Medicinal herbs, bioactives, phytochemicals and functional foods for health of aquatic species: Exploring a burgeoning focus for fish health sciences

The discovery and subsequent commercial development of bioactive compounds has a rich history of beneficial impacts on human, plant and animal health. More recently, and as attested by numerous review articles, many research groups have been engaged in the quest of discovering how these naturally sourced products can enhance aquaculture production and reduce disease complications for commercially significant aquatic species. Finding alternatives to currently used antibiotics and antiparasitic agents is often described as an important benefit arising from these types of studies. Given the nature of these works, ranging from early prospecting of plants and crude extracts, through to formal tests of efficacy, both within laboratory and farm settings, results are finding their way to publication in journals spanning many discipline areas. Aquaculture and fish health journals are of course a prime location given the practical nature of these journals and the overarching themes of responsible aquaculture, sustainable productivity and evidence-based health management of aquatic species. Research groups, and lead authors of such papers, often reach out to the editorial team of the Journal of Fish Diseases (JFD) to determine whether their specific paper would be a good fit for the JFD, and we are always happy to work with author groups to help them find the right home for their specific planned submission. Although this often happens prior to a manuscript's submission, these discussions also unfold at the time of submission when the editorial team makes its early decision as to whether the scope of the journal and its areas of peer review and editorial strength would provide benefits to the paper and the authors. Papers on topics such as medicinal herbs can be challenging for the peer review process since many of these works are multidisciplinary, and for peer review to be complete and effective, we may need to seek out insights from biochemists, botanists, physiologists, pathogen specialists, statisticians and fish health experts. This breadth of peer review is often very challenging to arrange and coordinate and therefore extra time is often needed. If the core findings and key parts of the study sit outside of the areas of expertise of the JFD, we are likely to suggest a journal where the journal's scope and the paper's findings align. Although historically this might be considered a “desk rejection” and by its nature a bit disappointing to authors when the news is received, it would be better to think of this as a “constructive redirection” to ensure that authors benefit from a credible peer review and editing process. Authors are not well-served when a journal provides an incomplete peer review process, particularly if those selected to conduct the peer review are not experts in the main subject areas of the submitted manuscript. Recent advances in publishing sciences have made it much easier for authors to re-direct their paper to another journal. Often this can be done seamlessly, by a single keystroke, through programs such as ScholarOne without the need to make modifications to the manuscript's layout or referencing style. This practice is likely to become more common in the future as journals become part of cascade referral networks (a practice whereby journal editors collaborate with one another for the benefit of finding the best home for submitted research papers). We look forward to working with authors on submitted manuscripts dealing with natural products and look forward to learning more about the efforts of many dedicated scientists seeking new and better ways to manage health of aquatic species. The questions and thoughts outlined in the preceding section are meant to be soft-guidelines (rather than a prescriptive list) and perspectives that might help authors decide if the JFD is the right home for their work, and also to give authors an idea of some of the common problem areas that we encounter with submitted works. When a paper is “re-directed”, we hope that authors realize that this is meant to be constructive and a genuine attempt to help ensure that a manuscript will receive the depth of peer review consistent with what is expected by the scientific community. All authors have contributed to the writing equally. The authors attest that there is no conflict of interest.

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