The Journal of Genetic Genealogy (JoGG) is an independent online journal that publishes original work relevant to the application of genetic testing in combination with traditional genealogical, historical, or anthropological records and data. Articles are reviewed by the journal Editor and Advisory Board, published in regular journal issues, and available individually. At present, there are no costs to publish in JoGG nor to access the articles on-line.
Authors retain copyright to their work but license it to the JoGG pursuant to the Creative Commons agreement.
JoGG invites papers presenting original work describing methods and examples of interest to the genetic genealogical community. Since these interests may involve the use of genetic data in fields as diverse as traditional genealogy, forensics, and anthropology, the journal offers a forum for articles that may not be appropriate for other established genetics journals (or for that matter for journals in the related fields as well). Articles are welcomed on a variety of subjects including the application of autosomal, Y-DNA, mtDNA data or that may include X chromosome markers, and ancestrally informative autosomal markers. For more information on types of articles, templates and the process to submit articles please see our Submission Policy and Resources for Authors.
These guidelines are not exhaustive. Correspondence with the editor is welcomed concerning any topic of genetic genealogy an author thinks may be appropriate for JoGG.
The JoGG and its contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Commercial use is not allowed without permission. The information is free for personal users and researchers; attribution is required on derivative works and a share-alike license applies. All rights reserved.
The following members currently comprise the JoGG’s permanent Advisory Board. Guest reviewers and board members may be added periodically at the JoGG’s discretion.
T. Whit Athey, PhD
Whit Athey is a retired physicist whose working career was primarily at the Food and Drug Administration where he was the chief of one of the medical device labs. He received his doctorate in physics and biochemistry at Tufts University, and undergraduate (engineering) and masters (math) degrees at Auburn University. For several years during the 1980s, he also taught one course each semester in the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Maryland. Besides his interest in genetic genealogy, he is an amateur astronomer and has his own small observatory near his home in Brookeville, MD.
Ann Turner, MD
Ann Turner is the founder of the GENEALOGY-DNA mailing list at RootsWeb and the co-author (with Megan Smolenyak) of “Trace Your Roots with DNA: Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree.” She received her undergraduate degree in biology in 1964 and her M.D. from Stanford University in 1970. In recent years, she developed software for neuropsychological testing and wrote utility programs for the PAF genealogy program. One of these utilities provided a way to split out all people in a database who were related via their mitochondrial DNA, six years before mtDNA tests were commercially available. The inspiration for this feature came from the (then) forward-looking predictions of Dr. Thomas Roderick.
Steven C. Perkins, JD, LLM
Steven C. Perkins is Coordinator of Reference Services at the University of Houston M.D. Anderson Library. He has a JD from the University of Cincinnati and a LLM degree from the University of Denver. He is an avid genealogist and is running eight Y chromosome surname studies.
David A. Stumpf, MD, Ph.D.
David A Stumpf, MD, PhD is board certified in neurologist, pediatrics and clinical informatics. He is Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University and a mentor at MATTER, a Chicago health care incubator. Previously he was an executive at UnitedHealth Group, working at the corporate level with its subsidiary companies: United Healthcare (payer) and Optum (data, analytics and disease management).
Brit Nicholson, M.S.
Brit Nicholson has a formal education in various fields of the natural sciences. His B.S. is in applied mathematics and M.S. is in geophysics/geological oceanography. Following those degrees, he worked at a university for two more years running oceanographic models, and then two more years in the modeling and simulation department. He has been independently studying genetics since 2001. Brit’s passion for genealogy developed after getting a DNA test with 23andMe in 2013. He has developed numerous tools for genetic genealogy at his website dna-sci.com.
The JoGG’s current editor is David Vance. We wish to also thank our past editors who have helped bring the JoGG to the genetic genealogy community.
David Vance
David is an IT services manager and application developer by background with degrees in computer science and cognitive science. He has been a traditional genealogist for over 30 years and started his journey in genetic genealogy with the first National Genographic test in 2005. He is a Y-DNA surname project administrator and haplogroup project co-administrator and is the author of the SAPP tool (Still Another Phylogeny Program) for Y-DNA phylogenetic analysis. He is also the author of “The Genealogist’s Guide to Y-DNA Testing for Genetic Genealogy”, an introductory book explaining Y-DNA in detail.
Leah Larkin, PhD.
Leah Larkin earned her bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and her PhD in 2002 from the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation work relied heavily on phylogenetic analysis, which is applicable to both ySNP and mtDNA studies in genealogy. She left academia after several years as a professor to become a freelance scientific editor. Her genealogical interests focus on using autosomal DNA in endogamous groups, especially through the Cajun Cousins project.
Blaine T. Bettinger, PhD, JD
Blaine Bettinger is a graduate of the Syracuse University College of Law where he studied intellectual property law. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY in 2006. He is currently the coordinator of the Bettinger surname DNA project and blogs at The Genetic Genealogist.
T. Whit Athey, PhD.
Whit Athey is a retired physicist whose working career was primarily at the Food and Drug Administration where he was the chief of one of the medical device labs. He received his doctorate in physics and biochemistry at Tufts University, and undergraduate (engineering) and masters (math) degrees at Auburn University. For several years during the 1980s, he also taught one course each semester in the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Maryland. Besides his interest in genetic genealogy, he is an amateur astronomer and has his own small observatory near his home in Brookeville, MD.