“Professor Bernard Corfe’s strategy for JNS will be to continue to build on JNS’s reputation for quality, to publish work supporting scientific reproducibility (and to support research identifying irreproducibility), and to continue to emphasise the critical place of this mission in a changing world of scientific publishing.”

Was this just delusional enthusiasm? How the journal progressed? What are the challenges as I go into year 2?

I am delighted that JNS received a very good impact factor (2.4) in 2023 and that this has stabilised (against a background trend of slight decrease generally) in 2024. This indicates that the standard of papers and their interest to the wider scientific community has been sustained over the last year and that the Journal’s reputation is consolidating.

Journal of Nutritional Science is now growing considerably. In the graphs below we highlight both the number of submissions year-on-year and the numbers of published papers year-on-year. We have seen a 19% rise in the number of original submissions compared to 2023 and whilst this was partially due to the increased visibility that comes from having an impact factor, the submission rate has been sustained ever since. We are additionally seeing a growing and sustained rate of original submissions (rather than transferred papers) which demonstrates that JNS is becoming a recognised and respected journal in its own right.

Working closely and collaboratively with Professor John Mathers (Editor-in-Chief of British Journal of Nutrition) we are progressively separating the editorial boards of British Journal of Nutrition and Journal of Nutritional Science. In the last year I have welcomed four deputy editors who will support and accelerate the decision-making process, and nine new First editors with a wide range of skills and experience to offer critical evaluation of manuscripts. You can see our expanded editorial board here. We have joined in the Nutrition Society peer review mentoring programme to grow the available pool of peer reviewers across our journals. Finally, I have updated the journal workflow to improve time-to-decision, which is already showing benefits.

When taken together we are working hard to provide a more positive author experience through an experienced editorial team and trained peer reviewers, coupled with a quicker decision process that remains absolutely rooted in expert peer review.

We remain strongly committed to upholding high standards of research integrity and all aspects of our workflow aim to embed best practices in scientific publishing. Our next steps will be beginning to work up of a grouping of Editors-in-Chief across nutrition journals to explore how we might work effectively as a community to drive the very best standards of publishing. I remain very grateful to CUP’s ethics advisory team for good advice over the year.

In short: I am delighted with how it’s going. I feel we are offering an improved author experience though our expert and growing editorial board, gaining visibility and identity as a source of robust science and continuing to hit the sweet spot between the advantages of classical and OA publishing models.

Bernard Corfe is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Nutritional Science. He is Professor of Human Nutrition and Health at Newcastle University and is director of The Human Nutrition and Exercise Research Centre and one of the Centre for Healthier Lives.