A Word from the New Editor-In-Chief

It is an enormous privilege to write this editorial as the new Editor-In-Chief (EIC) of Plant and Cell Physiology (PCP). It has been 57 years since PCP was launched and it now holds the position of a quality international journal (top 10% in the Thomson Reuter’s ICI Plant Science category). Its reputation has been established through the efforts and collaborative work of former EICs and editorial teams, alongside the support of the Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists (JSPP), the patrons of PCP. My role as EIC has only just begun, and over the next 4 years I hope to build on these successes to enhance PCP’s growth and development with the collaboration of our outstanding editorial team which is guided and supported by our managing editor, Liliana Costa. In recent years, we began to expand our team of editors and advisory editors to include a wide range of scientists from all over the world. From 2016, David Jackson (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA) started his new role as Reviews Editor. We also welcomed 7 new editors to our team, Erich Grotewold (Ohio State University, USA), Rodrigo A. Gutierrez (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile), Takayuki Kohchi (Kyoto University, Japan), Rowan F. Sage (University of Toronto, Canada), Takashi Ueda (National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki, Japan), Masami Yokota-Hirai (RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan) and Hirofumi Yoshioka (Nagoya University, Japan). The entire team of handling editors now comprises 12 scientists from Japan and 13 overseas scientists from 10 countries, all with complementary expertise ranging from cell biology to biochemistry, systems biology, biotechnology and genomics. The full list of editors along with details of their expertise can be found on our website (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/pcp/ editorial_board.html). In addition, we have a 50-strong Advisory Editorial Board from over 24 countries and with wide-ranging scientific expertise to support our editors. At present, PCP is experiencing an increase in the number of submissions received, mainly due to our many advantages, amongst which include: (i) low publication fees and no additional costs for figures or color image reproduction— I therefore encourage authors to submit papers with full color images and illustrations; (ii) the offer of various publishing options in addition to the standard subscription model, including green and gold open access to suit the needs of researchers and funding agencies; (iii) a ‘Rapid Paper’ category for expedited peer-review and rapid publication of studies that contain new findings of exceptional interest and novelty. First decisions are usually made within 20 days of submission. In addition, ‘Rapid Papers’ are made freely available to all readers without subscription for the first 3 months; and (vi) Special Focus Issues (SFIs), of which several are published each year. (for more information, please see http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/ pcp/pcp_special_list.html). So far this year, the Online Database Issue [January 57(1)], and the SFIs on ‘Marchantia polymorpha’ (February, 57(2)] and on ‘Plant Responses to the Environment’ (in this issue, see also Ingram and Fujiwara 2016) have been published, with a further two on the way; one focusing on C4 biology and the other on how photosynthetic organisms manage light stress. The Online Database Issue, which is organized by Kentaro Yano (Meiji University, Japan), Takeshi Obayashi (Tohoku University, Japan) and Hajime Ohyanagi (KAUST, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), has now been published annually since 2011 and serves to showcase a selection of highly useful and freely available bioinformatics resources that will undoubtedly facilitate dry and wet lab research. Papers cover a range of ‘-omics’ databases, such as ATTED-II (Obayashi et al. 2014, Aoki et al. 2016), the KNApSAcK collection of databases (e.g. Afendi et al. 2012, Nakamura et al. 2016, Nakamura et al. 2014) and genomics resources in Triticeae (e.g. Bolser et al. 2015), Brassicaeae (Kiefer et al. 2014), Medicago (Krishnakumar et al. 2015) and rice (Sakai et al. 2013, Yonemaru et al. 2014). The next call for pre-submission proposals will be announced later this spring; for more information, please see http://www.oxfordjournals.org/ our_journals/pcp/pcp_database.html In each regular and special issue, PCP will continue to publish high-quality cutting edge research covering a broad range of topics in the plant sciences field. We hope you make PCP your journal of choice for submitting your next manuscript.

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