Professor University of Wisconsin, Madison Madison, WI, United States
Abstract: The publishing world has changed a fair amount over the past 50 years. For one, there are no more blue bags for shipping JAOCS manuscripts back and forth. The advent of electronic manuscript submission and peer review has made the task of editors and publishers that much easier, and saved a lot of postage. Also, many societies have given over their publishing rights to commercial publishers, something that has changed the role of societies in their journals. But what does the future hold, especially for society-based journals? One of the obvious topics to consider is Open Research publishing. The rapid expansion of Open Access publishing promises to change the relationships between publisher and society dramatically in the near future, with significant financial ramifications. Further, the requirement for data sharing with all published articles will be enforced in the near future, meaning authors will soon need to provide access to the data behind their publications. Another potential change is the growth of pre-review sites, where authors can post their manuscript for feedback prior to submitting to a journal. Although still not common in food journals, the number of authors using these sites is increasing rapidly. Then there is the question of what peer review will look like in the future. One journal, eLife, has already changed its approach to peer review, using a process they call “publish, review, curate.” Will this be the model of the future? It’s clear that the publishing world is changing rapidly and society-based journals, in particular, need to be actively engaged in shaping their own futures.
