EDITORIAL

It is painful to stop doing something you really enjoy. This is the feeling I had when I made the decision at the end of the last year that BJPP needed fresh air. As of this issue, BJPP has a new Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Fábio Murilo DaMatta. My decision was based on the simple fact that I believe in the Gaussean curve. And it was easy to realize that when I took into my hands the first issues I edited and the last one. It was an evolution, from the quality of the articles to the quality of diagramation, style, etc. But with the last issue in hand I felt that new ideas were necessary. I cannot deny that being an Editor takes time and keeps one away from the lab, which I do miss, but there is compensation. During this time I had help from several people, not to mention the Assistant Editors and Associate Editors with their continuous work of editing manuscripts. All these people gave valuable and inspiring contributions, always in the direction to improve the journal in every aspect. A consequence of this effort is that BJPP became a strong option for Brazilian plant physiologists to publish their work. Also, there was an increasing interest from other South American researchers to publish in BJPP, indicating that this journal may become a means for scientific integration in the continent. However, there is still room for improvement, for example, through the registration of BJPP in world scientific databases. An example of how useful this can be are the statistics for BJPP in the Scielo (Scientific Electronic Library Online – www.scielo.br). Every time an article is downloaded from the Scielo database as a PDF the event is registered. Starting with volume 14(1):2002, 111,373 downloads have been made. The numbers for each volume and issue are shown in the following figure. Considering the first three volumes, where the downloads were leveled and assuming an average of 10 articles per issue, it can be estimated that approximately 1,000 downloads per article were made. From volume seventeen BJPP started to be published quarterly. Another impressive number is that 9 articles were downloaded more than 2,000 times and one of them over 3,500. These numbers make it clear that BJPP is being widely read, and this is the most gratifying return I can have from these years as Editor.

It is my wish that BJPP grows strongly as a Plant Physiology journal. It was a pleasure to work for you and with you.

Prof. Paulo Mazzafera

Departamento de Fisiologia Vegetal – IB

Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  27 Sept 2006
• Date of issue
  June 2006