A new start: Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology re-launches with BioMed Central

Animal Science Research is a diverse program where research areas intersect to study the genetic, nutritional, metabolic, reproductive and physiological mechanisms during animal growth and development, using biotechnology. Animal agriculture continues to expand worldwide, as demand for animal protein and products increase. Research is also conducted in food science and meat science areas to provide consumers with safe, high quality food products. With the continuous development of molecular biology and molecular biotechnology, the reach of the field has become increasingly broad. With the gradual completion of whole-genome sequencing and improvements in biochip technology, the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotypes caused by mechanisms, other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence, also becomes a hot topic. At the same, biotechnology applies to animal nutrition research in order to reveal the metabolic mechanism at the molecular level. Traditional animal science research still plays a huge role to improve the quantity and quality of animal products.Open access is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. Open access is increasingly being used to publish journal articles, in addition to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters [1]. A study published in 2011 on the development of publishing of open access journals from 1993 to 2009 shows that open access journals have increased both in numbers and in average annual output over time [2]. The main reason authors make their articles open access is to maximize the impact of their research [3]. A study in 2001 reported an open access citation impact advantage [4], and lots of studies [5] have confirmed that an open access article is more likely to be read and cited more than one behind subscription barriers. The more the article is read, cited, and built upon, the better for research and for the researcher's career [6