An introduction to Animal Frontiers: The uphill climb

Some journeys are an uphill climb; thankfully, the view is usually worth it! Metaphorically speaking, conceiving and launching a new science magazine in less than 9 months falls into that category. Therefore, it is appropriate that the idea for an international collaboration to form Animal Frontiers was first voiced in the Mile High City, Denver, Colorado, and that solidifying the partnerships took us to Rome, Italy, where we climbed at least 10,000 stairs, and through the New England mountains into Canada during a blizzard. Several times a year, leaders from the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), the Canadian Society of Animal Science (CSAS), and the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) meet to brainstorm, update, and attempt to increase our collaborative efforts to bring new services to our members. Before the 2010 Joint Annual Meeting in Denver, we had often discussed the negative worldwide image of animal agriculture and the roles of our individual scientific societies in combating that image. The questions that always come out of these discussions are “How can animal agriculture and animal science have such a negative image? Isn't our ultimate goal to feed the world?” The unique element of this discussion in July, 2010, was our rather obvious realization that we as animal science professionals do an amazing job of promoting the quality of science and advancement of animal science to ourselves, but we do very little to bring our message to a wider audience. We often discuss our desire to be the “scientific voice of animal science,” but to use an American vernacularism, we are “preaching to the choir.” So we decided it was time to leverage our best assets of great scientists, great science, and knowledge of scientific publishing and come up with a new information distribution plan. In the tradition of all great ideas, we decided to pay homage to a magazine called Elements that is currently published by a partnership of geological societies and poach their idea. The goal of Elements is to cover a single topic in geology from as many sides as possible, in a readable manner for a large and varied audience including individuals outside of geology. We pitched this idea to the ASAS board and to EAAP and CSAS during our joint discussions. All 3 societies quickly agreed in principle, and our journey began. To present details, to discuss ideas, and to organize the finances, individuals from ASAS (Steve Zinn, Meghan Wulster-Radcliffe) and the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS; Susan Pollock) flew to Rome and then traveled to Canada to meet individually with their counterparts at EAAP and CSAS. In Rome, we had one of those amazing business meetings where all goals were accomplished, many new ideas were developed, and we managed to sneak in dinners with great food and a bit of sightseeing. We did some of our work at the EAAP offices and then some at Andrea Rosati's dining room table about an hour north of Rome. In Andrea's hometown, we were treated to a tour of an olive oil press and a home-cooked Italian meal at Cled Thomas' rebuilt home (of course, none of us were sure if Italian food cooked by a Scottish national could truly be considered authentic, but it was cooked with olive oil grown in Cled's olive grove and pressed at the local press). In Rome, we were able to establish a managerial board structure, a preliminary budget, an advertising sales plan, an editorial workflow, an operations agreement, and most importantly determine topics for the first 4 issues. In between all of this, we engaged in what we affectionately called speed sightseeing, and because it is Rome that invariably meant we climbed hundreds of steps for great views! We climbed steps in the Vatican, we climbed steps in the Coliseum, and of course we climbed the Spanish steps! If we hadn't had an amazingly productive series of meetings, we might have thought we were on vacation. We left Rome, tired but exhilarated and with final buy in from EAAP. Our next stop was to travel to Canada to meet with CSAS. Our visit with CSAS was just as productive as our visit with EAAP, but we would probably admit that it was harder to get to Canada than to Rome. We met in Hartford for a supposedly easy drive across the border, and we did make it across the border, but delayed flights, torrential rain, a forgotten passport, and finally a blizzard certainly added to the excitement. But in a short time, we were able to get final buy-in from CSAS, 2 more ideas for future issues, formalization of the editorial process, and final approval of the budget. All of the travel done, and the decision that FASS would help ASAS, CSAS, and EAAP begin a new publication within 9 months, definitely record time, we got back to our offices and started working. Nine months later, we have our first issue on the carbon cycle. It has been a hectic and scary 9 months. We have rewritten the rules on how to get an article through the editorial process 3 times, and we have come close to driving our authors, technical editors, and cover artist over the edge with tight, and then even tighter, time frames. And we have worked hard to find new and creative ways to fund a new publication in a time when the publications world has been turned upside down. Definitely an up-hill climb, but we think the view is worth it. Enjoy!

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.