Editorial

Science keeps on moving very fast and so is Planta Medica. Due to the growing impact worldwide of the field of medicinal plant and natural product research, and the appeal of Planta Medica as a scientific forum, the number of submitted manuscripts is increasing year by year, and is well over 1100 now on an annual basis. Whereas the 1000th manuscript was received in 2009 on 14 November, this number has already been reached in 2010 on 19 October. Anticipating this tendency, the Publisher and the Editorial Board had already decided to increase the number of issues of Planta Medica to 17 in 2010, and from 2011 on 18 issues will be published. Since Planta Medica is the official organ of GA – the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research – one of these issues is devoted each year to the annual congress of GA, and is the official book of abstracts of the congress. In 2010, this meeting was organised by Matthias Melzig and Herbert Kolodziej in Berlin from 29 August till 2 September 2010 (Planta Medica 2010; 76: 1163–1374). Next year's meeting will be organised in Antalya by Hüsnü Baser from 4 till 9 September 2011, another indication of the continuously growing globalisation of GA. Again one of the Planta Medica issues of 2011 will contain all abstracts of the presentations at this meeting.

In addition to these congress issues, the Planta Medica policy of publishing two special issues each year will be continued. In 2010, issue 11 was a Special Issue on Cancer Therapy with Natural Products, with Thomas Efferth as guest editor [1], and issue 17 a Special Issue on Traditional Chinese Medicine, with Rudolf Bauer and Kelvin Chan as guest editors [2]. In 2011, again two special issues are scheduled, one dealing with Tropical Diseases, and a second one containing selected contributions from the Annual Congress in Berlin, 2010.

In the light of the steadily growing number of manuscript submissions from continuously diverting fields of interest, the Editorial Board has also decided to reprofile the journal and to focus the journal on its core competencies. From 2011 on, Planta Medica will have the following 4 sections:

Biological and pharmacological activity (including biological screening studies); Pharmacokinetic investigations and clinical studies (pharmacokinetic investigations examining the kinetics of drug disposition and bioavailability including the use of in vitro, in vivo and human studies); Natural Product Chemistry; Analytical Studies.

This implies that articles on the former sections of plant biochemistry, plant molecular biology and plant biotechnology will no longer be published. This field is covered by many more specialised journals. By narrowing the scope of the journal, more space will be created for submissions in the core fields of Planta Medica.

In addition, in order to further increase the scientific quality of manuscripts published in Planta Medica, even higher standards will be imposed at the incoming level. Planta Medica will only accept the most interesting pharmacological investigations of well-characterised extracts and pure natural compounds as well as ground-breaking pharmacokinetics and clinical studies. It will further focus on the isolation and structure elucidation of interesting new compounds, and on innovative analytical studies reporting new approaches or techniques.

For the fourth consecutive year the impact factor of Planta Medica has increased and is 2.037 now; this is accompanied by a growing total number of citations to Planta Medica. The Editorial Board of the journal is confident that reprofiling the journal and the new policy that has been set will continue to support its further development as a high quality journal in the field of medicinal plant and natural product research. To achieve this, the editors need the continuing support of many scientists who review and comment on the submitted manuscripts. The Editorial Board and the Publisher of Planta Medica gratefully acknowledge the time-consuming but highly valuable efforts provided by the reviewers on a voluntary basis.

I wish you all a successful and stimulating 2011!
Luc Pieters Editor-in-Chief

References

• 1 Efferth T. Cancer therapy with natural products and medicinal plants.  Planta Med. 2010;  76 1035-1036
• 2 Bauer R, Chan K. Editorial.  Planta Med. 2010;  76 1947