Welcome to the 11th volume of Bioanalysis

Welcome to the 11th volume of Bioanalysis and we want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year. We would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the past 12 months from the perspective of the journal. We want to thank all our authors, readers and reviewers, as well as our esteemed Editorial Board members for their ongoing support.

We are very much looking forward to working with everyone in 2019.

Content highlights

Bioanalysis continues to publish a wide variety of articles covering key advances within this ever-evolving field and we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on some of our most accessed content of last year, at the time of writing this article (October 2018).

One of the most popular articles of this year proved to be the Special Report, ‘Immunogenicity of therapeutic protein products: current considerations for anti-drug antibody assay in Japan’, which provided the views and recommendations from a Japanese research group on the ADA assay [1].

As in 2017, meeting reports feature highly among our most popular content of 2017. One of the most-read articles was the Conference Report from the 11th GCC closed forum [2], the objective of which was for CRO bioanalytical representatives to meet and discuss scientific and regulatory issues specific to bioanalysis. Similarly, ‘Feedback from the European Bioanalysis Forum: focus workshop on current analysis of immunogenicity: best practices and regulatory hurdles’ was also one of the most popular conference reports from this year [3].

Several editorial-style articles providing a snapshot of issues of topical importance to the bioanalytical community featured in our most read content. Some novel approaches were explored this year, including: ‘Machine learning techniques for mass spectrometry imaging data analysis and applications’, an Editorial by Zhang and Liu [4], while Devangi Mehta, Shobha Purushothama and Lauren Stevenson explored ‘Parallelism: the foundation of biomarker assay development and validation’ in their Editorial [5].

We have continued to publish a range of exciting research-style articles presenting novel work and representing important advancement in understanding of techniques, which continue to be highly accessed. Examples of these include the Methodology article on the ‘Evaluation of cAMS for ¹⁴C microtracer ADME studies: opportunities to change the current drug development paradigm’ [6] and a Research Article exploring a ‘Novel and rapid LC–MS/MS method for quantitative analysis of methylphenidate in dried blood spots’ [7]. A Perspective article exploring the importance of ‘Biomarkers in early-phase trials: fundamental issues’ [8] was one of the most viewed review-style pieces. These aim to highlight recent significant advances in research, ongoing challenges and unmet needs within the field.

As we enter 2019, we will endeavor to continue capturing the trends and evolution of the field of bioanalysis.

Special focus issues

We have continued to highlight hot topics in the field of bioanalysis with the publication of special focus issues last year. 2018 saw a range of topics for which we wanted to initiate a greater level of interest and awareness of the focuses among the broader audience. Details of all the special focus issues and themed issues published by the journal in 2018 can be found in Table 1.

The year began with a themed issue on the ‘Bioanalytical techniques in lipidomics’ aiming to highlight some of the analytical challenges and recent emerging technologies in lipidomics, with the focus on how to improve the analytical workflows for lipidomics [9]. ‘Novel LC–MS assays impacting CYP and transporter drug–drug interaction evaluations’ was the focus of the second special focus issue of the year, exploring novel LC–MS/MS, LC-high resolution accurate mass spectrometry (LC–HRMS) or LC–MS/HRMS assays early in drug development, bringing together some of the novel LC–MS applications and outlook from leaders in the field [10]. Following this, the multiplicity of issues surrounding biomarker assay validation for clinical trial use and regulatory submission was explored in the special focus issue ‘Biomarker assay validation’ [11]. ‘New opportunities with quantification of protein therapeutics by LC–MS’ [12] and ‘Analytical convergence in surrogate control matrices’ [13] were topics examined in themed issues published later in the year. The final special focus issue of the year, ‘Incurred sample reproducibility (ISR)’, examined the history of ISR, its importance and how it can be developed in the future [14].

We hope to continue to capture some of the current hot topics of the industry with our exciting special focus issues planned for the upcoming year. These will include focuses on the topics of: bioanalytical techniques in determining immunogenicity, stability issues in bioanalysis, internal standard variability, oligonulceotides as well as a special focus issue celebrating the journal's 10th birthday.

In June 2018, Bioanalysis published its 200th Issue and to celebrate this achievement, we published a free to access foreword [15] looking back at a handful of the most-read content published by the journal since its launch in 2009.

Bioanalysis in the community

Bioanalysis editorial team endeavors to ensure the journal continues to be focused on the current themes and trends in the bioanalytical community. We work hard to achieve a strong presence in this community through reaching out to our readers and contributors. To maintain our presence, editors regularly attend relevant symposiums and conferences across the world as representatives of the journal, establishing networks and stable working relations with experts in the field, and keeping up-to-date with the most recent advances.

We continue to welcome unsolicited manuscript submissions through the online manuscript processing portal ScholarOne Manuscripts™ [16] or contact our editorial team with feedback, suggestions, ideas and of proposals for articles.

We also continue to be present on social media via our Bioanalysis LinkedIn group [17], where we post about our latest articles, and our Twitter account (@fsgbio) [18], providing followers with the latest and most interesting bioanalysis news and developments from the global community, as well as news from the journal.

Demographics of readers & contributors

Bioanalysis has continued its wide reach throughout 2018 with both readers and authors based all over the globe. As seen in previous years, contributions from authors in 2018 have mainly been from North America and Europe (Figure 1). This is true also for the readership demographics, however, a significant proportion of the readers were also from Asia (Figure 2). The journal also continues to attract a variety of readers across working environments and academic institutes (Figure 3).

Bioanalysis zone

If you have not previously, we highly recommend you visit our associated site, Bioanalysis Zone [19], which is an interactive online resource for the bioanalytical community. Since launching in 2011, Bioanalysis Zone has attracted over 11,000 active members from the global bioanalytical community, representing the pharmaceutical, biotech and CRO industries, along with academia and healthcare.

The Journal and the Zone work in collaboration on several projects, with the vision of ensuring research and advancements in the field are presented in the most appropriate and accessible manner to the bioanalytical community. One of the successful collaborations of 2018 included the publication of the 3rd Edition of ‘The Bioanalysis Glossary’ [20] intended to be a useful resource for researchers and experts in the field. There was also the successful publication of Panel Discussions that we organized with the Bioanalysis Zone team, in which experts from leading CROs, consultancies and pharmaceutical companies discussed two current issues facing the bioanalytical field: new technology integration in bioanalytical workflows and the sharing of scientific data. The Panel Discussion Report we published alongside this was also popular among our readership [21].

Conclusion

We continue to appreciate the feedback that has been provided regarding the direction of the journal and we look forward to more exciting developments in the upcoming year. Finally, we would like to thank everyone for their continued engagement and support with the journal, and we are excited to continue working with you all in the coming year.