Announcing Focus Collections in Plant Physiology

Plant Physiology has had excellent success in recent years publishing special issues devoted in whole (Special Issues) or part (Focus Issues) to a specific thematic topic of high current interest. To date, we have published 22 of these thematic issues, and their importance and impact are documented by the fact that on average they have been viewed and cited more often than contemporary regular issues. These thematic issues have ranged in topic from those devoted to research on the specific model organisms of Arabidopsis (June 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005), Grasses (March 2001 and December 2002), and Legumes (March 2003 and April 2004), to highly focused topics such as Reactive Oxygen Species (June 2006), Plant Databases (May 2006), and Biochemistry of Plant Volatiles (August 2004). While the research articles anchor these thematic issues, all begin with a State of the Field editorial and include an appropriate selection of Updates that have the dual purpose of reviewing recent progress in the thematic area as well as serving as an instructional resource for graduate teaching. Until now, Plant Physiology has published both “Focus” and “Special” issues that differed primarily on breadth of topic and on number of articles. However, at the recent Plant Physiology Editorial Board Meeting at the ASPB Annual Meeting, the decision was made to discontinue this distinction, and all special thematic issues will be now called Focus Issues. These will continue to be organized by appointed Special Editors who write the State of the Field editorial as well as solicit authors for Update articles. The call for papers for Focus Issues is issued 8 months prior to the publication date and 4 months prior to submission deadline.

The Editorial Board is excited about a new feature that will accompany all upcoming Focus Issues that we are calling Focus Collections. A Focus Collection is a “virtual issue” consisting of an online collection of papers anchored by those articles published in the Focus Issue, but also will include relevant articles that have been published in Plant Physiology during the 2 previous years as well as new topic-relevant articles that are published in Plant Physiology in the following 2 years. For this 2-year prospectus, authors will be able to self-declare at the time of submission that they want their paper considered for inclusion in the Focus Collection, plus the table of contents of each upcoming issue will be scanned for potentially relevant articles. The intention is to make the Focus Issue more dynamic and timely by continually adding new articles as they are published. The Editorial Board is very enthusiastic about the Focus Collection concept, believing it will make Focus Issues more useful, give them a longer lifetime, and thereby increase their impact. We also think that the Focus Collection will have important value beyond the thematic research community by providing the broader plant community a living collection of relevant literature on high-interest topics for teaching and self-instruction. I recently announced full Open Access publishing in Plant Physiology at no charge to ASPB members (Ort, 2006), meaning that many of the articles in Focus Collections will be immediately available upon publication to anyone, anywhere in the world, who has an Internet connection.

I would like to close with an invitation. Plant Physiology is a journal that belongs to the plant research community as a whole. If you have an idea of an important area that should be the topic for a Focus Collection, I invite you to contact the disciplinarily appropriate Editorial Board member(s) with your suggestion.