Everything about Pnas totally explained
The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as
PNAS, is the official journal of the
United States National Academy of Sciences.
PNAS is an important
scientific journal that printed its first issue in
1915 and continues to publish highly cited research reports, commentaries, reviews, perspectives, feature articles,
colloquium papers, profiles, letters to the editor, and actions of the Academy. Coverage in
PNAS broadly spans the biological, physical, and social sciences. Although most of the papers published in the journal are in the biomedical sciences,
PNAS recruits papers and publishes special features in the physical and social sciences and in mathematics.
PNAS (abbreviated
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA for referencing and indexing purposes) is published weekly in print, and daily online in
PNAS Early Edition CODEN: PNASC8.
History
PNAS was established by the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1914, with its first issue published in 1915. The NAS itself had been founded in 1863, a private institution, but chartered by the
U.S. Congress, with the goal to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art." By 1914, the Academy was well established.
Prior to the start of the journal, NAS published three volumes of organizational transactions, consisting mostly of minutes of meetings and annual reports. In accordance with the guiding principles established by Astronomer
George Ellery Hale, the foreign secretary of NAS in 1914,
PNAS publishes brief first announcements of Academy members' and foreign associates' more important contributions to research and of work that appears to a member to be of particular importance
(External Link
).
Editors
The first managing editor of the journal was mathematician
Edwin Bidwell Wilson.
Peer review
All research papers published in
PNAS are peer-reviewed
(External Link). The standard mode is for papers to be submitted directly to
PNAS rather than going through an Academy member. Members may handle the peer review process for up to 4 of their own papers per year--this is an open review process because the member selects and communicates directly with the referees. These submissions and reviews, like all for
PNAS, are evaluated for publication by the
PNAS Editorial Board. Members may also communicate up to 2 papers from non-members to
PNAS each year. This is an anonymous review process in that the identities of the referees are not revealed to the authors. Referees are selected by the NAS member.
Dual use papers and national security
In 2003,
PNAS issued an editorial stating its policy on publication of sensitive material in the life sciences
(External Link).
PNAS stated that it would "continue to monitor submitted papers for material that may be deemed inappropriate and that could, if published, compromise the public welfare." This statement was in keeping with
the efforts of several other journals. In 2005
PNAS published an article titled "Analyzing a bioterror attack on the food supply: The case of botulinum toxin in milk"
(External Link) despite objections raised by the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The paper was published with a commentary by the president of the Academy at the time,
Bruce Alberts, titled "Modeling attacks on the food supply"
(External Link).
Impact
PNAS is widely read by researchers, particularly those involved in basic sciences, around the world. PNAS Online receives 11.6 million hits per month
(External Link). The journal is notable for its policy of making research articles freely available online to everyone 6 months after publication (
delayed open access), or immediately if authors have chosen the "open access" option (
hybrid open access). Immediately free online access (without the 6-month delay) is provided for more than 140 developing countries and for some categories of papers such as colloquia. Abstracts, tables of contents, and online supporting information are free. Anyone can sign up to receive free tables of contents by email.
Because
PNAS is self-sustaining and receives no direct funding from the government or the
National Academy of Sciences, the journal charges authors publication fees and subscription fees to offset the cost of the editorial and publication process.
The journal's
impact factor for 2004 was 10.452, for 2005 was 10.231, and 2006 was 9.643 (as measured by
Thomson ISI).
PNAS is the second most cited scientific journal with 1,338,191 citations from 1994–2004 (the
Journal of Biological Chemistry is the most cited journal over this period with 1,740,902 citations in total).
Classic papers
PNAS has been the first to publish many scientific breakthroughs across disciplines, including the following papers:
Edwin Hubble (1929) A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 15, 168-173.
John F. Nash (1950) Equilibrium points in n-person games. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 36, 48-49.
Linus Pauling, &
Robert Corey (1951) Atomic coordinates and structure factors for two helical configurations of polypeptide chains. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 235-240.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey (1951) The structure of synthetic polypeptides. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 241-250.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey (1951) The pleated sheet, a new layer configuration of polypeptide chains. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 251-256.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey (1951) The structure of feather rachis keratin. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 256-261.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey (1951) The structure of hair, muscle, and related proteins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 261-271.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey (1951) The structure of fibrous proteins of the collagen-gelatin group. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 272-281.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey (1951) The polypeptide-chain configuration in hemoglobin and other globular proteins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 282-285.
Linus Pauling &
Robert Corey &
Herman Branson (1951) The structure of proteins: two hydrogen-bonded helical configurations of the polypeptide chain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 235-240.
Julian Schwinger (1951) On the Green’s functions of quantized fields. I. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 452–455.
Julian Schwinger (1951) On the Green’s functions of quantized fields. II. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37, 455–460.
Robert Briggs &
Thomas J. King (1952) Transplantation of living nuclei from blastula cells into enucleated frogs’ eggs. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 38, 455-463.
Matthew Meselson &
Franklin Stahl (1958) The replication of DNA in Escherichia coli. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 44, 671–682.
Kathleen Danna &
Daniel Nathans (1971) Specific cleavage of Simian Virus 40 DNA by restriction endonuclease of Hemophilus influenzae. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 68, 2913-2917.
Frederick Sanger, S Nicklen, AR Coulson (1977) DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 74, 5463-5467.
Allan Maxam and
Walter Gilbert (1977) New method for sequencing DNA. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 74, 560-564.
Towbin H, Staehelin T, Gordon J (1979) Electrophoretic transfer of proteins from polyacrylamide gels to nitrocellulose sheets: procedure and some applications. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 76, 4350-4354.
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