Welcoming PhytoFrontiers™ into Our APS Family of Journals

In midsummer of 2020, The American Phytopathological Society (APS) is launching the new journal PhytoFrontiers™. PhytoFrontiers joins Phytopathology^®, Plant Disease, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions^®, Phytobiomes Journal, and Plant Health Progress. Each of our existing five journals fills a distinct niche in our publishing portfolio. Hence, you might ask—why are we launching yet another journal? There are many reasons.

One important distinction between PhytoFrontiers and existing APS journals, and a feature consistent with many other gold open access (OA) journals, is that manuscripts will not be judged on novelty but rather solely on quality and scientific rigor. The expectation therefore is that the manuscripts are based on solid experimental design, robust statistical analyses, and quality technical writing. PhytoFrontiers explicitly encourages publication of negative results because it removes a significant and persistent bias from the literature. Under this new model, manuscripts in PhytoFrontiers may also confirm previous research, if they satisfy the above expectations.

An equally important reason for the launch is establishing a new venue for our plant health colleagues in Europe and elsewhere who are required by their institutions or funders to publish in gold OA journals (i.e., journals that allow immediate access to all content). This includes funders that signed onto Plan S, an initiative for OA publishing launched in 2018 by cOAlition S. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and several European funders are participating in Plan S.

Another major reason for launching PhytoFrontiers is to complement our established journals by providing a new place for manuscripts that do not fit the subject areas currently covered in our five existing journals (Fig. 1). We have many colleagues who study aspects of plant health that are partially or completely out of scope in our current suite of journals. PhytoFrontiers provides an appealing new venue for suitable papers for the benefit of the plant health community. In recent years, we have seen many submitted manuscripts that were out of scope in APS journals subsequently published elsewhere. These papers might cover subjects as broad as robotics, microbial taxonomy, and those that focus primarily on abiotic stress responses, in addition to all of those plant health subjects typically found in our other APS journals, and potentially other subject areas.

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APS recently implemented lateral transfer among journals, and PhytoFrontiers is poised to accept lateral transfers of papers for consideration that are out of scope in other APS journals, with the author’s permission. With lateral transfer the author is given a choice by the editor after a review is completed to have it transferred to another APS journal where it would be a better fit.

PhytoFrontiers also pioneers a new editorial model with a two-tier editorial board. In addition to the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor-in-Chief, the board will be composed of editors that will have the responsibility to obtain high-quality peer reviews and judge manuscripts. All of the current Editors-in-Chief of our existing APS journals will also serve as editors on PhytoFrontiers. Furthermore, many of the current and past senior editors of our APS journals have volunteered to serve as editors, so PhytoFrontiers has a highly experienced editorial board. We encourage other colleagues with prior experience as editors to join our editorial board. PhytoFrontiers will have a large editorial board so that no editor is heavily burdened. Combined with the lateral transfer of papers that have received peer reviews, this should substantially reduce the burdens involved in submitting and reviewing manuscripts for our plant health community.

We are excited to launch this new journal and hope you will consider PhytoFrontiers for your next submission. Follow us on our new journey on Twitter @PhytoFrontiers.