Abstract: The 2011 JIPB Editorial Board Meeting, which coincided with the 2011 International Symposium on Integrative Plant Biology, was held at Lanzhou University, China, on August 26, 2011. Over thirty editors were in attendance for this extremely productive event (Figure 1). The symposium, jointly organized by JIPB, Lanzhou University and four Chinese societies involved in plant science research, the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, Botanical Society of China, Genetics Society of China, and Chinese Society for Plant Physiology, drew nearly 400 participants from all over China and abroad. The 2011 JIPB international editorial board meeting was well attended by over 30 editorial board members from China, the United States, England, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands. This photo was taken outside the Legend Hotel, Lanzhou on 26 August 2011, with JIPB board members and editorial staff. Front row, from left to right: Drs. Jia Li, Zhongchi Liu, Martin AJ Parry, Chun-Ming Liu, Chris Hawes, William J. Lucas, Leon V. Kochian, Ian T. Baldwin, Jinzhong Cui, Li-Hui Zhao, Meng-Xiang Sun, Ping He; Middle row, from left to right: Drs. Sandi Chen, Jianping Hu, Taiyu Wang, Jason Hu, Carol Bacchus, Trevor Wang, Remko Offringa, Jianqiang Wu, Zhizhong Gong, Jirong Huang, Toru Fujiwara, Ming Yuan, Yaoguang Liu; Back row, from left to right: Drs. Dabing Zhang, Cong-Ming Lu, Hongwei Xue, Qi Xie, Li-Jia Qu, Daoxin Xie, Xiaoquan Qi, Dong Liu, Hai-Chun Jing, Li-Xin Zhang. The board meeting commenced with an overview of the current situation and future prospective of the Journal, given by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Chun-Ming Liu, followed by a very encouraging analysis of JIPB's market status as seen from the publisher's perspective, provided by Jason Hu from Wiley-Blackwell. It is clear that JIPB continues its steady progress in many aspects. JIPB has been indexed by 66 international abstract & indexing databases including PubMed/MEDLINE, SCI-E, SCOPUS, CA, BA and BIOSIS. Our circulation continues to grow by leaps, where subscriptions went from 9,400 in 2009 to 11,800 in 2010 (Figure 2), and the Journal is available in over 8,000 libraries worldwide, a 25% increase compared to 2009. Last year there were over 109,000 full text downloads compared to 62,000 in 2009 (Figure 3, cited from The Publisher's Annual Report 2010). The number of subscriptions to JIPB has shown steady progress over the last five years, reaching 11,833 in 2010. JIPB article downloads have increased dramatically since 2009 and additional progress is expected in the data from 2011. The Journal's Impact Factor has risen steadily over the years to 1.603, according to ISI Journal Citation Reports (2010). We expect it to reach over 2.0 in 2011 (Figure 4). Likewise, JIPB's financial situation is healthy, with several grants from various Chinese funding agencies. Most visibly, JIPB has been repeatedly selected as an “A-class Journal” for the past 6 years, a prestigious prize awarded by the China Association for Science and Technology to the top 7 best scientific journals from among over 4,900 journals published across all disciplines in China. JIPB's impact factor continues to progress steadily, and is expected to reach more than 2.0 in 2011 with the help of its international editorial board and its publisher, Wiley-Blackwell. JIPB's special issues over the past years have proved popular, including 2010's top-visited 5 special issues on Plant Vascular Biology and Agriculture, The Plant Cell Surface, Frontiers of Integrative Plant Biology, Photosynthesis, and Plant Metabolic Biology (Figure 5). Meanwhile, selected topics for special issues in the coming two years will be on 1) Methods in Crop Molecular Breeding (to be organized by Martin Parry, Jiankang Wang and José Luis Araus), 2) Cell Polarity & Development (to be organized by Remko Offringa et al.), 3) Organelle Biology (to be organized by Jianping Hu and Chris Hawes), 4) Fertilization & Zygotic Embryogenesis (to be organized by Chun-Ming Liu and Tetsuya Higashiyama), 5) Nutrient Sensing (to be organized by Bill Lucas and Leon Kochian), 6) Receptor-Like Kinases (to be organized by Jia Li and Frans Tax), 7) Plant Senescence (to be organized by Haichun Jing and Hong Gil Nam), 8) Epigenetics (to be organized by Zhizhong Gong and Imran Siddiqi), 9) Ubiquitinization (to be organized by Qi Xie and Giovanna Serino). JIPB full text downloads by issue in 2010. JIPB publishes special issues on selected topics, which have proved exceedingly popular among its readers. Graphically, it is clear that articles benefit from the focused topics, including JIPB's special issues on Plant Vascular Biology and Agriculture, the Plant Cell Surface, Frontiers of Integrative Plant Biology, Photosynthesis, and Plant Metabolic Biology. These special issues have reliably shown great market strength and appeal to its viewers. I'm also happy to announce that the board has decided to shift the attention of the reviewing process to foster a mentoring spirit for young scientists and students. This reflects our appreciation and value for young scientists who contribute to JIPB. We believe no progress would be made without such fearless postdocs and tireless graduate students! Another focus of the Journal's reviewing process is to help improve the quality of submitted manuscripts. Specifically, every manuscript should include a synthesized model, to be proposed in a global perspective. The importance of such models is inherent, as they not only draw a broad audience, but also erect new tiers for new knowledge and future growth. The board has also made decisions on several other important topics: 1) to offer JIPB Author Workshops targeted towards talented young students considering publication in an international journal; 2) to change the reviewing system and enforce more efficient decision making to shorten turn around times; 3) to establish leadership opportunities by allowing each co-editor the opportunity to organize a special issue; 4) to make comprehensive, ergonomic changes to the Bench>Press manuscript handling system; 5) to consider the possibility of reviewing old Chinese language literature that has previously been sequestered in Chinese journals, with the intent of re-contextualizing past findings with present knowledge. At this year's Symposium, on behalf of the JIPB Board, Associate Editors, Profs. Bill Lucas and Leon Kochain announced the winners of the JIPB Best Poster Award and 2010 Best Paper Award. The Best Poster Awards, nominated and voted for by a panel of researchers, were given to Dr. Baocai Tan's Lab at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Dr. Jiang Tian's Lab at South China Agricultural University. Two papers, one from Dr. Peter Gresshoff's Lab at The University of Queensland (Ferguson et al. 2010) and one from Dr. Lei Zhang's Lab at the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai (Wang et al. 2010), were awarded as JIPB's Best Papers in 2010. We noticed that, among those highly cited papers, topics related to ROS and abiotic stresses (Booker et al. 2009; Chen et al. 2009; Cheng et al. 2009; Li et al. 2009; Moura et al. 2010; Nanda et al. 2010), metabolic regulation (Zhang et al. 2009; Buer et al. 2010; Guerriero et al. 2010; Kärkönen and Koutaniemi 2010; Wang et al. 2010; Zulak and Bohlmann 2010) and developmental and reproductive biology (Liu et al. 2009; Zhang and Tan 2009; Du and Groover 2010; Hannape 2010; Hirakawa et al. 2010; Liu et al. 2010) have received the most attention. We believe this trend partially reflects the expertise areas represented by our board members. In addition, JIPB has changed the Free Access policy this year to allow the widest possible audience to access articles published in JIPB. Those interested may view the associated changes on our website (see Free Access policy at http://www.jipb.net). In summary, the past meeting has galvanized my resources and renewed my faith that we can and will make JIPB a top plant science journal in the immediate future. The immense support and creative energy that came forth at the 2011 board meeting were truly inspiring and remind me of the great impact that our collective efforts can have on this Journal. I sincerely thank our editors, reviewers, authors, readers and in-house staff for their contributions over the years. Look forward to the years to come.