As proposed by Prof. Chun-Ming Liu, Chief Editor of JIPB, a Chinese New Year’s party was organized in the wooden house located in the gardens of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on 29 January, 2010 for the editors of the journal.

Attending editors were mainly from Beijing and included Profs. Weicai Yang, Xiaofeng Cao and Qi Xie from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, CAS; Lijia Qu, Hongya Gu and Hongwei Guo from Peking University; Daoxin Xie from Tsinghua University; Xiaoquan Qi and Yuxin Hu from Institute of Botany, CAS; Zhizhong Gong and Chuanqing Sun from China Agricultural University; Jun Yu from Beijing Institute of Genomics, CAS; Mengxiang Sun from Wuhan University. 

Chun-Ming firstly expressed his sincere gratitude to all of the editors for their hard work in the past year in supporting JIPB to become a more influential and international journal. He then gave a brief presentation on the recent progress of JIPB, including a much more international Editorial Board, standardized procedures for rapid publication (PubExpress), the various special issues published, the various improvements of the Bench>Press manuscript system, etc. Although rapid progress has been made, demonstrated by the anticipated IF of 1.3 in 2009, we are still facing some serious challenges e.g. publication of low-quality manuscripts, still internationally unrecognized, too long publication turnaround time, and the reviewer database, which still is not fully functional, etc. An action plan for 2010 was presented, which includes strategic meetings between the Associate Editors, several special issues, and increased efforts with marketing and sales in order to achieve a strong and healthy development of the journal.

Chief Editor’s report was followed by an intense discussion among the editors concerning current problems in the manuscript peer-reviewing process, how to attract more high-quality manuscripts, and how to make JIPB more publicized, etc.

After the meeting a delicious hot pot was served and the editorial office delivered a New Year speech to the editors and also sang the newly composed JIPB song. A very entertaining and appreciated game of charades had been organized by the editorial office and was followed by more singing and games, making the party a very successful and enjoyable one.

This activity provided a great opportunity for our club members to get together, to discuss JIPB’s future development in a very informal and relaxed manner. We all look forward to the next club event.

The Editorial Office of JIPB, 1 February 2010