Abstract
The year 2020 has been marked globally by the COVID-19 pandemic, political unrest, and social upheaval. The editors, Editorial Board, and publishing staff of the Food and Nutrition Bulletin (FNB)—located across the United States, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia—have not been unaffected by these events, which have contributed to delays in peer review and publication that I and the editorial team regret. We continue to be thankful for the patience and dedication of our authors and reviewers.
Given the events of this year, readers may begin to understand the complex emotions I felt while accepting the editorship of the journal. Some benefits have emerged from the year's chaos, however: the virtual working environment that has become a global necessity has enabled our editors to collaborate across time zones, including that of Kathmandu, where my home has become a satellite office. I am Nepal Country Director and Nutrition Advisor for iDE, an international nongovernmental organization, and hold a research appointment with the Nevin Scrimshaw International Nutrition Foundation. I was appointed Managing Editor of the FNB by former Editor-in-Chief Dr Irv Rosenberg shortly before Dr Noel Solomons assumed the editorship in 2017. I have overseen the business, technological, and editorial operations of the FNB since that time, during which I completed a PhD from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. My editorial experience is much longer than this short postgraduate experience, however: for 25 years I worked in a range of editorial roles, from the Let’s Go travel guides to Harvard University Press to the Annual of Armenian Linguistics; in later years I served as Senior Editor of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs and Guest Editor alongside President Bill Clinton of a special issue of the MIT journal, Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization.
To follow in the footsteps of Drs Solomons and Rosenberg, and of Dr Nevin Scrimshaw before them, is a daunting and inspiring privilege. I am the first Editor-in-Chief of the journal not to have known or been mentored by Dr Scrimshaw, who shepherded the FNB through its first 25 years in print. His 2 successors have mentored me both professionally and personally, however, and I am proud to continue this legacy. Dr Scrimshaw established a dual mission for the journal, which includes building the capacity of the next generation of researchers alongside publication of research with practical application to human nutrition that improves quality of life for individuals and populations. This mission will hold steady under my watch, and the FNB will continue to publish high-quality work by emerging researchers from developing countries alongside that of the field’s preeminent scholars, without regard for citations or “impact factor.”
At the same time, we will continue to advance as a modern journal, which includes exploration begun under the leadership of Dr Solomons into new business models such as Open Access, which could increase our visibility and accessibility to researchers around the world, and into emerging concerns around publication ethics, such as the use of preprint servers (particularly relevant in 2020). We have also recently expanded the scope of our journal; as announced in our March issue, we are now accepting manuscripts focused on nutrition during humanitarian crises. This includes rapidly published Field Reports, which are non-peer-reviewed descriptions of emergent threats to food security and nutrition that hearken to the journal’s earliest days as a publication of the UNU World Hunger Programme. The first of these, on the impact of COVID-19 on food availability in Rajasthan, should appear on our website shortly after this issue goes to press.
Astute readers may observe other changes to our masthead, following new appointments by Dr Solomons over the past year: Dr Daniel Hoffman, Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Rutgers, has joined us as Associate Editor, and several new Editorial Board members will refresh and diversify the ranks of scholars we rely on most heavily for peer review. A sincere welcome to all, and profound thanks to the editors and Editorial Board members who have served us to date. We and our readers and authors are grateful for your service—and for that of all of the reviewers on whom we depend—to ensuring the continued publication of high-quality scholarship in the pages of the Food and Nutrition Bulletin.