The first issue is out!

We are thrilled to announce the very first issue of “LiveCoMS” - the Living Journal of Computational Molecular Science. The issue’s six articles include both detailed best-practices discussions for essential aspects of molecular simulation, as well as tutorials for two important software packages.

The published articles embody the vision we have for the journal - first and foremost, clear guidance on how to leverage expert understanding to plan and execute molecular simulations of the highest quality. The articles are also “living” - updateable - and indeed two of the articles have already been updated via its GitHub page based on community input (more on that below). Finally, the journal has incentivized work that is critical for the community but formerly unrewarded - in particular, tutorials which provide step-by-step guides so crucial for beginners.

LiveCoMS is a community-run, not-for-profit enterprise with high standards. Not only are all articles open access, but the cost to authors is only $100 per article - a small fraction of typical prices, and authors retain all copyrights, only licensing the work to LiveCoMS. We do not compromise on quality. In fact, our peer review process includes not only senior investigators but additionally a student or postdoc reviewer is required for every paper to ensure clarity and broad relevance.

In addition to the best-practices and tutorials article categories, LiveCoMS also welcomes updateable reviews, software-package comparisons, and “lessons learned” articles. Although such articles can (sometimes) be published in existing journals, they are central to our mission of promoting high-quality simulation studies.

A special part of LiveCoMS is the updateable nature of articles. In fact, we expect articles to be updated to maintain their value to the community. Our authors commit to this when they publish with us. Authors are required to maintain public GitHub repositories of their articles, which can be updated at any time based on community input or the authors’ own investigations. Once substantial, scientifically significant changes have been been made to the repository, a new version of the article can be submitted for peer review and full publication.

We hope you will find the journal valuable and consider submitting your work to LiveCoMS.

The Managing Editors,

- Michael Shirts (University of Colorado Boulder)

- David Mobley (University of California, Irvine)

- Daniel Zuckerman (Oregon Health & Science University)