2010

0.824

58

696

2009

0.574

59

696

2008

0.579

59

603

 

                                                                                       Indian Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics

 

 

Journal of Biosciences Impact Factor reversing

Year Impact Factor (IF) Total Articles Total Cites
2010 1.888 60 1630
2009 1.956 82 1274
2008 1.703 82 1045

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

PLoS ONE's 2010 Impact Factor is 4.411

PLoS ONE received its 2010 journal impact factor today, 4.411, placing the open access journal in 12th spot among 85 Biology journals.

The open access journal, published by the Public Library of Science, has grown rapidly since its launch in December, 2006. In 2010, it published nearly 7,000 articles and became the largest scientific journal in the world. Based on this trajectory, the publisher predicts 12,000 published articles by the end of 2011.

PLoS ONE is based on a scalable publishing model with an editorial board of 1,300 volunteer academics. As an online-only publication, the growth of the journal is nearly limitless: The journal is purposefully interdisciplinary in nature, bases criteria for inclusion primarily on "sound methodology," not novelty, and pays for itself through individual article fees. At the 2011 SSP Annual Conference, PLoS ONE publisher, Peter Binfield, believes that we've entered the era of the "OA Mega Journal." According to his predictions, by 2016, 50% of all STM articles will be published by 100 of these mega journals.

The metaphor to describe this new publishing model could go both ways: For the cynical, PLoS ONE is an alien Blob that is bent on devouring the publishing landscape; for its supporters, it represents a successful model to be emulated — and emulated it has.  In the last two years, many subscription publishers have launched PLoS ONE-like journals (SAGE OpenBMJ Open,Biology Open, and Open Biology, to name a few) into the growing market, promising similar services–fast publication, high-acceptance, and article-level metrics — at competing prices.

Expect several more entrants this year.

To continue reading this article by Phil Davis please visit The Scholarly Kitchen

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

'Indians could actually be refrectory to the German E. coli strain' - Lothar Wieler


My friend, Lothar Wieler, called this evening from Berlin and informed that they are now tracing the history of the bacteria, and will be out in the field going after cows, trash and soil to know the natural descent of the outbreak strain! so that its kinships are established. This is now the natural scientific way out as the latest analysis released by the BJI indicates that the two German strains (01-09591 originally isolated in 2001 and TY2482 from the 2011 outbreak) have clonal profiles for all 12 virulence/fitness genes and 7 MLST housekeeping genes (100% identity). However, at some point over this 10-year period, the new 2011 outbreak strain might have accumulated mutations/plasmids that conferred ability to resist many additional types of antibiotics. In simple words, the source of the German EHEC outbreak is home grown - their own EAEC strain from a 2001 outbreak.



I am hopeful Lothar and his team will succeed in their efforts. We discussed also the possibility that the new isolate being interoaggregative could become pandemic if certain patients turn chronic carriers and could take the bug with them on travel routes. The EU therefore should be proactive on containment of this outbreak within the boundaries of Germany. Lothar, (who is always surprised and amused on visibly unhygienic conditions in certain parts of India, such as heaps of garbage, open drains etc., and apparently healthy people with no institutionalized outbreaks! ) then laughed loud to say Indians could actually be immune to the EHEC like strains - so no worries!! and, I agree. So sometimes the cow dung around us could be 'auspicious' in many ways!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Crowdsourcing annotation of the German (monster-) E. coli (STEC O104:H4)?

By Mariam Rizkallah - Open Source Pharmacist
 
(added by Niyaz Ahmed ->> Gut Pathogens will consider to publish any such annotation study on priority!) 

As soon as Beijing Genomics Institute has finished sequencing the E. coli strain that is responsible for the outbreak in Europe, BGI made the "draft assembly" available for download. I didn't know the difference between a draft and the elegant assembled genome I used to work on while annotating phage capsid proteins, but I did believe that this outbreak idea is a phage thing, you know, "Cherchez le phage!" I wanted to annotate this E. coli.

I suggested to Dr. Aziz that this "genome sequence" may benefit from RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology – http://rast.nmpdr.org), the tool developed by Dr. Edwards' Lab and ANL for rapid and accurate annotation of bacterial and archaeal genomes. Dr. Aziz replied "Then what are you waiting for? Upload it to RAST". Then he told me how the draft is in "FASTQ" format, a machine output format that can not be an input for RAST (and for Real-Time Metagenomics.web in particular http://edwards.sdsu.edu/rtmg/). Dr. Aziz explained to me that each "run/genome fragment" will be treated as metagenome, that's why I should use RTMg.

Step1: Convert sequences from fastq to fasta: I searched the web for the problem, then I found this one-line program in Perl by Robert Schmeider, PhD student at Dr. Edwards' lab on his lab blog. I am very grateful, Robert!

Step2: Uploading the draft in fasta format to RTMg as separate "runs". I don't know if it's the right measure, or I should've collected all "runs" in one big fasta file and let RTMg process them.

Step3:I made use of the "tab-separated" output of RTMg and saved it to a spreadsheet (I do apologize, but the spreadsheet on Google is not viewable, please download it to edit it). I saved the results sorted by "function" and by "3-level subsystem".

Step4: ??? I don't know really. I do want to make use of RTMg data, but I don't know where to start. I guess aligning the 5 runs as well as the strain vs other E. coli strains will be the answer. Community will take STEC O104:H4 down sooner than "it thought".

I quote Dr. Aziz here:

"RTMg is mainly a tool for metagenomics analysis, and it treats every sequence read as an environmental gene tag (EGT) or simply as an independent fragment. It cannot be really used to explain a genome; however, it gives a really quick ideaof what each sequence looks like, of the ratio of different genes, of the most frequent protein-encoding genes in this strain, the density of phage proteins (for example, you can write a script to count the word phage and calculate its percent to the overall genome), etc.

There are two main things needed though before this: 1) is to clean up the sequence fragments; 2) is to assemble them (using, for example, NEWBLER). To check the sequence and clean it up check: Prinseq and Tagcleaner then re-run. Another way to benefit from RTMg would be to compare that strain with another one sequenced exactly the same way, which is not relevant here."