About Journal of Molecular Cell Biology

Journal of Molecular Cell Biology

The Journal of Molecular Cell Biology (JMCB) is a peer-reviewed, fully open-access scientific journal covering all areas of molecular and cell biology, published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in partnership with the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, and based in Shanghai, China (print ISSN 1674-2788; online ISSN 1759-4685). Launched in 2009 and sponsored by the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology in Shanghai, it was founded on an explicit premise stated by its founding editor: that science in China needed, and could benefit from, a high-profile international journal of its own. It publishes research articles and authoritative reviews on signal transduction, stem cells, development and disease mechanisms, and it received its first Journal Citation Reports impact factors above 7 within three years of launch — early evidence that the founding ambition was realistic.

From China, for the world: the 2009 launch

JMCB's first issue carried a launch editorial titled “JMCB: From China, for the World,” announcing the journal on behalf of its sponsoring institution and its international publisher. The journal is sponsored by the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (IBCB), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and jointly published with Oxford University Press; the Chinese Society for Cell Biology is also named among its sponsors in institute accounts. The founding editor explained the inspiration plainly: the idea that science in China was in need of, and could greatly benefit from, having a high-profile journal, and that both IBCB and OUP shared that strategic vision — their close collaboration proving instrumental to the launch. The journal assembled an outstanding international editorial board from the start, serving as scientific advisers and providing strategic guidance, and set out to be a high-profile venue for outstanding research articles and authoritative reviews in all areas of molecular and cell biology, and a first-rate forum for scientists worldwide. Its online version was freely available before the end of 2010, with an optional free-access model from 2011 — an early openness that anticipated its later conversion to full open access.

Why molecular and cell biology

The choice of field was deliberate, and the founding editorial argued it directly. Molecular and cell biology sit at the centre of modern life science: the level at which genes become processes, processes become cells, and cellular failures become disease. Shanghai's sponsoring institute — an institute of biochemistry and cell biology within the Chinese Academy of Sciences — was itself one of China's historic centres for exactly this work, so the journal's subject matched its sponsor's strength. A general-interest journal in this area, owned in Shanghai and published with OUP, could credibly invite the world's best cell biology rather than only China's — the distinction between a national journal that publishes international work occasionally and an international journal that happens to be based in China. JMCB has consistently presented itself as the second kind, and its subtitle-free, English-language, internationally board-led format was designed for that purpose from the first issue.

Aims and scope

JMCB describes itself in current listings as a full open-access, peer-reviewed online journal interested in interdisciplinary studies at the intersections between molecular and cell biology, publishing outstanding research articles and authoritative reviews in all areas of the two fields. Its subject scope, as the commissioning record for this profile summarises it, covers molecular and cell biology including signal transduction, stem cells, development and disease mechanisms. Bibliographic analyses of its published content confirm where its centre of gravity lies: cell biology is its largest research area by a wide margin, followed by cancer research and signal transduction, with molecular biology and genetics close behind; its most-cited papers include a major review on the lysosome as a therapeutic target, work on microRNAs in NF-κB signalling, and a widely used review of ribosomal proteins' functions beyond the ribosome. That pattern — organelles, signalling pathways, RNA regulation and cancer — is a fair portrait of molecular cell biology itself in the journal's first fifteen years.

Signal transduction, stem cells and disease mechanisms

Three threads run through the journal's scope statements and published record. Signal transduction — how cells receive, relay and interpret chemical and physical signals — is both a core topic and a bridge: the same pathway logic governs growth, immunity, metabolism and cancer. Stem cell biology and development form the second thread, from embryonic stem cells and differentiation to the regenerative possibilities that follow from understanding them; analyses of the journal's editions repeatedly surface embryonic stem cell work among its prominent topics. Disease mechanisms form the third: the journal has a standing interest in research that elucidates the molecular pathways involved in disease, particularly cancer, metabolic disorders and infectious disease, together with genomic and epigenomic regulation of gene expression and cellular identity. Host–pathogen interaction, including work prompted by SARS-CoV-2, appears in its recent scope as well — molecular cell biology applied at the point where a virus meets a cell.

Publishing model and open access

JMCB is published by Oxford University Press, appears six times a year according to bibliographic listings, and has been fully open access since 2019 — a conversion noted across journal directories, which list an article processing charge in the region of US$2,730, with waiver policies recorded for authors from developing countries. The open-access turn completed a trajectory begun at launch, when the online journal was made freely available in its first years under an optional model. For a journal whose founding complaint was that Chinese science lacked a high-profile venue of its own, open access solved the remaining half of the problem: not only could Chinese and international authors publish in a Shanghai-based international journal, but readers everywhere — including the Chinese provincial universities and institutes whose rise the journal was meant to serve — could read it without a subscription. Its content is indexed for discovery in the Directory of Open Access Journals as well as the citation databases.

Indexing and early impact

The journal is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and in Scopus, and abstracted in PubMed, as recorded in the commissioning brief and in indexing listings that also name Embase and the DOAJ. Its early citation performance was striking. The Shanghai institute's own reporting records that JMCB received an impact factor of 8.432 in the 2013 Journal Citation Reports — its third official impact factor, after 7.667 for 2011 and 7.308 for 2012 — figures that placed a three-year-old Chinese journal in territory normally occupied by long-established Western titles, and drew comment precisely because they demonstrated that a China-sponsored journal could achieve them quickly. Its then editor-in-chief, Professor Jiarui Wu, fronted the institute's announcement. Recent bibliometric listings are more modest — a Scopus CiteScore of 7.3 and SJR of 1.44, with Q1 standing in genetics and medicine categories and Q2 in cell and molecular biology — reflecting a larger, more competitive field rather than any change in the journal's basic position as an established international title.

A forum for scientists worldwide

The founding editorial set a second goal alongside quality: to provide a first-rate forum for scientists worldwide to communicate their exciting findings. That forum function explains the journal's mix of content. Original research articles carry new results, but the authoritative reviews JMCB commissions and accepts do different work — synthesising a fast-moving area, such as lysosome biology or ribosomal protein functions, into the form in which researchers outside a specialism can use it. Its international editorial board was recruited for the same purpose, serving as scientific advisers and providing strategic guidance rather than merely lending names. A journal sponsored by a single Shanghai institute thus deliberately operates as shared infrastructure for a global field: Chinese in ownership and address, international in editorship, authorship and intended readership, with its Shanghai sponsor and its Oxford publisher sharing, in the founder's account, one strategic vision of what such a forum should be.

Place in China's journal landscape

JMCB belongs to a small, influential cohort of Shanghai life-science journals built on the same formula in the same decade: academy-institute sponsorship, an international commercial or university-press partner, English-only publication and global editorial boards. Its nearest relative in spirit is Cell Research — also Shanghai-institute based — and its OUP partnership parallels the early history of Molecular Plant before that journal moved to Cell Press. Within that cohort JMCB is the generalist: where its siblings specialise, it takes all of molecular and cell biology as its territory. For WorldNM's directory of Chinese magazines and journals, it is a landmark title — not because it is the largest or the highest-ranked, but because its 2009 founding editorial said out loud what the whole cohort was attempting, and because its first impact factors, all above 7, were among the earliest proofs that the attempt could succeed. More than fifteen years after launch, sponsored from Shanghai, published from Oxford and read everywhere, it remains what its founder announced: a journal from China, for the world.