What's up for Annals of Applied Biology in 2024

A new year starts and we are looking forward to publishing new interesting research for you. It seems that the trend in submission observed in the last 2 years is slowly getting to a new level. After a continuous steady increase in submissions until 2021 (Azevedo, 2022) when a major jump was observed, 2022 and 2023, showed reductions. Still, the number of published papers did not change and we have maintained the same numbers over the years. We would obviously like to see more submissions and more articles published, therefore, please do consider Annals of Applied Biology when publishing your next work. There is a much wider range of types of publications now and we look forward to getting your views and ideas in articles types such as Point-of-View. We especially welcome hypothesis-driven research using either theoretical or experimental approaches to answer key questions of general interest to our broad readership.

Annals has an online manuscript submission and tracking, fast, efficient refereeing of manuscripts, no page charges, but the author can opt for the Open Access alternative, and we always try to make sure papers are published rapidly. Annals is owned by the Association of Applied Biologists (AAB—https://www.aab.org.uk) so we have worked with AAB to disseminate what is published and our actions on social media, making the articles more visible than ever. By the way, many of them are made Free Access. The AAB team has also worked hard and efficiently in order to help Annals with our activities, continuing with the work with some authors, offering them free membership for a certain period. It is important to mention that now all our editors have been offered membership of AAB for the duration of their time helping Annals. My thanks to the AAB team, in particular Geraint Parry (Executive Officer), and also to AAB's Publication Officer, Prof. Martin Parry.

Our thanks also to the Wiley (https://www.Wiley.com/en-us) team who is giving a lot of support, from the publication of the journal to the marketing of our activities, and helping us in so many different ways. They are so many but I would like to mention Andreas Petersen (Senior Journal Publishing Manager), Madalina Poienaru (Analyst—Product Optimization—ReXReadiness), and Devvie Miranda (Production Editor). Last year Wiley introduced the ReX submission system, which is looking good, but naturally, with its use by our potential authors, we noticed that some adjustments and changes were needed, so we have worked together to make sure that the necessary alterations are performed and the submission process is as easy and efficient as possible. My thanks to Carol Millman, Annals Editorial Officer, who has also maintained close communication with the Wiley team, adjusting ReX and any other issues that we have eventually encountered. Thanks are also due to our editors and reviewers who have been working extremely hard as always and making sure we keep the high standard and efficiency during the entire publication process. In an editorial I wrote in July 2023 (Azevedo, 2023), I commented about an issue that is certainly making the life of editors and authors difficult: finding reviewers to evaluate the manuscripts. Conversations with fellow editors clearly showed that many of us are facing the same problem. Therefore, I invite you to read the editorial where many issues related to that are discussed, and more than ever I appreciate the hard work by our editors and reviewers and their cooperation, and the patience of our authors when the reviewing process takes longer than expected. Finally, my thanks to our authors who considered Annals as a vehicle to publish their research and ideas, and to our readers who I hope are happy with the science published in our articles, many of them made Free Access.

We continued with our new series of special editorials, named ‘Interviews’ introduced in Annals in 2020 (Azevedo & Millman, 2020). In 2021, we published an Interview with Carol Millman, former Executive Officer, AAB (Azevedo, 2021), and in 2022 an Interview with Prof. Nigel G. Halford, who is a group leader in plant sciences at Rothamsted Research, UK, and is currently the Honorary Treasurer of the AAB, was published (Azevedo & Haslam, 2022). In the January issue of Annals one will have Free Access to the Interview article with Prof. Evgenios Agathokleous, School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST), China (Azevedo, 2024). Read it! Don't miss it. It is very interesting and enjoyable.

The special sections on Plant Phenological Growth Stages and Description of Plant Viruses (DPV) are thriving. I would like to invite you to visit the Descriptions of Plant Viruses website (https://dpvweb.net/). I am also happy to let you know that our Senior Editor Antonino Malacrino, is now in charge of the section on Plant Phenological Growth Stages and we have new members on the board who will be almost exclusively handling these submissions.

I would like to call your attention that almost all manuscripts submitted to Annals are also now being reviewed by one of our Statistical Editors. I ask you to check the Annals' Author Guidelines where a special section on ‘Statistics’ is included. Help and advice from the Annals Statistical Editors is available to authors.

I would like to welcome the following new colleagues to the Board of Editors from 2023: Robin Heinen (Germany) (Senior Editor), Meriem Miyassa Aci (Italy), Mohammed El-Esawi (Egypt), Joseph Galani Yamdeu (United Kingdom), Yin-Gang Hu (China), Niamh McHugh (United Kingdom), Kundan Kishore (India), Fabio Quaglino (Italy), David Ruano Rosa (Spain), Fernanda Salvato (United States), Afranio Vieira (Brazil), and Yong Zhang (China).

Our thanks are also due to the editors who resigned from the Board in 2023: Jo Staley (Senior Editor), Gavin Ash, Alison Kingston-Smith, Emilia Lopez Solanilla, Carmine Marcone, Thomas Perring, Paul Struik, Paulo Mazzafera, and Colin Turnbull. We truly appreciate your contribution over the years.

I would like to welcome our New Senior Editor for Ecology and the Environment: Welcome Robin Heinen – Department for Life Science Systems, TUM School of Life Sciences, Technische Universität München, Germany (https://www.lss.ls.tum.de/en/toek/team/heinen-robin/). Robin (Figure 1), was an Associate Editor and has already taken the role from Jo Staley (Figure 2) since September 2023, who resigned from the board after 9 years of working with Annals. Thank you so much Jo! We will miss working with you. You were truly dedicated and committed to Annals, extremely efficient, and a tremendous colleague. We wish you the best in your new adventures!

We have had our periodic Senior Editor's meeting in which we discuss the journal and make decisions about any issues. We have also had the participation of Andreas (Wiley), Martin (AAB), Geraint (AAB), and Jamie (AAB), which has facilitated our actions since they contribute not only with key information about the publisher, Wiley, and the Association (AAB), but also with the needed urgent actions that can be implemented almost immediately. We hope to continue this kind of meeting on the top of our catch-up regular meetings with this amazing team, four times/year.

Once more I would like to invite you to follow us on social media. Check our Facebook® page, Twitter (Twitter accounts: @Annapplbiol, @AABiologists), and so forth, and also those of our editors and collaborators. We can create a nice network for the dissemination of research published in Annals, by our editors, authors, readers, and collaborators as well. Your feedback is very important to us.

I wish you all the best for 2024 and keep on checking Annals publications and visit our website (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17447348) and social media pages (@AABiologists; aabiologists; https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068738984850) for more news and updates, and also the AAB website (https://www.aab.org.uk).