Julio Licinio, MD, PhD, MBA, MS, is a renowned psychiatrist and an internationally recognized research leader in neuroscience, stress, pharmacogenomics, microbiome, and depression. He is the inaugural Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of Genomic Psychiatry. 

Dr. Licinio is a board-certified psychiatrist by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (FRANZCP) and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAAHMS). Dr. Licinio has published 327 research papers listed in Pubmed. His work has been cited 42,166 times, and his h-index is 90.

In his career spanning over 30 years, Dr. Licinio has founded and led four journals from inception to full indexing and high impact. He has edited and published 44 articles by 9 Nobel Prize laureates in the last seven years alone, including 19 by the late Nobel laureate Paul Greengard. Dr. Licinio is a seasoned Editor-in-Chief, having raised the impact factor and rankings of the first journal he launched, which went from non-existent to number 1 worldwide in just 13 years.

Our Editorial Board has eminent international experts. Confirmed members of the Editorial Board include:

Huda Akil, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA

Ole A. Andreassen, University of Oslo, 0318 Oslo, Norway

Bernhard Baune, University of Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany 

Stefan R. Bornstein, TUD Dresden University of Technology, 01307 Dresden, Germany  

Kristen Brennand, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA 

Avshalom Caspi, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA

Moses Chao, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, New York 10016, USA

Claude Robert Cloninger, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA. 

Ian Deary, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, Scotland, UK

Yogesh Dwivedi, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birminagm, Alabama 35294, USA

Janice Fullerton, Neuroscience Research Australia and University of New South Wales, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia

Fred H. Gage, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California 92037, USA                                   

Samuel E. Gandy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029-5674, USA

Patricia Gaspar, INSERM Paris Brain Institute, Hôpital Salpêtrière, 75013 Paris, France

Anthony A. Grace, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA

Todd D. Gould, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA     

Raquel E. Gur, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA          

Jan-Åke Gustafsson, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204, USA    

Sir John Hardy, University College London Dementia Research Institute, London, WC1E 6B, UK

Noboru Hiroi, University of Texas Health San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas 78229, USA

Yasmin Hurd, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA

Siegfried Kasper, Center for Brain Research, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria

Kenneth S. Kendler, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 23298, USA     

Lorenzo Leggio, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Maryland 21224, USA   

Xin-Yun Lu, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia 30912, USA

Robert Malenka, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

Andrew McIntosh, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH10 5HF, Scotland, UK,

Maria Oquendo, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA              

Sir Michael Owen, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, Wales, UK

Aarno Palotie, Institute for Molecular Medicine, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland

Carlos N. Pato, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

Michele Pato, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

Mary L. Phillips, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA

Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, SE5 8AF, UK

Maurizio Popoli, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy                                      

John Rubenstein, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158, USA

Carlo Sala, L’ Istituto di Neuroscienze del CNR, Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca, 20854 Vedano al Lambro, MB, Italy

Alan F. Schatzberg, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

Jair Soares, University of Texas Health Science Center, McGovern School of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77054, USA

Thomas C. Südhof, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

Giuseppe Testa, Università degli Studi di Milano, Human Technopole, 20157, Milan, MI, Italy

Gustavo Turecki, McGill University, Montréal, Québec H4H 1R3, Canada

Monica Uddin, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33612, USA

Myrna Weissman, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York 10032, USA

Xiangmin Xu, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA  

Takeo Yoshikawa, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan                                    

Mone Zaidi, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA

Aims

The principal aim of Genomic Psychiatry: Advancing Science from Genes to Society is to interweave groundbreaking advances in psychiatric genomics with major advances in all other areas of contemporary psychiatry. Why is this important? The impact of genes in psychiatry is clearly modified by development, the environment, and society. Conversely, the environment and society interact with our genetic substrate before their effects are manifested. By bringing together, side by side, single contributions and interdisciplinary collaborations from genomics and multiple other fields, Genomic Psychiatry aims to redefine psychiatric science by bringing about a veritable transformation on how we bring together progress in genomics and all other fields to enhance our understanding of psychiatric disorders, from genes to society. 

Scope

Genomic Psychiatry has a broad scope. As our goal is to interweave genetics with other advances in contemporary psychiatry, we welcome innovative research from in-depth studies of psychiatric genomics to broader investigations of the underpinnings, treatments, outcomes, and consequences of mental health. In addition to the genetic aspects of mental illness, our scope includes advances in neuroscience of potential relevance to mental illness, imaging, psychology, pharmacology, therapeutics, microbiology including the microbiome, immunology, endocrinology, brain stimulation, functional neurosurgery, “big data,” computational approaches including AI, epidemiology, and public health initiatives.

Mission

Our mission is to push the frontiers of knowledge across the continuum from the genome to society, interweaving progress in genomics with advances in all other areas of psychiatry. Through our discovery and innovation journey, we aim at creating a new, cross-disciplinary, and team-science based narrative for mental health in the genomic era. We are particularly committed to work that is conceptually novel and that has the potential for translational impact.

Values

Genomics Psychiatry values integrity, scientific rigor, ethical standards, and inclusivity. We welcome papers from all countries and all continents and will treat and process each manuscript based exclusively on its content, not on where it comes from.

Indexing

We are already registered with Crossref, providing all our publications with searchable DOI links. Our DOI prefix is 10.61373. Genomic Psychiatry is indexed with the US Library of Congress: our online ISSN is 2997-2388 and our print ISSN is 2997-254X. As a new and academically based and focused publication, we strive to build a robust portfolio of published articles to meet the criteria for inclusion in other databases. Upon reaching the required thresholds, our mission is to actively pursue indexing by prominent databases such as Emerging Sources Citation Index, Web of Science, Current Contents, Current Contents/Life Sciences, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, MEDLINE/Index Medicus, Neuroscience Citation Index, PsycINFO, and Science Citation Index. Importantly, inclusion in these databases is retrospective. Consequently, even if your paper is submitted before our indexing, once achieved, your work will be indexed and electronically accessible through these databases. 

Impact Factor

Genomic Press is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and as such we support the adoption of multiple practices in research assessment. DORA’s first general recommendation is not to use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.

The notion of a “journal impact factor,” alternately abbreviated as IF or JIF, conceived by Eugene Garfield, was created at the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The IF was originally created as a tool to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a measure of the scientific quality of research in an article. Broadly, the IF is indicative of a journal’s influence, as it has regularly assessed annually since 1975 for those journals enumerated in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This establishment, first identified as Thomson ISI, fell under the ownership of Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992. A series of transactions in 2018 saw Thomson Reuters divest itself of ISI, transferring ownership to Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia. In the current epoch, Clarivate, an emergent corporation formed by these organizations, presides over the publication of the JCR.

The term “impact factor” is constituted by the quotient derived from dividing the total citations received in one year by articles published within the preceding two years, divided by the number of articles published within that same two-year timeframe. As an illustration, the highly regarded journal Cell (published by Cell Press, a subsidiary of Elsevier) boasted an impact factor of 66.850 for 2022. This number indicates that each scholarly piece published in 2020 and 2021 by Cell was cited, on an average scale, close to 67 times in the year 2022. It must be emphasized, however, that the computations for the impact factors for the year 2022 were only disclosed in June of the year 2023, for the calculus can only be performed post the thorough perusal and processing of all scholarly output for the year 2022 by the indexing company.

The journal impact factor (IF or JIF) is a metric index calculated by Clarivate that measures the number of citations articles published in a specific journal receive over two years, based on the Clarivate Web of Science index.

This metric often represents a journal’s relative importance within its field. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious and influential than those with lower values.

Although universities and funding agencies frequently employ the impact factor to assess promotions and research proposals, it has faced criticism for potentially distorting good scientific practices. For more information, see the article by EC McKiernan and colleagues (2019) [1].

Genomic Psychiatry’s Impact Factor will be calculated and provided after the journal’s first three years of publication.

[1] Source: Erin C McKiernan et al. Meta-Research: Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations. Elife 2019 Jul 31;8:e47338. doi: 10.7554/eLife.47338.

Link: https://elifesciences.org/articles/47338.

Peer Review

Peer review stands as the foundational pillar of the scientific evaluation process, extensively employed in the assessment of research funding (grants) and research outcomes (papers). Our unwavering commitment resides in upholding the integrity of the editorial process, which rests upon an impartial peer review system.

The peer review process can be configured in different ways, with the vast majority of journals worldwide adhering to one of three formats: (i) Single-blind peer reviews are anonymous only to the authors. Authors do not know the reviewers’ names or backgrounds, but reviewers know theirs. (ii) Both authors and reviewers in double-blind peer reviews are anonymous; only the editor knows their identities. A truly double-blind peer review process is hard to attain, as a knowledgeable review can infer authorship based on specific methods and areas of research and cited work. (iii) In open peer review the identity of the author and the reviewer is known by all participants, during or after the review process.

Genomic Psychiatry will adhere to the traditional single-blind peer review format, which is the most widely used. Authors shall remain unaware of the reviewers’ identities, both before and after publication.

Every submission to Genomic Psychiatry, encompassing original research, reviews, correspondence, and all manuscript genres, will invariably undergo external evaluation via single-blind peer review, facilitated by our editorial office. To ensure the global diversity of Genomic Psychiatry, each submission will typically be sent to eight experts, strategically selected to avoid concentration in any single country. Our editorial decisions aim to be grounded in at least three reviews, although if only two reviews are available, they will be considered in the decision-making process. The only exception to the peer review process will consist of purely informational material, such as news and editorials, which will be explicitly identified as such.

The unique strengths and advantages of publishing your research in Genomic Psychiatry include rapid and personalized review, global dissemination of your work, press releases leading to worldwide access, fair cost, and a dedicated but broad focus on cutting-edge research in multiple areas, highlighting advances in genomics in the context of progress in multiple other areas.

Amplifying Your Research Impact

In today's digital landscape, scientific communication extends far beyond traditional academic channels. At Genomic Psychiatry, we have developed a proven strategy that has generated over 500 news stories in more than 10 languages within our first two months of publication. Our comprehensive approach ensures your work achieves maximum visibility while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity.

Global Distribution Through EurekAlert!

All newsworthy articles published in Genomic Psychiatry are distributed through EurekAlert!, the world's leading science news service operated by AAAS. EurekAlert! has specific eligibility guidelines that news releases must meet to be accepted and hosted on their platform. Rest assured that Genomic Press will cover all submission fees associated with your press release. However, please note that payment of these fees does not guarantee acceptance by EurekAlert!

Genomic Press’ recent success stories through EurekAlert! demonstrate the power of this approach:

• Multiple Sclerosis Research: 124 media outlets worldwide
• Depression Treatment Analysis: 88 media outlets across 10 languages
• Body Dysmorphic Disorder Study: 80+ global media outlets
• Liver X Receptor Research: Multiple languages including Lithuanian, French, Portuguese

Each newsworthy paper receives coverage through:

• EurekAlert! English language service (12,000+ journalists)
• Multiple language versions (Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic)
• Specialized scientific channels targeting specific research communities

Strategic Digital Dissemination

We leverage various social media platforms strategically:

• LinkedIn: Connect with industry leaders, potential collaborators, and research organizations
• X (formerly Twitter): Engage in real-time with the global scientific community
• Facebook: Reach broader academic audiences through established scientific groups
• Instagram: Transform complex concepts into visually engaging content
• YouTube: Share in-depth interviews and methodology explanations

Comprehensive Press Distribution

Beyond EurekAlert!, our press office maximizes impact through:

• International press release networks
• Specialized science media outlets
• Institutional press offices
• Scientific news services

The success of our approach is evident in the rapid global uptake of research published in Genomic Psychiatry. At Genomic Press, our goal is not simply to publicize your research, but to foster meaningful engagement within both academic circles and the broader scientific community, as demonstrated by our achievement of over 500 media stories across multiple languages in our first two months.