Interview with Erchin Serpedin—Editor-in-Chief of the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology

In this latest interview of our blog series about the SpringerOpen EURASIP journals, you will learn more about the Editor-in-Chief of the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Erchin Serpedin. He talks about the journal’s field, open access and more.

Please note that this information is not up to date. For up to date information on the current editorial board please visit the journal website.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, and my research expertise lies in the fields of signal processing, machine learning, computational statistics, and applied mathematics with applications in bioinformatics, systems biology and biomedical engineering.

Why did you decide to become Editor-in-Chief of the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at the time, and what are your ambitions for the journal in the future?

EURAISP_JBSBThe EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (JBSB) is a young journal that represents the small community of electrical and computer engineers who are working in the fields of bioinformatics and systems biology. My goal for JBSB when accepting the role as JBSB’s Editor-in-Chief was and still is to increase the number of quality submissions to JBSB, to increase the journal’s prestige and the visibility of the research published in the journal (as the journal’s open access model means that researchers and also clinicians and practitioners have unfettered access to the research). In this regard, I am hoping that many other communities of researchers and scientists will submit their excellent research to JBSB.

How has the journal’s field advanced in the last few years and what do you think will be an important focus of research in the next several years?

Most of the important research problems in the areas of bioinformatics and systems biology are still open, and the progress towards solving them is still very slow. During the recent years more emphasis is being put on a more comprehensive systems biology based approach for understanding the complex relationships between different biological processes with the major aim to develop more effective drugs. The ‘omics’-revolution is currently shaping many research efforts in computational biology and requires novel computational tools to deal with large as well as small size data sets. In the same time, more accurate and robust statistical inference tools are required to extract information from multiple data sets that often are of different nature. Intelligent algorithms are needed also to support the current translational efforts towards personalized medicine. Efficient data mining algorithms are also needed to search fast and extract information from multiple big data sets. Building electronic personalized health records that enable efficient tracking in real-time of a person health status is another open research problem.

What advice would you give a researcher before submitting to the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology?

I suggest all potential authors to check the papers that have already been published in JBSB

I recommend all authors to read carefully the Submission Guidelines posted on the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology website before submitting any paper. Understanding the type of papers that are accepted for publication in JBSB helps to avoid undesired rejections. Therefore, I suggest all potential authors to check the papers that have already been published in JBSB and understand the format and the level of technical content required for acceptance.

How do you see open access helping (or not) the development of your EURASIP journal?

I believe that open access helps the development of the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology because any reader can freely access any paper published in JBSB. Therefore, a broader audience is expected. Providing free access to information is perhaps the best benefit offered by open access.

 

Visit the journal website to learn more about the EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology


 

© vege / Fotolia
© vege / Fotolia

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