AmericanJournal ofBotany—Past, Present and Future (2005)

Change comes at regular intervals to American Journal of Botany (AJB). It comes when a term ends for an Editor-in-Chief. It comes when the paradigms of our discipline shift and with the relentless advance of scientific techniques and technologies. The first type of change is more readily observable, and with this issue, we officially bid farewell, and say thank you, to Karl J. Niklas, for his 10 outstanding years of diligent service as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Botany. Karl and his team (Caroline Spellman, Office Manager; Elizabeth Lawson, Production Editor; Beth E. Hazen, Production Editor and lead Copy Editor; and Ellen Cotter, Copy Editor; and others over the years) have guided the AJB through some important innovations: institution of the online version of AJB, adoption of electronic manuscript submission and handling, compilation of all issues and volumes of AJB by JSTOR, and, most recently (October, 2004), production of a special 90th anniversary issue of AJB devoted to the plant tree of life. Their efforts, along with authors, reviewers and special editors, have made possible the publication of a timely, attractive, and informative journal, and the botanical community is indebted to them for this. I also extend my personal thanks for the gracious assistance Karl and his staff have provided during the transition to the new editorial team. Successful scientific journals also change with the science, and the current and historical tables of contents for AJB manifest a breadth and scope that might surprise current readers. The very first paper published in the AJB, volume 1, number 1 (January, 1914), was entitled “The development of Agaricus arvensis and A. comtulus.” It was followed by a paper on floral morphology and genetics in Nicotiana (does this sound familiar to anyone?), another mycological paper, and an article on abscission of branches in Impatiens. The first systematics paper appeared in number 5 (May, 1914), and number 7 (July, 1914) began a series of papers entitled “Investigations on the phylogeny of the angiosperms” (some things never change!). Since then, AJB has contained papers marking the passage of botany through the “golden ages” of cytogenetics, plant hormone physiology, tissue culture, morphogenesis/experimental morphology, ultrastructure, isozyme analysis, population ecology, reproductive biology, DNA sequence analysis, cladistics, and other topics. Some disciplines, such as plant pathology, plant physiology, mycology and phycology have shifted largely to specialty journals, while others, such as paleobotany, run as a thread through the past, present, and, we hope, the future of the AJB. Predicting the future is always risky, but AJB is likely to be publishing papers dealing with developmental genetics, evolution of developmental mechanisms, comparative genomics, and biocomplexity (i.e., plant–microbe interactions) before long, as these are clearly exciting, emerging, and rapidly advancing areas of research in plant biology. There is little doubt that research integrating several disciplines will appear with greater frequency in AJB in coming years. What makes a scientific journal valued and respected is no secret. Kent Anderson, of The New England Journal of Medicine, put it succinctly (HighWire Press Publishers'Meeting, May 2004, Stanford University) when he said, “People read what they want to read,” and they want to read journals that contain “prominently published, high-quality, novel, and important information from a source you can trust.” AJB has a solid reputation, it is widely and prominently distributed, and readers can and do trust the papers that are published in AJB. Our challenge is to maintain and enhance the quality, novelty, and importance of papers published in AJB, to maximize the usage, impact and value of our distinguished journal. One way to do this, as authors and reviewers, is always to ask ourselves several important questions. What in this paper is important enough that all plant biologists need to know this? Which major question of biology in general or botany in particular is the research addressing? What explicit significant question has been addressed, what hypothesis tested? Why should someone outside the specific discipline of this paper care about these results? How will our knowledge of general principles and mechanisms of biology be expanded by this paper? Reviewers and editors will be asking these questions and looking for clear answers; future authors should think in terms of these questions as they (you!) prepare manuscripts for submission to AJB. Our goal is to continue the AJB tradition of publishing a mixture of disciplinary topics while broadening the journal's appeal and strengthening coverage in active and emerging areas of research. In time, new features may be added (e.g., “News and Reviews”), use of existing features increased (e.g., “Brief Notes”), and use of the online AJB expanded (e.g., publish ahead of print/AJB Advance). Suggestions from you, the reader, will always be welcome, and I encourage you to communicate these to me, along with your expectations and criticisms. Most importantly, I encourage all of you to submit your very best papers to the American Journal of Botany, so the tradition of publication of important high quality papers in our journal can continue.