A New ‘Silk Road’ for a New Era of Plant Science

Abstract

The Silk Road—the route that extends more than 5000 miles through land and sea—served as a critical pathway for commercial and intellectual exchange between China and the rest of Asia, the Mediterranean, and Africa. Those who trod the old Silk Road included merchants and scholars who brought commercial goods, ideology, knowledge, and technology to countries along the path, contributing to the development of the great civilizations, including China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and Rome. Open exchange and collaboration brought prosperity to all parties involved and, indeed, China's most prosperous Tang dynasty benefited greatly from the exchange through the Silk Road. History repeats itself 1000 years later. Starting in the early 1980s, thousands of scholars and business delegates exchanged visits and information between China and the rest of the world, through new ‘Silk Roads’ in the air and cyber space, respectively (in addition to land and sea), contributing to the development of international collaborations in the high-tech era and, in particular, bringing the great geographical area of China to the center stage of world economy. Rapid economic development enabled China to invest significantly in science and technology, increasing the funding for basic and academic research more than 40-fold over the past 20 years. Thousands of scholars, trained overseas, have been attracted by the rapidly improving living and working environments in China and have returned to China in the past decade, establishing new and advanced laboratories and other research entities. It takes no more than a glance of the top scientific journals to recognize the breadth, magnitude, and high quality of the contributions by the Chinese scientific community. More specifically, in the plant biology field, publications from China in journals with the most stringent review policies increased 10-fold in the past 10 years (based on number of papers in Plant Physiology Plant Journal and Plant Cell). In this context, the Chinese Academy of Science (IPPE, SIBS), the Chinese Society for Plant Physiology, the SIBS-UC Berkeley Center for Molecular Life Sciences, together with Oxford University Press, decided to collaborate on an exciting venture, launching this new international plant science journal. To ensure the high quality of the science published in this journal, the editorial board is organizing all issues for the first two years as themed issues on some current topics in plant biology. While encouraging plant biologists to submit high-quality manuscripts from all areas of molecular plant biology, each issue is organized by a leading editor, who, together with an organizing committee, invites contributions from scientists of highest caliber in the topic area. All papers go through a vigorous review process before reaching a decision on publication. Accepted papers will be published online immediately following the page-proof step and the online publishing date is the official date of publication. Submission, review, and editorial communications all take place through Bench Press—a well known online processing system provided by Highwire. A truly international editorial board aims to make this a top journal in plant biology and an outstanding platform for international collaboration in plant science. We hope that this journal will become a new ‘Silk Road’ that leads us to a new era in plant research in and out of China.