A Year of Milestones

T his was an exceptionally exciting year for JALA. It started off with news from Thomson’s Journal Citation Reports that JALA had been added to Thomson Reuter’s Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Biological Abstracts, and BIOSIS Previews. This meant that JALA would have an impact factor! JALA was added with the 2009 volume, so during 2011, Thomson’s tracked citations to articles published in 2009 and 2010, and JALA’s first impact factor will be announced in June of 2012. More good news arrived in March when we learned JALA was accepted by the U.S. National Library of Medicine for indexing by MEDLINE, the largest component of PubMed. Because MEDLINE functions as an important resource for biomedical researchers worldwide, JALA authors now enjoy significantly increased opportunities for discoverability and citations. Both of these achievements represent important milestones and underscore JALA’s unique role in supporting the SLASmission of providing education and facilitating information exchange throughout the laboratory science and technology community. This year also saw the JALALiteratureHighlights baton passed from long-time co-authors Kerstin Thurow, Ph.D., of the University of Rostock, Germany, and Hilmar Weinmann, Ph.D., of Bayer Schering Pharma in Berlin, Germany, to TalMurthy, Ph.D., of Caliper Life Sciences in Hopkinton, MA,