A new genomics and systems biology journal will collaborate with an international, open access database to include a section devoted to publishing genetic datasets.

Human Genomics and Proteomics (HGP) was officially launched Saturday (May 31) at a human genomics symposium in Barcelona by editor-in-chief, George Patrinos, a geneticist at Erasmus University Medical Center in The Netherlands.

The new journal is the first offering from SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research, a partnership designed to create a family of open access journals between publishers SAGE and Hindawi. HGP will be linked to FINDbase, a public, population-specific genetic database that charts mutations and their associated disorders in several countries around the world.

"As the first journal with an affiliated database in this discipline, HGP offers a unique opportunity to authors to open up access to their research to the widest possible community," Patrinos, the newly appointed joint editor-in-chief of the journal, said in a press release.

HGP will publish original research papers in systems biology, human genomics, proteomics and personalized medicine. The journal will also accept submissions of genetic datasets alone, without a full manuscript, that will also be peer-reviewed and, if accepted, abstracted and featured in a dedicated section, called FINDbase datasets. The data will be available in PubMed and in FINDbase.

"It's quite an exciting time to see where this goes," said a SAGE spokesperson, who said that the journal hopes to publish articles online in HGP an average of six weeks after acceptance. The spokesperson called HGP "a new opportunity to make the most of our existing community" of genetics and genomics researchers and said that the journal is making its first call for submissions this week.

The SAGE-Hindawi partnership hopes to publish five to ten new titles every year, according to the spokesperson.