EMBO Press

EMBO Press
Embocomm · Public domain · source
Name	EMBO Press
Formation	2013
Type	Academic publisher
Headquarters	Heidelberg
Location	Germany
Parent organization	European Molecular Biology Organization

EMBO Press EMBO Press is the publishing arm of the European Molecular Biology Organization established to manage a portfolio of life sciences journals and to set editorial standards for molecular biology publishing. It operates within the scientific landscape alongside publishers such as Nature Publishing Group, Cell Press, Public Library of Science, Oxford University Press, and Springer Nature, and collaborates with institutions including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Max Planck Society, Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the European Research Council. EMBO Press plays a role in initiatives that involve stakeholders like COPE, DOAJ, CrossRef, ORCID, and Plan S.

History

EMBO Press was created in 2013 by the European Molecular Biology Organization to consolidate the editorial management of flagship journals previously associated with EMBO. Its establishment paralleled changes in scholarly communication observed after events such as the launch of PubMed Central and the growth of bioRxiv, and it emerged during debates echoed at meetings such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The imprint built upon legacies linked to journals founded in the 1970s and 1980s, a period that saw seminal work from laboratories affiliated with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Pasteur Institute. EMBO Press expanded its remit in contexts influenced by funding policy shifts led by agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, and national funders across the European Union.

Organization and governance

EMBO Press is overseen by the governing bodies of the European Molecular Biology Organization and integrates advisory input from editorial boards drawn from academic centers such as the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its governance model interfaces with professional bodies including the Committee on Publication Ethics and technical services from CrossRef and ORCID to manage persistent identifiers and metadata. Editorial decision-making involves editors with affiliations to institutions like Stanford University, Harvard University, ETH Zurich, University College London, and the University of Tokyo, while strategic direction aligns with funders such as the European Research Council and philanthropic organizations like the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Journals and publications

EMBO Press publishes several peer-reviewed journals and associated formats, including flagship periodicals that attract submissions from researchers at entities such as the Salk Institute, the Whitehead Institute, the Johns Hopkins University, the Pasteur Institute, and the Riken Institute. Titles under its management encompass experimental and review formats, editorial commentary, and methods papers paralleling offerings from Cell, Nature, Science (journal), PNAS, and eLife. The journals are a venue for studies originating from consortia and laboratories that have contributed to landmark findings tied to institutions like the Broad Institute, the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Francis Crick Institute, and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine.

Editorial policies and research integrity

Editorial policies at EMBO Press align with standards promoted by organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and infrastructure providers like CrossRef and DataCite. Policies address issues including authorship disputes, data availability, image integrity, and peer review processes similar to considerations raised in controversies involving high-profile retractions from journals linked to Nature Publishing Group, Elsevier, and historical cases at institutions like the Karolinska Institute. The press implements procedures for handling allegations that reference best practices used by agencies such as the Office of Research Integrity and embraces transparency measures that have been advocated by groups such as the Reproducibility Project and the Open Science Framework.

Open access and licensing

EMBO Press engages with open access models and licensing frameworks debated in forums like the Budapest Open Access Initiative and negotiations associated with Plan S. Licensing choices incorporate Creative Commons schemes familiar from publishers including Public Library of Science and BMC (BioMed Central), and the press participates in transformative agreements that intersect with consortia such as Projekt DEAL and national negotiations with libraries like the Bodleian Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Its policies on preprints reflect the growing role of servers like bioRxiv and medRxiv in life sciences dissemination.

Impact and reception

The journals managed by EMBO Press are cited in works from laboratories at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, the Salk Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Max Planck Society, and they contribute to citation networks that include outputs in Nature Communications, Science Advances, and Cell Reports. Reception among researchers is shaped by comparisons with publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis, and by assessments from ranking services and bibliometric analyses conducted by groups like Clarivate Analytics and Scimago Institutions Rankings. Debates over access, editorial independence, and reproducibility that involve EMBO Press have paralleled discussions at conferences such as the Gordon Research Conferences and policy forums hosted by the European Commission.

Category:Academic publishing Category:Science publishing companies