Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Oscar Vicente has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change” in Plants  (ISSN: 2223-7747).

Prof. Dr. Oscar Vicente is a biochemistry and molecular biology Professor at the Department of Biotechnology and a research group leader at the Institute of Conservation and Improvement of Valencian Agrodiversity (COMAV), Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Spain. Obtaining his Ph.D. in sciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1983, Prof. Dr. Vincente spent a postdoctoral period at the Friedrich Miescher Institut in Basel (Switzerland) before joining the Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, University of Vienna (Austria) in 1988. He then established and led a research group studying different aspects of plant reproductive biology and its biotechnological applications during his time there, in addition to examining the molecular characterization of pollen allergens and plant MAP kinases. Prof. Dr. Vicente returned to Spain in 1996 to join the UPV faculty, where he currently specializes in teaching biotechnology and biomedical engineering students, and he has also supervised the work of many undergraduate and Ph.D. students, exchange students and visiting scientists in Vienna and Valencia. Prof. Dr. Vicente's area of focus is studying plant responses to abiotic stress and stress tolerance mechanisms in the context of climate change, utilizing different crops, crop relatives, and wild species that are naturally tolerant to stress (e.g., halophytes) as experimental materials while combining field and laboratory/greenhouse work and physiological, biochemical and molecular aspects in his eclectic approach to research. Prof. Dr. Vicente has published over 180 indexed scientific papers, predominantly in the plant sciences category. He is vice president and coordinator of the European Biotechnology Thematic Network Association (EBTNA) for Spain. In 2017, Prof. Dr. Vicente was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa degree by the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca (Romania).

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Oscar Vicente, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views on the research area:

1. How has your experience been as an Editorial Board Member of Plants so far?
It has been extremely satisfactory. I feel I have had the opportunity to apply my research experience of more than 40 years, and also a long time as a reviewer and editor for other journals, to contribute modestly to maintaining the high quality and standards of the work published in Plants and, more specifically, in the Section “Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change”. This has been facilitated by the highly efficient and user-friendly online review process and the rapid and professional support provided by the Editorial Office and the assistant editors, whose help has allowed me to focus on reaching informed editorial decisions on the submitted manuscripts from their initial evaluation to the assessment of reviewers' reports.

2. Do you have any new topics or new directions to which we should pay more attention?
Regarding research topics, I consider that Plants' broad scope already covers the most relevant, although it is to be expected that technical developments will be incorporated at an accelerated pace into the published research articles, including the increasing use of “omics” approaches, large-scale phenotyping, digitalization, imaging applications and remote sensing in precision agriculture or for monitoring natural habitats threatened by climate change or human activities.

Concerning the journal promotion policy, I would reinforce the assessment of Plants' quality following DORA recommendations; that is, not only based on the Impact Factor and Quartile within a category–although they will probably remain the most relevant criteria– but also including several other journal-based metrics, such as 5-year impact factor, EigenFactor, h-index, editorial and publication times, and so on, which should be easily accessible from the journal webpage. Similarly, bibliometric data could be included for individual articles–apart from the Almetrics link, to facilitate the evaluation of the research performed by individual authors.

3. What do you think of the development status and trends of open access publishing?
First, I must state that I fully support open access publishing, as requested by the granting agencies: research funded with public money should belong to society. I also believe that academic publishing is at a crossroads. With the ever-increasing pressure to publish very quickly, and the emergence of predatory journals, there is the risk that the sheer number of manuscripts submitted for publication will make unviable, in practice, the peer review system that, if not perfect, is the best we have; I do not believe there will be an alternative working system (AI-based?), at least in the short and medium terms. It is essential that serious, professional journals like Plants ensure the quality of the research they publish, which will finally depend on the commitment of the academic editors and the reviewers. Editorial companies and independent journals should implement measures to guarantee the quality of the reviewers' reports, even if that means delaying the reviewing process.

4. Can you give any advice on academic research for young scholars in related fields?
I would stress the importance of undertaking a research career, based on a solid academic background, with illusion, enthusiasm and a strong commitment to carry out honest work, learning from your elders what to do (and not to) and collaborating with your colleagues. It will not be easy, but with some ideas, much effort and a bit of luck, it finally pays off; with publications, grants, professional recognition… but mainly with the satisfaction of work well-done.

5. How do you envision the future of the Section “Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change”?
Unfortunately, climate change effects, including higher temperatures, prolonged and more intense drought periods and soil salinization are increasingly affecting crop yields and wild plants' natural habitats. Therefore, studying plant responses to abiotic stress and elucidating stress tolerance mechanisms have become, in recent years, top priorities in basic and applied plant research. Consequently, I envision a bright future for this Section, with an even higher number of manuscripts submitted, many probably incorporating the technical developments mentioned above, such as omics or remote sensing technologies, but many others using more classical physiological (or ecophysiological), biochemical or molecular approaches. I also expect that we will continue receiving proposals for Special Issues addressing specific topics within this Section. I foresee that the quality and interest of these Special Issues will be maintained and even increased, considering the newly implemented MDPI policies regarding Guest Editors' credentials and the quality of the published research, according to COPE's best-practice guidelines.

We wish Prof. Dr. Oscar Vicente every success in his position as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to his future contributions to the journal.