Editorial : Greetings from the new Editor-in-Chief - Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology
I am honored to serve as the new Editor-in-Chief of Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology, and on behalf of a new editorial team, it is my privilege to welcome readers to the first issue of 2009. I wish to thank the former Editors Drs Marlos Bezerra, Fábio DaMatta and Paulo Mazzafera for helping to ensure a successful Editorial transition and for their dedication to the Journal during the last years. I am also pleased to inform that Dr. Lazaro Peres (ESALQ-USP) has been appointed as new Assistant Editor and at the new Editorial Office we are joined by my colleagues, Drs Anna Okorokova-Façanha (UENF) and Alessandro Ramos (UVV), which assist us with the manuscripts management and journal production. We are also proud and fortunate to work closely with an international board of Associate Editors that includes renewable scientists from Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, UK, USA and Venezuela.
It is clear for us that recovering the ability to publish the issues on time is the first big challenge that has to be faced by our Editorial Board, which implies the reestablishment of a healthy backlog of the submitted manuscripts. This is an essential criterion for the journal indexation by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Actually, it is becoming an even harder task to be accomplished due to the controversial change of the Qualis-CAPES based on ISI impact factor and the increasing competitiveness of other national and abroad plant/agronomic journals that have recently been indexed by ISI. However, I strong believe it is just a question of time until the Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology can also be indexed, mainly because this is a respectable peer-reviewed journal of international scope, for which the quality and availability of authors, editors and reviewers are particularly important issues that have been preserved.
It is a time for our plant science community to come together to support and improve this traditional Brazilian scientific journal that during the last 20 years has effectively disseminated so many interesting and original studies on all aspects of plant physiology, mainly produced in developing countries and/or addressing relevant issues for the tropical world. We are continuously looking for committed reviewers and for an enhancing number of qualified submissions to give back to our scientific community the response it deserves. However, the success of this endeavor depends on the participation of everyone in the community. Each invited reviewer should treat each author's submission exactly the way he/she'd like to be treated when submitting a manuscript elsewhere and make every effort to make a revision quickly and professionally. Each potential author should consider a submission and even for those who doesn't feel motivated to submit a manuscript at this time to our Journal, please, do not hesitate in search for relevant information on your research subjects in the published issues available in SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) platform. Certainly you will find out interesting studies to be well-referenced in your future works.
As Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology enters its 20th year of publication, we are delighted to present an issue that brings the articles authored from four different countries five Brazilian works and three abroad articles from India, Spain and USA. Five of them report on underexplored physiological aspects of important tree species native from Cerrado (Souza et al., 2009) Amazonian (Sendall et al., 2009; Silva et al., 2009a, b) and Atlantic (Mengarda et al., 2009) forests. Other two are dedicated to the regulation of metal tolerance in cultivated radish, Raphanus sativus (Choudhary et al., 2009) and in the aquatic invasive species native to the Amazon basin, Eichhornia crassipes (Caldelas et al., 2009). Last but not least, Brandão and Sodek, (2009) describe nitrate uptake and metabolism in soybean plants under hypoxia. Soybean occupies about 6% of the world's arable land and is the fastest growing major agricultural crop, and Brazil produces soybeans on over 18 million hectares. I presume this overview gives an idea of the identity of our Journal and why it cannot be regarded as only one more journal on the plant science scenario.
By writing this essay, I mainly would like to emphasize that the new editorial team is resolutely committed to making the best research available to our readers and looks forward to work synergically with the Executive Council of the Brazilian Society of Plant Physiology to further improve its scientific quality and international reputation in the next few years. In order to improve our system for handling manuscript submission and review we are mobilizing the efforts to organize an efficient electronic platform for manuscript submission provided by the SciELO system. Also, as you can see, some changes to the layout of the Journal were introduced reflecting a more attractive and readable format. I hope to bring you more updates on the Journal's progress in the next issue. Enjoy the reading, and we look forward for your critical analysis, suggestions and future contributions.
Arnoldo Rocha Façanha
Editor-in-Chief
- 1. Caldelas C., Iglesia-Turińo S., Araus J. L., Bort J. and Febrero A. (2009) Physiological responses of Eichhornia crassipes [Mart.] Solms to the combined exposure to excess nutrients and Hg. vol. 21 (1):1-12
- 2. Andrea D. Brandăo and Ladaslav Sodek (2009) Nitrate uptake and metabolism by roots of soybean plants under oxygen deficiency. vol. 21 (1):13-23
- 3. Sikander Pal Choudhary, Renu Bhardwaj, B.D. Gupta, Prabhu Dutt, Mukesh Kanwar and Priya Arora (2009) Epibrassinolide regulated synthesis of polyamines and auxins in Raphanus sativus L. seedlings under Cu metal stress. vol. 21 (1):25-32
- 4. Elizamar Ciríaco da Silva1, Rejane Jurema Mansur Custódio Nogueira, Fernando Henrique de Aguiar Vale, Francisco Pinheiro de Araújo, Mariana Antunes Pimenta (2009) Stomatal changes induced by intermittent drought in four umbu tree genotypes. vol. 21 (1):33-42
- 5. Elizamar Ciríaco da Silva1, Rejane Jurema Mansur Custódio Nogueira, Fernando Henrique de Aguiar Vale, Natoniel Franklin de Melo, Francisco Pinheiro de Araújo (2009) Water relations and organic solutes production in four umbu tree (Spondias tuberosa) genotypes under intermittent drought. vol. 21 (1):45-53
- 6. Liana Hilda Golin Mengarda, Rogério Luís Faria de Souza, Eliemar Campostrini, Fabrício de Oliveira Reis, Wagner Aparecido Vendrame, Geraldo Rogério Faustini Cuzzuol (2009) Light as an indicator of ecological succession in brazilwood (Caesalpinia echinata Lam.). vol. 21 (1):55-64
- 7. Kerrie M. Sendall, George L. Vourlitis, and Francisco de Almeida Lobo (2009) Seasonal variation in the maximum rate of leaf gas exchange of canopy and understory tree species in an Amazonian semi-deciduous forest. vol. 21 (1):65-74
- 8. Joăo Paulo Souza, Carlos Henrique B. A. Prado, Ana Lúcia S. Albino and Maria A. Damascos (2009) Shoot-foliage relationships in deciduous, semideciduous, and evergreen cerrado tree species. vol. 21 (1):76-86
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
17 Dec 2009 -
Date of issue
2009
