Editorial

I am very pleased to announce that CURRENT PROTEIN and PEPTIDE SCIENCE has achieved an impact factor of 3.00 for the past year. This is an increase from the previous rating of 1.79. Clearly, the quality of papers published in the journal has increased and we are very grateful to the authors who have contributed their best work to this review forum. We strongly believe that the reviews published here are providing an excellent way to encapsulate recent scientific progress and an outstanding stimulus to new experimentation to move the field of protein and peptide science forward. Volume 6 had three special "Hot Topics" issues: Host Defense Peptides, edited by Alessandro Tossi, Exploiting the Peptide Pool; New Structures, Novel Functions and Therapeutic Opportunities, edited by Knut Adermann, and Biomedicine and Bioinformatics, edited by Kuo-Chen Chou. These three issues highlight the diversity of the protein and peptide world, with topics from naturally-occurring peptides, through synthetic chemistry, and into the emerging world of bioinformatics. Together with three issues that featured general topics of great importance, Volume 6 has taken CURRENT PROTEIN and PEPTIDE SCIENCE to new heights. We expect that Volume 7 will continue this trend. In the coming year, Bentham Science Publishing will improve the mechanism for manuscript submission, assignment to referees, and communication to authors. This will improve the processing of manuscripts and thus shorten the time between submission and publication. As always, we are continually seeking new Guest Editors to organize special Hot Topics issues and welcome suggestions from our readers for topics. At the same time, we will continue to publish stand-alone papers on topics submitted by individuals. It has been a great pleasure to work with many scientists from around the world on papers for CURRENT PROTEIN and PEPTIDE SCIENCE and I look forward to working with many new authors in the future.