Meeting Abstract

 

48-7  Saturday, Jan. 5 09:30 – 09:45  Integrative Organismal Biology – a journal of the Society for integrative and Comparative Biology SUMMERS, A.P.*; BLOB, R.W.; BUTLER, M.A.; FARMER, C.G.; FASSBINDER-ORTH, C.A.; HERNANDEZ, L.P.; MOORE, I.T.; MULLER, U.K.; SATTERLIE, R.A.; WILLIAMS, S.H.; SUMMERS, Adam; Friday Harbor Labs; Clemson University; University of Hawaii; Trinity College, Dublin; Creighton University; George Washington University; Virginia Tech; CSU Fresno; UNC-Wilmington; Ohio University fishguy@uw.edu

We are excited to announce the launch of Integrative Organismal Biology, an open access journal that will serve as an organizing center for our field. Recent efforts to define grand challenges have made clear the need to integrate across disciplines that form modern organismal biology. SICB has flourished, demonstrating there is a critical mass of biologists who value and benefit from the diversity of thought and approaches that span the society’s divisions. There is a pressing need for an intellectual outlet that showcases our best integrative endeavors. For example, we have comparative endocrinologists fundamentally interested in the ecology and evolution of their study organisms, neurobiologists working on the biomechanics of feedback systems, and physiologists making advances in behavior and ecology. Integrative Organismal Biology (IOB) will give structure to the broad field and serve as a signpost for funding agencies, foundations, and national policy discussions. Integrative Organismal Biology will define and push the edges of integrative and comparative biology, putting it on stage with, and complementing, more reductionist and abstract flavors of biology. IOB will be: (1) explicitly and fundamentally integrative; showcasing work that is broader than a typical disciplinary journal; (2) open-access; and (3) a voice for diverse authors through inclusive and empowering policies, including double-blind peer review, and an explicitly constructive peer review process.