Editorial – A new year and a new editor team

As a new year starts for Veterinary Dermatology, we can reflect on several changes in terms of the teams involved with publishing this journal. The production of the journal involves a substantial team of people deployed by Wiley including journal manager, editorial team assistants, copy editor, production editor and typesetters. While changes in staffing are somewhat inevitable with publishers, there also is a significant change in progress in how the journal will be produced in the future. Wiley are introducing a new style and format for their journals (online and in-print) which inevitably will lead to changes in the appearance of the journal. Prospective authors may reference past issues and the author guidelines when preparing an article to submit to the journal. In the future these will be joined by an online journal style sheet which contains a variety of specific and detailed items that relate to the publication of articles focused on veterinary dermatology. This external style sheet will be a guide to help authors with the preparation of manuscripts and it will complement the highly detailed internal style manual that will be adopted across many of the Wiley journals. The editors will retain the current Vancouver reference format and aim to minimise changes to the article format in order to support authors as they prepare their manuscripts. Other changes in 2021 include the appointments of new co-editors to the editorial team. Barbara McMahill is a veterinary pathologist and past president of the International Society of Veterinary Dermatopathology (https://www.isvd.org/). She contracts for Idexx Labs in the USA and joins the team with expertise in pathology. Narayan Paul is a veterinary microbiologist and on the staff of the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory as their head of bacteriology at College Station. He joins the team with particular expertise in staphylococci. Microbial infection, especially staphylococcal infection, will likely remain an important and popular topic for future articles in the journal. Hilary Jackson is in referral practice in Scotland, having worked in academia in the USA and UK; she is a member of ICADA (https://www.icada.org/) and joint editor of the BSAVA Manual of Canine and Feline Dermatology. Liz Layne trained at the University of Wisconsin under Karen Moriello and is in referral practice in Utah, USA. Karen Moriello trained in veterinary dermatology at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, under Gail Kunkle and Richard Halliwell. In 1986 she joined the faculty of the veterinary school in Madison, Wisconsin, where she forged a prize-winning career as a teacher, clinician and expert researcher in the field of dermatophytosis. Karen became emerita professor in veterinary dermatology in 2019. Perhaps more importantly, she became an editor for the journal in 1996 and retired at the end of 2020, with a break from editing for 2003 to 2009, thus making her the longest standing editor for the journal. Karen has edited an enormous amount of material for the journal including many case reports. She also has supported the timely publication of the proceedings from various World Congresses of Veterinary Dermatology and papers from ICADA. It reflects the importance of the relationships between the journal and ICADA and WCVD, that their articles are published in this issue on feline allergic skin disease and later in the year the proceedings for WCVD9. I would like to thank Karen for all that she has given the journal, the discipline of veterinary dermatology and the many undergraduates and graduates she has taught and trained over the years. This will be my last editorial as an editor for the journal. I became editor around the time of the ESVD-ECVD Congress held in Mainz, Germany, 2006; little did I know then that I would be a member of the editor team for the following 14 years. Over the years I have worked with many people involved in the journal – people in various roles with Wiley and many authors and reviewers and editorial board members. One of the distinctive features of the veterinary dermatology community is the long-term commitment to professional relationships. Back in 1996, when Karen Moriello became the editor of Veterinary Dermatology, I was a veterinary dermatology resident in Madison and met Elizabeth Mauldin, who has recently become an editor, having supported the editors for many years with her expertise in reviewing images for publication. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight and thank members of the editorial board who, somewhat behind the scenes, have regularly and consistently supported the production of each and every article for many years – the abstract translators Karin Taglinger, Céline Darmon-Hadjaje and Fernando Ramiro-Ibanez, joined in recent years by Larissa Botoni, Liu Xin and Yotaro Shimazaki. I also would like to pay tribute to the founder of the journal, David Lloyd, who shepherded me into the role of Editor-in-Chief and is still working today with the journal in its 32nd volume and year. The journal will continue to be led by Anette Loeffler with Dan Morris and the other editors, as given above and also including Lluís Ferrer and Steve Shaw. I am sure the journal has a great future given the editor team and the ongoing support of the journal’s editorial board and of Wiley. After the many challenges of 2020, I wish the readers and all involved with Veterinary Dermatology a healthy and successful 2021.

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