Authors are now able to publish full-length Research Articles in FEMS Microbiology Letters, as well as continuing to submit shorter, more concise manuscripts as Research Letters. Full descriptions of both article types are available in our updated Instructions to Authors.

Since its inception over 45 years ago, FEMS Microbiology Letters has provided a venue for the publication of short papers that lead to significant advances across the broad scope of microbiology research, and therefore demand rapid communication. As the microbiology field advances, our experiments, and the resulting conclusions we can draw, grow ever more complex. By introducing full-length Research Articles to the scope, FEMS Microbiology Letters will provide authors the option to choose the format which best fits the study they have conducted.

This development is also important in light of the changes to the wider FEMS portfolio, as four of the journals flip to full Open Access from 2024 (find out more on the Open Access transition). FEMS Microbiology Letters will remain free-to-publish for any authors unable to access funds for APCs, and will continue to cover the full scope of microbiology research; we want to ensure that no author is left behind.

Key points:

• These developments are part of making FEMS Microbiology Letters as inclusive as possible and continue other efforts in the journal such as our double-anonymous peer review process and the commitment to education & professional development manuscripts.
• With FEMS Microbiology Letters, all microbiology researchers still have a free-to-publish venue for full length papers as all other journals become fully Open Access – no one gets left behind.
• We will continue to reflect the journal’s history of publishing shorter methods-based papers, whilst reflecting changes in the field – as experiments get more complex we need more space to describe them and the results.
• Having both manuscript types means that authors have options when considering which format best fits the study they are sharing.

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Why Publish With The FEMS Journals?

The FEMS journals are run by microbiologists, and for microbiologists. Every article published by us has been rigorously reviewed for soundness of science by our community of academic peer reviewers – and any surplus revenue generated by the not-for-profit journals goes directly into supporting the microbiology community.