Building a sustainable animal production system and establishing a harmonious human living environment

Abstract

According to UN's World Population Prospects in 2022, the world population has surpassed a stunning number of 8 billion people, posing enormous challenges to the already fragile ecosystem. The concept of “One Health” aiming to achieve sustainable and balanced development for humans, animals, and the entire ecosystem through a comprehensive approach has become a new crucial interdisciplinary focus and a worldwide scientific consensus.

As an important part of One Health, how can animal research establish a system to balance animal production, ecological safety, and human health? How can we develop an animal production system to meet our diverse food consumption demands while conserving natural resources and protecting the environment to achieve the goal of One Health? Is there an approach to produce green, safe, and high-quality animal-source foods while maintaining animals' physical and mental health? Is it feasible to build a production system to achieve the mutual promotion of animal production and natural resources such as grain, forage, water, and soil to facilitate intrasystemic material cycling and energy flows and to maximize carbon neutrality? All of these challenges and crises must be seriously addressed and effectively tackled by scientists and engineers with commitment and devotion.

To meet the demand of our time, Animal Research and One Health (AROH) is founded just in time and dedicated to build a sustainable and balanced system that reconciles animal production, ecological safety, and human health.

Holding the concept of “One Health,” AROH aims to promote the coordinated development of animal production, ecological safety, and human health. It also focuses on multidisciplinary studies and reports, including state-of-the-art biotechnology, animal resource conservation and utilization, genetic breeding and reproduction, animal nutrition and husbandry, smart animal husbandry and environmental science, animal disease prevention and management, and animal product safety and quality control. In particular, AROH highlights the latest progress in animal welfare research and application. It aims to provide an international platform for relevant basic and applied research as well as industrial technology development.

The objective of AROH is to promote the scientific and rational utilization of land, water, and environmental resources. To this end, AROH evaluates research and reports on all kinds of land, air, and water animals and related products. AROH acts as an international communication platform for basic research, translational research, and industrial technology development.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. AROH is launched in 2023 and sponsored by the top 10 animal research institutes. Adhering to the spirit of “pursuing excellence and uniting as one,” AROH collaborates with professionals, scholars, audiences, and authors in the field. With services such as open access publishing, publication charge waiver for the first 3 years, and a green channel for quality submissions, our vision is to develop AROH into an international top-ranked journal. Additionally, AROH has the following unique features: (1) Submission Process AROH offers free format submission and welcomes manuscripts from preprint repositories and collaborative journals; therefore, accelerating the processes of typesetting, submission, peer review, and revision. (2) Openness and Transparency AROH requires a Conflicts of Interest Statement from all authors, reviewers, and editorial members, and thus ensuring transparent peer review and final decisions on publication. (3) Evaluation Standards AROH lessens the excessive concern about journal metrics (such as the impact factor) and highlights the originality, innovation, and applicability of each submission. (4) Incentives An annual selection of top excellent articles is conducted to encourage future high-quality submissions. (5) Research Integrity Guaranteeing is the core mission of scholarly publications. AROH stringently follows the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CrediT) to ensure definite recognition of each author's contribution.

In summary, AROH's vision is to link academic research and One Health to establish a resource-saving and eco-friendly animal production system and to promote organic integration and positive interaction among animals, the environment, and humans. AROH strives to rebuild and optimize the One Health system to benefit human health. We sincerely expect AROH to be a vital platform for converging world-class research achievements. This dynamic journal is also destined to significantly contribute to the global health community and a brilliant future for humanity.