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Molecular Omics publishes high-quality research in the -omics sciences. We welcome scientific research based on the application of any -omics technology and we encourage multi-omics approaches to solving important chemical or biological problems. This includes combining different types of omics platforms encompassing genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and other specialized areas such as glycomics and lipidomics, as well as innovative bioinformatics approaches.

 

 

  

Robert Moritz - Chair

Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA

Impact factor: 2.273* (Partial)
Publishing frequency: 6 issues per year 
Indexed/abstracted in: MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science

A trusted editorial team

Our rigorous peer review process ensures transparency, fairness and balance

Open Access options

We can help you improve the visibility of your work and meet funder mandates

No cost to publish

We don't charge submission, page or colour charges - and we offer free electronic reprints

Pre-prints welcome

We accept submissions of manuscripts that have previously been posted as pre-prints

Copyright is yours

We believe the copyright of your work should always belong to you, so we only ask for a licence to publish it

A focus on community

Because the Royal Society of Chemistry re-invests all surplus back into the global scientific community, you can raise your profile and support international scientific progress at the same time

Scope

Molecular Omics publishes high-quality research from across the -omics sciences.

Topics include, but are not limited to: 

  • omics studies to gain mechanistic insight into biological processes – for example, determining the mode of action of a drug or the basis of a particular phenotype, such as drought tolerance 
  • omics studies for clinical applications with validation, such as finding biomarkers for diagnostics or potential new drug targets 
  • omics studies looking at the sub-cellular make-up of cells – for example, the subcellular localisation of certain proteins or post-translational modifications or new imaging techniques 
  • studies presenting new methods and tools to support omics studies, including new spectroscopic/chromatographic techniques, chip-based/array technologies and new classification/data analysis techniques. New methods should be proven and demonstrate an advance in the field. 

Molecular Omics only accepts articles of high importance and interest that provide significant new insight into important chemical or biological problems. This could be fundamental research that significantly increases understanding or research that demonstrates clear functional benefits. 

Papers reporting new results that could be routinely predicted, do not show a significant improvement over known research, or are of interest only to the specialist in the area are not suitable for publication in Molecular Omics.

Article types

Molecular Omics publishes:

  • Research articles
  • Reviews
  • Comments

Submitting a Review
If you are interested in submitting a review, please complete a Review proposal form and email the Editorial Office.

See more information about these article types

Research Article

All new research in Molecular Omics is published in the Research Article format. Research Articles have no page limits, although most articles fall between 4 and 10 journal pages (approximately 10–25 pages of double-spaced text).

Research findings should be presented in an informative way, emphasising the importance and potential impact of the research. Authors should limit experimental procedures and data in the main text to a maximum two journal pages (approximately 5 double-spaced pages), with all additional experimental information and data placed in the electronic supplementary information (ESI).

Authors are particularly encouraged to prepare a title and abstract which concisely summarise the key findings of their research and their importance, avoiding the use of non-standard abbreviations, acronyms and symbols, as this will enable potential readers to quickly understand the significance of the research. Authors should also consider using recognisable, searchable terms, as around 70% of our readers come directly via search engines. The table of contents graphic should give the reader a clear indication of the topic of the study, for example by showing key compounds.

Authors are encouraged to use the article template, available from our Author templates & services page, for preparing their submissions. However, the use of the template for Research Article submissions is not essential.

Additional guidance on the layout and formatting of the article and supplementary information can be found on our Prepare your article page.

Review Article

Molecular Omics reviews are a concise and critical appraisal of an important area in omics science or a related topic, typically 6–12 journal pages in length (approximately 15-30 pages of double-spaced text).

Reviews should focus on the key developments that have shaped the topic, rather than comprehensive reviews of the literature. Authors are encouraged to include their own perspective on developments, trends and future directions, particularly identifying areas where further developments are imminent or that are in urgent need of being addressed. Please note that Reviews should include balanced coverage of the field and not focus predominantly on the author’s own research. Reviews should not include new research results.

We welcome suggestions from authors for Reviews. If you are interested in writing a Review for the journal, please contact the editorial office.

Comments

Comments and Replies are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions between authors and readers concerning material published in Molecular Omics.

For publication, a Comment should present an alternative analysis of and/or new insight into the previously published material. Any Reply should further the discussion presented in the original article and the Comment. Comments and Replies that contain any form of personal attack are not suitable for publication. 

Comments that are acceptable for publication will be forwarded to the authors of the work being discussed, and these authors will be given the opportunity to submit a Reply. The Comment and Reply will both be subject to rigorous peer review in consultation with the journal’s Editorial Board where appropriate. The Comment and Reply will be published together.

Journal specific guidelines

The following guidelines are journal specific. For general guidance on preparing an article please visit our Prepare your article and Resources for authors pages, the content of which is relevant to all of our journals.

Data requirements for submission

On submission of a manuscript authors should provide all data required to understand and verify the research presented in the article; these should be submitted in the following ways:

  • All original raw datasets essential for the results and conclusion of the manuscript, especially X-Ray crystallographic data and macromolecular structure and sequence data, should be deposited in publicly available repositories (find list of recommended databases in the respective sections below), and accession numbers should be provided in the manuscript. As an alternative the datasets should be presented in the ESI in a machine-readable format (for example, spreadsheets instead of pdf); each manuscript should state data availability in a separate section in the manuscript.
  • All other required data, for example, small molecule characterisation data, should be submitted as electronic supplementary information. See also our general RSC guidelines for experimental data for additional information.

Referees should be able to access those data during the peer-review process, and public release should be coordinated with publication of the manuscript.

The Royal Society of Chemistry believes that, where possible, all data associated with the research in a manuscript should be freely available in an accessible and usable format, enabling other researchers to replicate and build on that research. Therefore, in addition to providing the data required for submission (as detailed above) we encourage authors to deposit as much data as possible that is related to the research in their article.

Data submission information

For experiments involving microorganisms sufficient detail should be provided to identify the species being used. Specific info on antibodies is essential. Commercial sources and if new antibodies are generated full experimental details such as immunogen/phage, species, protocols for mAb) should be given. We strongly recommend authors to use unique Resource Identifiers for model organisms, antibodies and tools and publish them with full descriptions.

For biomarker discovery and validation studies scatter plots of data, sensitivity and specificity values with confidence intervals and results of receiver operating characteristic curve analysis should be at least presented. If a marker is already routinely used for that disease, comparison with that marker should be included.

For genetically modified organisms and mutants appropriate repositories such as the UK Stem Cell Bank, the Maerican Type Culture Centre and the Jackson Laboratory should be used. Larger datasets might be given in the ESI instead.

a) Biological materials

DataRecommended databases
Cell lines, tissue biopsies, environmental isolates, Plasmids, DNA BioSample database, Addgene or PlasmID

b) Phylogenetic data

DataRecommended databases
Phylogenetic data (alignments, phylogenetic trees, or other relevant primary data) TreeBase, Dryad

Statistical methods should be presented with full information and their appropriateness for the test should be stated in manuscript.

Models of biochemical reaction networks are represented by a computer-readable format: the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML). SBML is applicable to metabolic networks, cell-signalling pathways, regulatory networks, and many others. We encourage authors to prepare models of biochemical reaction networks using SBML and to deposit the model with the BioModels database. Authors may submit datasets in SBML formats, when they are available, for publication as electronic supplementary information.

All mathematical models should be submitted alongside all necessary parameters to program the model (reaction conditions and stoichiometrics, rate equations, etc).

Authors should make new software applications as well as custom codes available for testing by reviewers preserving their anonymity. A link should be provided to access to newest version online and the archived version should be referenced in the manuscript. Both should be archived in a suitable repository and unique identifiers should be given in the manuscript. The software should be directly available for non-commercial usage without restrictions.

Atomic coordinates fitted to EM maps should be deposited to an appropriate database (and released upon publication) and accession numbers should be included in the manuscript. Deposition of relevant information in appropriate databases is highly recommended (for example, the Worldwide Protein Data Bank, Protein Data Bank Japan, Protein Data Bank in Europe, the Electron Microscopy Data Bank or the EMDataBank).

a) Functional genomics data/deep sequencing data (such as microarray, RNA-seq or ChIP-seq data)

Functional genomics data (for example, microarray, RNA-seq or ChIP-seq data) should follow the standards proposed by the Functional Genomics Data Society.

Gene nomenclature should be standardised with human gene names and symbols from a gene nomenclature database.

For unpublished genomic data the guidelines of the Fort Lauderdale and Toronto agreements should be followed and the authors should contact the owner of the genomic data before starting their research.

Genomic data generated from HeLa cells: We highly recommend authors to comply with the NIH HeLa Genome Data Use Agreement.

DataRecommended databases
Expression, epigenetics, phenol- or genotypes, genomic variants (GWAS studies), human sequence data Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)
Protein-protein, protein-DNA/RNA and molecular interactions The IntAct molecular interaction database (IntAct)
miRNA sequences and annotation miRBase
Human genomic data, genetic polymorphisms dbSNP, the Database of Genomic Variants Archive (DGVa), Database of Genomic Structural Variation (dbVAR)

b) Sequence variants

Mass spectrometry data should be provided in the mzML format following the HUPO Protein Standards Initiative guidelines; for peptide mass fingerprinting the total percentage of sequence coverage and number of peptides matching it should be given.

Mass spectrometric analysis and quantification of proteins and peptides: the authors should provide detailed information on how raw data was converted into a format for database searching (for example, peak list from raw MS or MS/MS data), the search engine used, the database(s), scoring function(s), false discovery rate (how calculated) and statistical methods employed.

For post-translational protein modifications results of fragmentation analysis and spectra should be provided. If no evidence for assigning a modification to a single amino acid is provided it should be reported as ambiguous.

Proteomics

To ensure reproducibility, please provide experimental details for (gel-based) proteomics data such as how the duplicates were performed and how the data was processed with what standard.

DataRecommended databases
Proteome PeptideAtlas, ProteomeXchange
Protein interaction MEx consortium

Metabolomics data should follow the standards of the Metabolomics Society. If your work is part of the NIH Common Fund Metabolomics Program supported research projects, your data should also be compliant with their guidelines.

DataRecommended databases
Metabolomics MetaboLights, Metabolomics Data Repository

 

Microarray data should be MIAME compliant and deposited in an appropriate database (for example, GEO or ArrayExpress). Accession numbers should be given in the manuscript.

a) Macromolecular structures

DataRecommended databases
Protein structures Worldwide Protein Data Bank, Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB)
Nucleic acid structures Nucleic Acid Database
Imaging (all types) Coherent X-ray Imaging Data Bank (CXIDB)

For macromolecular NMR and crystal data please refer to the general RSC experimental data guidelines.

 b) Chemical structures & assays

Structural data for small molecules should be presented in the manuscript ESI. However we would encourage authors to publicly deposit as much data as possible that is related to the research in their article.

DataRecommended databases
Chemical structures PubChem Substance
Bioactivity assays PubChem BioAssay 
Nanomaterials and their composition and physico-chemical and in vitro characterisations caNanoLab
Flow cytometry data Flow Repository

For single molecule crystal data and NMR data please refer to the general RSC experimental data guidelines.

If no dedicated subject repository exists, authors may wish to use one of the following general repositories and workspaces to archive their data, and make them publicly available:

Dryad

FigShare (max file size 250MB)

Zenodo (especially recommended for code archiving)

Post-acquisition processing of data

All image acquisition and processing tools (including their settings) should be clearly stated in the manuscript. The amount of post-acquisition processing of data should be kept to a minimum. Any type of alteration such as image processing, cropping and groupings should be clearly stated in the figure caption and the ESI (clearly describing the process of alteration). Data manipulation (for example, normalisation or handling of missing values) should be given.

Image processing changes should be applied to the entire image as well as all other images it is compared to. Processed images should still represent all the original data (with no data missing) and touch-up tools should be avoided.

For each blot and gel, all positive and negative controls and molecular size markers (for example, protein ladder) should be shown (if not in the main figure at least in the ESI). Important bands should not be cropped in gels and cropped blots should retain at least six band widths above and below the band. If part of a gel is shown in the main text, the full picture of the same uncropped gel should be given in the ESI. High contrast gels and blots are not recommended to avoid masking of additional bands; a grey background is highly encouraged. Only results of comparable experiments should be compared.

Genuine and relevant signals in spectra must not be lost due to image enhancement.

Microscopy images of cells from multiple fields should not be compared but shown as single images (at least in the ESI).

Authors might be asked during peer review to provide the original unprocessed data to the editors/reviewers of the journal.

Guidelines on writing titles, abstracts & table of contents information

The title, abstract and graphical abstract are the first parts of your manuscript that editors, referees and potential readers will see, and once published they play a major part in a researcher’s decision to read your article. Therefore it’s important that these clearly and concisely show the main findings of your research and why they are important.

More information on writing titles, abstracts & table of contents

Titles

The title should be short and straightforward to appeal to a general reader, but detailed enough to properly reflect the contents of your review article. 

  • Keep it relatively short – between 8 and 15 words is ideal.
  • Use easily recognisable words and phrases that can be read quickly.
  • Use general or well-known terms for compounds and procedures rather than very specialised terms or nomenclature.
  • Avoid using non-standard abbreviations and symbols.
  • Avoid using subjective terms such as “novel”.
  • Use keywords and familiar, searchable terms – these can increase the chances of your article appearing in search results. Around 70% of our readers come directly via search engines.

Abstracts

The abstract is a single paragraph which summarises the contents of your article. It will help readers to decide whether your article is of interest to them. 

  • The length can vary from 50 to 250 words (or 40 to 75 words for Communications), but it should always be concise and easy to read with recognisable words and phrases.
  • It should set out the objectives of the work, the key findings and why this research is important (compared to other research in its field).
  • It should emphasise (but not overstate) the significance and potential impact of the research in your article.
  • Avoid including detailed information on how the research was carried out. This should be described in the main part of the manuscript.
  • Like your title, make sure you use familiar, searchable terms and keywords.

Table of contents

This consists of a small graphic and short text which will appear in the table of contents and feeds (for example, RSS feeds).

The graphic should:

  • be 8 cm wide x 4 cm high.
  • be a clear representation of what your review is about. Think about what would grab the attention of a reader as they scan though article listings. For example, for synthetic articles a target compund or key reaction scheme work well.
  • include only one or two key elements (as the graphics are small). It’s much better to have a small amount of information that stands out rather than a lot of information which is too small to understand.
  • avoid using graphs or spectra.
  • include text large enough to read and in Arial, Times or Helvetica font.
  • avoid reusing figures from the article.
  • avoid using graphic images or animal or human testing or surgery.

The text should: 

  • be 15–25 words.
  • focus only on the key findings and their importance, not the processes used. Again, think about what would grab the attention of the potential reader and would encourange them to read the full article.
  • use easily recognisable words and phrases that can be read quickly.
  • not just repeat the information given in the title.

Readership information

Researchers from industry and academia interested in molecular level research in proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics, genomics and other omics science.

Thus the journal will appeal to a wide variety of researchers, but particularly to the folllowing.

  • Chemical biologists
  • Biological chemists
  • Biochemists
  • Molecular and structural biologists
  • Drug discovery scientists
  • Protein chemists
  • Bio- and cheminformaticians
  • Organic and analytical chemists

Subscription information

Online only 2021: £1,379 / $2,431

*2019 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2020)

** Average time from receipt to first decision in 2020

Journals, books & databases

Molecular Omics

Pre submission queries please contact Katie Lim, Executive Editor
Email:
Send us an email

Post-submission queries please contact Viktoria Titmus, Editorial Production Manager
Email:
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