Genome Biology

About Genome Biology

Overview

Genome Biology (Genome Biol.; electronic ISSN 1474-760X) is an international peer-reviewed open access journal covering all areas of biology and biomedicine studied from a genomic and post-genomic perspective. It is published by BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature, and BioMed Central has described it as its flagship title covering biology in the post-genomic era (sources: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com journal information; BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

The journal occupies a distinguished place in scholarly publishing history. It was among the very first open access journals launched by BioMed Central, and it was the first journal that, from its inception, placed all research articles in full in PubMed Central immediately on publication — a practice now standard across open-access biomedical publishing but pioneering at the time of launch. From the outset, all of its research articles have been freely available online with no subscription charges or registration barriers (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

Genome Biology is run by a team of full-time in-house professional editors — a Chief Editor, Senior Editors, and Associate Editors based in London, Shanghai, New York, and Philadelphia — each with a doctoral research background in a relevant field (source: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board). The journal publishes continuously online, and all content is open access immediately on publication (source: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/about). Per the journal's Springer overview, it offers authors flexible formatting at first submission, transparent peer review, scoop protection (including for preprints), transfers and portable peer review, and it is an affiliate journal of the EMBO preprint peer review platform Review Commons.

History

Genome Biology was launched in 2000 by BioMed Central. Its founding editor was Dr Theodora Bloom, then BioMed Central's Editorial Director for Biology (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006). The journal was deliberately designed from the beginning to evolve continually in response to changes in biology, emerging technologies, and readers' requirements.

In its earliest years the journal used an innovative hybrid print-plus-online model: a monthly printed journal served as a "taster" and reminder, while the complete and up-to-date coverage lived on the website. Notably, research articles were never printed in full — they were reproduced in the print edition only in summary form, with the definitive, complete versions available freely online and in archives such as PubMed Central. This print-summary model was readily accepted by the research community (source: Genome Biology editorial, Genome Biol 6, 123 (2006), DOI 10.1186/gb-2005-6-13-123).

In 2003, the journal introduced a standard processing charge levied on accepted research articles to cover the costs of making articles freely and universally accessible online — an early implementation of the article-processing-charge (APC) model that now funds most open-access publishing (source: Genome Biology editorial, Genome Biol 6, 101 (2005), DOI 10.1186/gb-2004-6-1-101).

By late 2005, with the vast majority of readers already accessing articles through the website, the editorial team judged the print edition no longer necessary. From January 2006, Genome Biology became online-only, continuing as a monthly online issue with immediate publication of each article as soon as it became available, alongside downloadable laid-out PDFs (source: Genome Biology editorial, Genome Biol 6, 123 (2006)).

The journal quickly established a reputation for quality. Its first Journal Impact Factor, for 2005, was 9.71 — an exceptionally high debut that BioMed Central cited as evidence that leading researchers were increasingly choosing open access venues for their best work. By that point the journal had published more than 2,900 articles, recorded over 45,000 registrants and more than 100,000 article downloads per month, with over 4.9 million cumulative article downloads since launch, including papers from prominent groups such as those of Mark Gerstein, Eugene Koonin, John Quackenbush, Gerry Rubin and Chris Sander (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

The journal has published continuously ever since. In 2022, leadership passed to Chief Editor Veronique van den Berghe, who returned to the journal after earlier experience there and at Nature Biotechnology, Scientific Data and Communications Biology (source: official editorial board page).

Leadership and Editorial Team

The current Chief Editor of Genome Biology is Veronique van den Berghe, PhD. She earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at KU Leuven in Belgium, where she investigated the development and migration of cortical interneurons in the mouse embryo, and then carried out postdoctoral research at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Spain and at King's College London, studying how these neurons integrate into the postnatal brain. She first joined Genome Biology as a locum editor in 2018, subsequently worked at Nature Biotechnology, Scientific Data, and Communications Biology, and returned to take up the Chief Editor role in 2022. She is based in the London office (source: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board).

She is supported by two Senior Editors:

• Tim Sands, PhD — joined the journal in 2016 after several years editing titles in the BMC series journals. He received his PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Edinburgh, studying hybrid zones, and handles manuscripts on evolutionary genomics and systems biology. Based in London.
• Wenjing She, PhD — joined in 2020 as an Associate Editor. She completed her PhD at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Zurich, studying chromatin reprogramming during the reproductive cell fate transition in plants, followed by postdoctoral research on temperature sensing, apomixis, and epigenetic regulation during sexual reproduction at the University of Cambridge, the University of Zurich, and the John Innes Centre. Based in Shanghai.

The journal's Associate Editors are Claudia Feng, PhD (joined 2024; PhD from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, on large-scale CRISPR-based screens with single-cell transcriptional read-out; New York), Alison Monroe, PhD (joined 2025; PhD at KAUST in Saudi Arabia studying transcriptomic and proteomic responses to future climate change scenarios in fish, then a postdoc at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi; also an editor at BMC Marine Biology; Philadelphia), and Zhenrun (Jerry) Zhang, PhD (joined 2025; PhD at Rockefeller University on host–pathogen interactions using chemical proteomics and chemical biology tools, then postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago on the human gut microbiome, metagenomics, antimicrobial resistance and microbial functional genomics; Philadelphia) (source: official editorial board page, accessed October 2026).

Note: Older references occasionally name Andrew Cosgrove in connection with the journal, but the journal's current official editorial board page names Veronique van den Berghe as Chief Editor from 2022 onward; the in-house team listed above is the current editorial leadership.

Aims & Scope

According to its official aims and scope statement, Genome Biology covers all areas of biology and biomedicine studied from a genomic and post-genomic perspective. The journal publishes research articles, new methods and software tools, and reviews. Its scope includes, but is not limited to: sequence analysis; bioinformatics; insights into molecular, cellular, and organismal biology; functional genomics; epigenomics; population genomics; proteomics; comparative biology and evolution; systems and network biology; genome editing and engineering; genomics of disease; and clinical genomics. All content is open access immediately on publication (source: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/about).

Historically, the journal has described its remit as any aspect of molecular, cellular, organismal or population biology studied from a genomic or post-genomic perspective — including genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, genomic methods (including structure prediction), computational biology, sequence analysis (including large-scale and cross-genome analyses), and comparative biology and evolution. The journal also publishes reviews, meeting reports, opinion pieces, commentaries and editorials on a broad range of topics, including scientific, medical and policy issues relating to genomic, post-genomic and genome-scale analyses (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

In practice, this makes Genome Biology a broad, multidisciplinary home for genomics research: from computational methods and software that underpin modern sequencing analysis, to large-scale biological studies that draw on genomic data across organisms, populations, and disease. The inclusion of dedicated Software and Database article types reflects the journal's long-standing commitment to publishing the computational infrastructure of biology alongside the biology itself.

Editorial Process and Peer Review

Genome Biology operates a single-anonymous peer review system: the reviewers know the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Reviewers and editors are required to declare competing interests and can be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. All manuscripts — including those in collections and special issues — are assessed in line with the journal's editorial policies and peer review process (source: official submission guidelines, Peer review policy section).

How manuscripts are handled:

1. Editorial assessment. Manuscripts are first assessed by the journal's professional editors against the aims and scope and the journal's publication criteria.
2. Formal peer review. Typically, two or more independent experts evaluate each manuscript against three main criteria: scientific robustness (is the methodology sound and valid, and does the data support the conclusions?), originality (does the research duplicate already published work?), and clarity (is the manuscript clear and coherent enough for publication?).
3. Editorial decision. Editors make their decisions based on the reviewers' reports and may consult with members of the editorial board if necessary.

Research integrity. The Directory of Open Access Journals records that Genome Biology checks for plagiarism. The journal's Springer overview notes transparent peer review, scoop protection (including for preprints), flexible formatting at first submission, and transfers with portable peer review; the journal is also an affiliate of the EMBO preprint peer review platform Review Commons. Authors may name anyone they would prefer not to review their manuscript in their cover letter, and manuscripts may only be submitted by an author of the manuscript, not by a third party (sources: DOAJ journal entry; official submission guidelines).

Metrics and Impact

The following metrics are published on Genome Biology's official journal page on the Springer Nature platform (link.springer.com/journal/13059, accessed October 2026):

Historical note: the journal's first Journal Impact Factor (2005) was 9.71 — a remarkably high debut for a new open access title at the time, and a milestone BioMed Central highlighted as validation of its open access model (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006). Impact factors fluctuate year to year; readers should check the current figures on the journal's official metrics page, as they are updated annually.

Other externally reported figures (not published on the journal's own pages and therefore presented here for reference only): third-party journal databases report an SCImago Journal Rank of approximately 5.7 (Q1) and a journal h-index of about 319; the DOAJ entry estimates an average of 14 weeks from submission to publication. These should be checked against current Clarivate or Scopus data before citation.

Submission Guidelines

Genome Biology's official submission guidelines walk authors through preparing a manuscript. Key points from the official guidance (source: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines):

• Submission portal: Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system (linked from the "submit your manuscript" step on the submission guidelines page). A manuscript may only be submitted by an author of the manuscript, not by a third party.
• Article types: Research, Software, Database, Review, Correspondence, Methodology, Brief Report, and Matters Arising — each with its own formatting rules detailed on the guidelines page.
• Formatting quick points: Use double-line spacing; include line and page numbering; use SI units and embed all special characters; do not use page breaks. Acceptable editable formats include Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX), Rich Text Format (RTF), and TeX/LaTeX (a Springer Nature LaTeX template is available). PDFs alone are not sufficient — editable source files are required for production.
• Figures and tables: Figure titles are limited to 15 words and legends to 300 words, provided in the main manuscript rather than the graphic file; individual figure files should not exceed 10 MB. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any previously published material.
• Data and materials: All BioMed Central journals strongly encourage or require authors to provide the datasets behind their conclusions, deposited in publicly available repositories where appropriate (mandatory where community expectations require it). Every manuscript must include an "Availability of data and materials" section, and publicly available datasets must be fully referenced with an accession number or unique identifier such as a DOI. Software submissions should state the project name and home page, archived version (DOI or identifier), operating systems, programming language, other requirements, licence, and any restrictions on non-academic use.
• References: Only published, in-press, or publicly available preprint material may appear in the reference list; journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Any in-press articles needed for reviewer assessment should be made available on request.

Authors are also asked to familiarise themselves with the journal's editorial policies, licensing and copyright terms, and fee information before submitting.

Open Access and APC

Genome Biology is a fully open access journal: all content is freely available to read immediately on publication, with no subscription charges or registration barriers (source: official submission guidelines).

An article processing charge (APC) applies to each accepted article. The current APC for Genome Biology is £3,790.00 GBP / $5,690.00 USD / €4,690.00 EUR; the APC for a Brief Report is £2,850.00 GBP / $4,280.00 USD / €3,520.00 EUR. The fee is subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, and the APC price is determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication. APC figures change over time — verify the current charges on the journal's official submission guidelines page before relying on any number (source: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Licensing: Articles are published under a CC BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International) or CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International) licence; under Creative Commons licences, authors retain copyright of their articles. Licence variations are available to meet funder and institutional open-access licence requirements.

Funding, discounts, and waivers: Springer Nature operates open access agreements with institutions that can cover publishing costs, and authors may be able to draw on funder or institutional open access funding. APC waivers and discounts are available for fully open access journals for corresponding authors based in the world's lowest income countries, and requests from other authors are considered on a case-by-case basis where there is financial need. All applications for discretionary waivers or discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission — requests made during review or after acceptance cannot be considered (source: official submission guidelines).

Indexing

Genome Biology's Springer Nature journal page lists 37 abstracting and indexing services covering the journal, including:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
• Scopus
• MEDLINE / PubMed
• PubMed Central
• Embase
• BIOSIS
• CAB Abstracts
• DOAJ
• Zoological Record
• Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)
• Google Scholar
• Dimensions
• SCImago
• AGRICOLA, ANVUR, BFI List, Baidu, CLOCKSS, CNKI, CNPIEC, CAMS, EMBiology, Gale, GoOA (CAS), JST, Meta, Naver, Norwegian Register, OCLC WorldCat, Ovid, Portico, ProQuest, Reaxys, TD Net, Wanfang, and eLibrary.ru

The journal is also listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (ISSN 1474-760X), which notes archiving in LOCKSS and PubMed Central with DOI as the permanent article identifier. As noted above, Genome Biology was the first journal that, from its inception, deposited all research articles in full in PubMed Central immediately on publication (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

Notable Landmarks

• 2000: Genome Biology is launched by BioMed Central with founding editor Theodora Bloom — among the first open-access journals from the publisher.
• 2000 (launch): The journal becomes the first to place all research articles in full in PubMed Central immediately on publication, from its inception.
• 2003: Introduction of a standard article processing charge on accepted research articles to fund universal free access — an early adopter of the APC model (per the journal's own 2005 editorial).
• 2004: Publication of the Bioconductor paper — "Bioconductor: open software development for computational biology and bioinformatics" (Gentleman, Carey, Bates et al., Genome Biol. 2004, 5:R80) — introducing the open-source R-based software ecosystem that became the foundation of genomic analysis worldwide.
• 2006: Transition to online-only publication (from January 2006), while retaining monthly online issues and downloadable PDFs.
• 2006: First impact factor of 9.71 (2005 citation year), with the publisher reporting over 2,900 articles published, 45,000+ registrants and 100,000+ monthly article downloads.
• 2009: Publication of "Ultrafast and memory-efficient alignment of short DNA sequences to the human genome" (Langmead, Trapnell, Pop & Salzberg, Genome Biol. 2009, 10:R25) — the Bowtie aligner paper, a foundation of the short-read alignment era.
• 2010: Publication of "Differential expression analysis for sequence count data" (Anders & Huber, Genome Biol. 2010, 11:R106) — the DESeq paper behind one of the most widely used RNA-seq differential-expression methods.
• 2013: Publication of "TopHat2: accurate alignment of transcriptomes in the presence of insertions, deletions and gene fusions" (Kim, Pertea, Trapnell et al., Genome Biol. 2013, 14:R36), which became a standard RNA-seq alignment method.
• 2014: Publication of "Moderated estimation of fold change and dispersion for RNA-seq data with DESeq2" (Love, Huber & Anders, Genome Biol. 2014, 15:550) — among the most cited papers in the history of computational biology.
• 2006–present: Continuous online publication of research, methods, software tools, databases, reviews and commentary across genomics and post-genomic biology.
• 2022: Veronique van den Berghe becomes Chief Editor, returning after earlier stints at the journal (2018) and at Nature Biotechnology, Scientific Data and Communications Biology.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Genome Biology?

Genome Biology is an international peer-reviewed open access journal published by BioMed Central (part of Springer Nature) covering all areas of biology and biomedicine studied from a genomic and post-genomic perspective — including sequence analysis, bioinformatics, functional genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, systems biology, genome editing, and clinical genomics.

Who publishes Genome Biology?

It is published by BioMed Central Ltd., which is part of Springer Nature. BioMed Central has described Genome Biology as its flagship title in post-genomic biology (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

When was Genome Biology founded?

The journal was launched in 2000. Its founding editor was Dr Theodora Bloom, then BioMed Central's Editorial Director for Biology (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

What is Genome Biology's impact factor?

According to the journal's official metrics page on the Springer Nature platform, Genome Biology's Journal Impact Factor is 9.2 (2025), with a 5-year Impact Factor of 13.7 (2025). The journal's very first Impact Factor, for 2005, was 9.71 (source: link.springer.com/journal/13059; BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006). Figures are updated annually — check the official metrics page for the current values.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief of Genome Biology?

Veronique van den Berghe, PhD, has been Chief Editor since 2022. She earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at KU Leuven and previously worked at Nature Biotechnology, Scientific Data, and Communications Biology (source: official editorial board page).

Is Genome Biology open access?

Yes. Genome Biology is a fully open access journal — all content is freely available immediately on publication. It was a trailblazer in this model: the first journal to place all of its research articles in full in PubMed Central immediately on publication, from its inception (source: BioMed Central press announcement, June 2006).

What is the article processing charge (APC)?

The current APC is £3,790.00 GBP / $5,690.00 USD / €4,690.00 EUR per accepted article (Brief Report: £2,850.00 GBP / $4,280.00 USD / €3,520.00 EUR), subject to VAT or local taxes. Fees change over time, so verify the current figure on the journal's official submission guidelines page before submitting. Waivers and discounts are available for authors in qualifying circumstances.

How does peer review work at Genome Biology?

The journal uses single-anonymous peer review: reviewers know the authors' identities, but reports to authors are anonymous. Typically two or more independent experts evaluate each manuscript on scientific robustness, originality, and clarity, and the editors make decisions based on their reports (source: official submission guidelines).

How long does Genome Biology take to make a first decision?

The median time from submission to first editorial decision is 13 days, according to the journal's official metrics (source: link.springer.com/journal/13059, accessed October 2026).

What is Genome Biology's acceptance rate?

The journal does not publicly disclose its acceptance rate.

What types of articles does Genome Biology publish?

Research, Software, Database, Review, Correspondence, Methodology, Brief Report, and Matters Arising — each with its own formatting guidelines. The dedicated Software and Database article types reflect the journal's central role in publishing bioinformatics tools such as Bioconductor, DESeq, DESeq2, TopHat2 and Bowtie.

Where can I submit to Genome Biology?

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system, reached via the "submit your manuscript" step on the official submission guidelines page at genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines. Only an author of the manuscript may submit it.

Sources

This profile was compiled from the following official and reference sources (all accessed October 2026). Every factual claim above is drawn from these pages; figures not published by the journal itself are explicitly flagged in the text.

• Genome Biology — Journal home and metrics: https://link.springer.com/journal/13059
• Genome Biology — Aims and scope: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/about
• Genome Biology — Editorial board: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board
• Genome Biology — Submission guidelines (aims, fees, licensing, manuscript preparation, data policy, peer review policy): https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines
• Genome Biology — How to publish with us (fees and funding, APCs, waivers): https://link.springer.com/journal/13059/how-to-publish-with-us
• Genome Biology — Editorial, "Genome Biol 6, 123 (2006)" (launch history, online-only transition): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/gb-2005-6-13-123
• Genome Biology — Editorial, "Genome Biol 6, 101 (2005)" (2003 APC introduction, PubMed Central policy): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/gb-2004-6-1-101
• BioMed Central press announcement — "Genome Biology's first Impact Factor – 9.71" (June 2006): https://www.innovations-report.com/life-sciences/report-66597/
• Genome Biology — Directory of Open Access Journals entry (ISSN 1474-760X): https://doaj.org/toc/1474-760X
• Genome Biology — Wikipedia entry (bibliographic details, indexing list, JCR figures): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_Biology
• Landmark papers cited via their Springer Nature article pages: Bioconductor (2004, 5:R80), DESeq (2010, 11:R106; 10.1186/gb-2010-11-10-r106), TopHat2 (2013, 14:R36; 10.1186/gb-2013-14-4-r36), DESeq2 (2014, 15:550), Bowtie (2009, 10:R25)

Figures explicitly not officially published by the journal: acceptance rate (not published), CiteScore/SJR/h-index (third-party databases only), submission-to-publication time beyond the journal's own 13-day median to first decision (DOAJ estimates 14 weeks average). All figures on this page should be re-verified against the journal's official pages before citation, as metrics and policies change over time.

Profile compiled October 2026 from official Genome Biology, BioMed Central, and Springer Nature sources listed above and in the accompanying sources file.