Editorial: Charging forward

I have served as Editor-in-Chief of World’s Poultry Science Journal since June 2021. My charge from the Board of Directors of the World’s Poultry Science Association when appointing me as Editor-in-Chief was to increase readership and make the journal even more relevant to poultry scientists and the poultry industries worldwide, while maintaining the journal as a publication outlet for scholarly works regardless of their origin of submission. Moving forward, I considered several approaches to achieve these goals.

One approach is to attempt to improve the quality and relevance of articles published in the journal. This is certainly one of the responsibilities of the Editor-in-Chief. To that end, I am making efforts to improve the quality and rigour of peer-review for the journal. I require at least two reviews from recognised scientists in the field of the submission prior to making my decision. I am taking comments from reviewers related to manuscript quality, relevance, thoroughness, competence and timeliness quite seriously. My intention is that by improving these metrics for every article published, the overall quality and relevance of the journal will improve. In this issue, there are 14 articles, all of which underwent rigorous peer-review. As we strive to improve the metrics noted above, one might expect our rejection rate to increase, but that is not my intention. Rather, my intention by trying to raise the bar for publication in the journal is, quite simply, to improve the quality and relevance of the articles published.

A second approach to improve the quality and relevance of the journal is to attract more submissions from regions of the globe with substantial engagement in poultry research and commercial poultry production. There are multiple venues for publication of articles related to poultry science and the poultry industries. Authors have a choice of journals to submit their manuscripts to for consideration for publication. Some of the factors taken into consideration by authors when selecting a journal to submit their work to include audience, prestige and cost. World’s Poultry Science Journal reaches a global audience, and there are no page charges to authors for publishing in the journal. Prestige of a journal is difficult to define, but one aspect is the relative ranking of the journal among other related journals in its category. Previously, I shared the good news that in 2021 World’s Poultry Science Journal was ranked 12 out of 63 journals in the Agriculture, Dairy and Animal Science category, with an impact factor of 2.915 (Porter 2021). As we improve the quality and relevance of the articles published in the journal, one would hope that citations would increase and the relative ranking and prestige of the journal would continue to improve. An increase in the prestige of the journal would likely attract more submissions from regions of the globe with substantial engagement in poultry research and commercial poultry production.

A third approach to improve the quality and relevance of the journal is to solicit invited review articles from leading scientists on their specific area of research expertise. The current issue contains an invited review by Yuta Yoshida, Shotaro Nishimura, Shoji Tabata and Fuminori Kawabata titled ‘Chicken taste receptors and perception: recent advances in our understanding of poultry nutrient-sensing systems’ (Yoshida et al. 2021). The taste of food affects appetite and feed intake, thereby affecting the performance of poultry. Much of the recent research on taste receptors in chickens was conducted by this group of scientists and their colleagues. In their review, the authors discuss the current understanding of taste receptor systems in chickens. Readers of World’s Poultry Science Journal can expect to see more invited reviews from leading scientists on their specific areas of research expertise. The intent of these invited reviews is to increase readership and make the journal even more relevant to poultry scientists and the world poultry industries.

I look forward to serving the World’s Poultry Science Association as Editor-in-Chief for World’s Poultry Science Journal and to answering the call to increase readership of the journal and make the journal even more relevant to poultry scientists and the world poultry industries.