Plants, People, Planet was launched in July 2017 at the International Botanical Congress in Shenzhen, China. An important output from this landmark meeting was the Shenzhen Declaration on plant sciences, which outlined global threats to humanity and detailed seven action points to help create a sustainable future. Here, we consider the societal impact of Plants, People, Planet over the last 5 years and highlight articles published in the journal that have informed or impacted policy work. It is encouraging to note the contribution these articles make to the seven action points of the Shenzhen Declaration, via their impact on policy. Plants, People, Planet was launched in July 2017 at the International Botanical Congress in Shenzhen, China. An important output from this landmark meeting was the Shenzhen Declaration on plant sciences, which outlined global threats to humanity, and detailed seven action points to help create a sustainable future (see below and also Crane et al., 2018). The Shenzhen Declaration was a rallying call for plant researchers, and the wider community, to safeguard the diversity of the planet before it is too late. We continue to endorse these action points, which stand as true today as they did when first written. It was in the “spirit of the Shenzhen Declaration” that we launched Plants, People, Planet, as a journal focused on the wider importance of plants and the impact of plant-related research on people, society, and the planet. In order to reinforce this message we ask authors to provide a brief ‘Societal Impact Statement’ in addition to the standard ‘Summary’ (Abstract) at the front of their paper (Hiscock et al., 2018). Plants, People, Planet was also created, in part at least, to provide a forum for cross-disciplinary research and to recognize the immense value and potential for cross-disciplinary approaches to provide solutions to the types of major challenges outlined in the Shenzhen Declaration—such as environmental degradation, unsustainable resource use, and biodiversity loss. Since 2017, it has been an exhilarating period at Plants, People Planet and we thank the global community of authors, reviewers, and editors that contributed to the journal. We would not be the thriving journal we are today without this support. Work published in Plants, People, Planet is having significant impact—from international media attention to influencing policy (see Table 1). The journal has a global audience, with articles being accessed from virtually every country in the world, and we expect to reach 1 million downloads by the end of 2022. Overall, this keen level of interest has resulted in some encouraging metrics for Plants, People, Planet: Article Influence Score 2021, 1.254; Cite-Score 2021, 5.1; H-Index 2021, 17; and Impact Factor 2021, 5.695. To delve more deeply into the broad impact of Plants, People, Planet, see Table 1, which highlights examples of Plants, People, Planet articles that have informed or impacted policy work. It is encouraging to note the contribution these articles make to the seven action points of the Shenzhen Declaration, via their impact on policy. Although the world has changed since the Shenzhen Declaration was written in 2017, plants and plant researchers remain critical to tackling global challenges. Indeed, plants matter now more than they ever have done in human history. Given the importance of plants to providing solutions to the global challenges outlined in the Shenzhen Declaration and to celebrate influential plant-focussed research with policy impact, we are delighted to announce an open-ended special collection on “Plants and policy: generating societal impact to address global challenges”. We welcome submissions from the community on an ongoing basis, to build this evolving special collection to showcase success stories, share best practice, and discuss challenges and opportunities around generating policy impact. Our hope is that this special collection will form a developing resource to benefit the wider community, including policymakers, think-tanks, non-governmental organizations, and anyone with an interest in the impact of plant-focussed research on policy. See here for more details and contact Plants, People, Planet Central Office ([email protected]) with your article ideas: https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)2572-2611.plants-and-policy. There is an incredible amount of significant work and an abundance of projects with societal impact that warrant celebration within the global plant research community. We will continue to move forward in the spirit of the Shenzhen Declaration and aim to highlight as much of this work as possible in the pages of Plants, People, Planet—we hope you will join us. The authors declare no conflict of interest. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Sep 27, 2024
Leilei Peng + 1
Open Access