Title: Despite a stressful period with the pandemic, publication is going strong: News about <i>Annals of Applied Biology</i>
Abstract: It has been 2 years since this challenging period due to the pandemic started. The disruption caused by COVID-19 has probably been much stronger than any of us could have expected. The year 2021 was not easy despite some clear improvement in the overall condition around the world, mainly thanks to the tremendous work of the scientific community and companies in producing a range of vaccines quickly and the use of very simple and efficient protective measures such as wearing face masks indoors and outdoors, and social distancing. I want to start this editorial with a big thanks to the Association of Applied Biology (AAB: https://www.aab.org.uk) and Wiley (https://www.wiley.com/en-us) for their support over the last 2 years. They did a tremendous job keeping everything going well and with full and continuous support. To our editors and reviewers who also did not drop the ball and managed to keep the high standard and efficiency of the entire publishing process. To our authors and all those who considered Annals as a vehicle to publish their research and ideas. Thanks also to you, our readers, who we hope are happy with the information we are publishing and are using it in your research and activities. It was another difficult year, but I believe we all did pretty well. Research continued to be affected in 2021, but the overall perception is that we all managed to do a bit better than in 2020. Many of us still had to do most of the work from home, but it has been amazing how the new communication alternatives made possible by tools such as Meet, Teams, Zoom, among others, so rapidly created a new positive and reliable scenario for online conferences, teaching, webinars and so on. Some hybrid events are already taking place, and slowly scientific activities are getting back to near normal. The year 2021 was also the year we lost a friend and extraordinary colleague, Prof. Simon Leather (Figure 1), who has been on the board of Annals since 2005 as a Senior Editor, and between 2015 and 2020 as the Editor-in-Chief. Simon passed away in September. It was a shock to all of us but also to the entomology field, which is so easy to understand based on numerous tributes paid to him (I share with you links to two of these tributes: by Harper Adams University: https://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/news/204717/tributes-paid-to-harper-adams-professor-emeritus-simon-leather; by The British Ecological Society: https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/obituary-simon-leather/). Simon was totally involved with his work and very active on social media. Following his tweets was mandatory because they were always interesting and good fun to read. I only joined social media stimulated by Simon. As I did in my January 2021 Editorial (Azevedo, 2021a), I invite you again to read the “Interview—Editorial” we published with Simon in the November issue of 2020 (177:3) (Azevedo & Millman, 2020). It was the first Interview type of Editorial published in Annals, which is now a regular type of article we will be publishing (see, for instance, the Interview with Carol Millman: Azevedo, 2021b). Annals is also publishing an Obituary article, which I also invite you to read (which will be published in 2022). In the name of all Annals Editors, our condolences to Simon's wife Gillian and family. We owe Simon so much. His commitment to Annals is an example to be followed. Thank you Simon! It is not an easy job to find a new editor, especially after losing someone of the calibre of Simon, but I am pleased to let you know that our Associate Editor Dr Gia Araddottir (Figure 2), Mamoré Research and Innovation Limited, UK, and fellow and trustee of the Royal Entomological Society, has accepted the role of Entomology Senior Editor (SE) of Annals. Gia has been on the board for some years and was Simon's PhD student. Gia, in her own words “I am passionate about sustainable agriculture and food security, and how we can use plant natural defences to protect crops from insect pests.” I am looking forward to working even closer to Gia as the new SE for the next 5 years. Welcome Gia! We also welcomed other new colleagues on the Board of Editors from 2021: Antonio A. F. Garcia, Gabriel R. A. Margarido, Marcia E. A. Carvalho, from Brazil (joined in late 2020), Rob Heinen (Germany), Rob Johns (Canada), Mark Ramsden, Joe Roberts, Maria Christodoulou (United Kingdom), David Gramaje, José Antonio Gutierrez, Javier Palarea-Albaladejo (Spain), Michele Ricupero (Italy), Mansour Ghorbanpour (Iran) and Jeanmarie Verchot (United States). I thank you all for joining Annals and we are counting on your expertise and commitment to the journal. Our thanks are also due to the editors who resigned from the board in 2021: Eduardo Mizubuti (Brazil), Thomas Döring (Germany) and Tim Sparks (United Kingdom). We truly appreciate your contribution over the years. Publishing goes on, and I would like to invite you to read two recent Editorials: “Agro-ecology and biodiversity in the Annals of Applied Biology” by our SE on Ecology & The Environment, Joanna Staley, with her views and expectations for papers on these subjects to be published in Annals (Staley, 2021). Joanna is pleased to see an increase in the number of agro-ecology papers published in recent issues and discuss some of them, so do not miss her article, and we hope to see more manuscripts submitted on agro-ecology and biodiversity. The Editorial “Regression analysis in the context of designed experiments: Neglect not thy opportunity to test for position and parallelism” is another article from our SE for Statistics, Stephen Powers, who has noticed that opportunities for comprehensive regression analysis in the context of designed experiments have sometimes been neglected in articles published in Annals. The Editorial is very interesting (Powers, 2021). I can also share with you that the March issue (180:2) will have two Editorials, one already online by Butler (2022), and the other from our SE for Farm Animal Health and Welfare, Philip Robinson, also expressing his views and expectations for papers to be published in Annals in coming years. An Interview with Prof. Nigel Halford is also being prepared to be published in the first part of 2022. When it comes to types of submissions, the SEs have discussed and altered the submission types that Annals can consider and publish. The Editorials and Interviews will continue and be exclusively chosen and decided by the SEs and the board of editors. Reviews, which are handled by our Reviews' SE Antonino Malacrinò, have now been changed to (i) “Synthesis,” which includes quantitative meta-analyses testing a specific hypothesis, and systematic reviews of the published literature addressing a specific research theme; and (ii) “Review,” which must be on a highly topical subject area, usually covering the most recent literature on fast moving and important topics that merit rapid consideration and publication. “Original Article”, a report of research addressing a specific research question and “Forum”, essays on new ideas and perspectives that will appeal to a wide audience, complete our types of publications. Annals carries on with the special sections on Plant Phenological Growth Stages and Description of Plant Viruses. For more detailed information, visit our website at Author Guidelines: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/17447348/homepage/forauthors.html. We were very happy to see a 15% increase in submission in 2020, and the current trend indicates that Annals is on the increase again in 2021. This is always good news, and I must stress that Annals is a hybrid journal, in which you have the option for open access or the subscription publication. However, the number of papers published by Annals is not increasing at the same rate, so selection is getting harder. On top of that, we have begun publishing Special Issues with the March 2020 (176:2) issue on “International Advances in Plant Virology” (see the Editorial: Plant Virology: Alive and Kicking!—Aranda, 2020), and in 2021 with the March 2021 (178:2) issue on “Plant Under Attack—Surviving the Stress” (see the Editorial: Plant Under Attack—Surviving the Stress—Azevedo, Teklić, & Benavides, 2021). These Special Issues are already a success with an expressive number of downloads and citations, so please check them out with the special bonus of all papers being Free Access! You are not going to miss them, are you? It is free! Do share them with your colleagues. Keep an eye on more Special Issues that are already being produced for 2022 and 2023. Where Metrics are concerned, Annals is performing well overall with 2.750 (up on 2.037 in the previous year) and 0.99, on the Journal Impact Factor (JIF)™ and Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)™ (a new field-normalised measurement of journal citation impact launched by Clarivate™), respectively. Annals is also in the top quartile of the SCImago Journal Rankings for Agronomy and Crop Science (SJR 0.68). The CiteScore™ (Scopus®) is up from 3.5 to 3.7 and the CiteScoreTracker 2021 is already at 4.1 (updated on October 5), indicating a good increase trend on the current 3.7. Finally, I would like to let you know that in 2021 we started having virtual meetings with all our Editors on the Board. This was in the strategic plan set up for the next 5 years. The idea is to bring together in virtual meetings editors separated by subject areas. The meetings we had so far were very positive, a really good vibe, and we had the opportunity to get to know better the associate editors (AE), discuss with them the journal and our plans for it, but more importantly, listen to the AE, get their input, ideas, so we can make sure everything that concerns the journal runs smoothly and that they feel even more appreciated by the essential work they do. We will be having these meetings at least once a year. I invite you to follow us on social media. Check our Facebook® page, Twitter, etc., and also those of our editors and collaborators. Your feedback is essential to us. My thanks to Carol Millman, our Editorial Officer. I am running out of words to express my gratitude for her support, mentoring and guidance. I wish you the best for 2022 and let us hope life is back to normal by this time in 2023. Keep checking Annals publications and visit our website and social media pages for more news and updates. Take care and stay safe and well.