A time for change—A time of fermentation

Comp. Biochem. Physiol.Vol. 107C,No. I, pp. iii-iv, 1994 ~

ElsevierScienceLtd Printed in Great Britain.All rights reserved

Pergamon

EDITORIAL NOTE A TIME FOR CHANGE--A TIME OF FERMENTATION A Letter to our Colleagues in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology from the Editors We are writing to bring you up to date on new developments at CBP and to ask for your support in moving the journal into the 21st Century.

Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology is now over 30 years old. During this time, its first Editor, Gerald Kerkut, steered an unswerving course and philosophy for the journal and successfully developed an impressive world-wide distribution, authorship, and reading audience. But now we find ourselves in a time of diminishing research and library budgets, and many of us have become quite concerned about the direction, evolution, and maybe even survival of a journal which, because of its name, captures the very heart of the chief discipline to which most of us belong. Although these are hard times financially, they are exciting times intellectually. The life sciences today sustain more fermentation and excitement than ever before and more intellectual turnover than almost any other discipline. Classical disciplinary boundaries are becoming more and more blurred as the unitary nature of mechanism, process, adaptation and evolution become more and more firmly established. Novel technological developments are being introduced with startling and penetrating capacities. To mention a few at three different levels of biological organization: (i) New molecular biology tools, especially PCR and protein engineering, are greatly expanding our knowledge of cell and tissue functions as well as their places in the tree of life. (ii) New non-invasive real-time monitoring processes with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Imaging, with Positron Emission Tomography, and with Magnetoencephalography are bringing about revolutionary new insights in integrative biochemical and physiological research. (iii) New microcomputer-assisted and satellite-transmission technologies are, for the first time, allowing biologically relevant and quantitative biochemical and physiological studies of animals in their natural environments doing their natural things. Spurred on by such powerful new technologies that are now becoming widely available, conceptual revolutions are breaking out on many fronts in the life sciences. These are indeed exciting times in the research field of comparative biochemistry and physiology and, for these reasons, we consider the 1990s to be an opportune and challenging time to take over the editorial helm of the journal. To this end, as many of you may have realized already, we have set up a new CBP Editorial Office on the University of British Columbia campus, which formally swings into action in 1994. A number of major developments have occurred since then which we wish to bring to your attention: • First, and foremost, we have begun laying the foundations for a large contribution from the international community of comparative biochemists and physiologists to the editorial process and to setting editorial standards. To this end, we are in the process of organizing three new Editorial Boards (one for each of CBP A, B and C) and for several Section Associate Editors, all of whom will participate actively in the operation of the journal and in the setting of editorial standards. • Second, we began communicating with discipline-linked societies in order to establish formal affiliations. At this time, the European and Japanese Societies of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry have both formally affiliated with the new CBP. In addition, comparative physiology and biochemistry organizations in the United States of America, in the United Kingdom, and in Canada also are reviewing the idea of a similar affiliation with us. In all these cases, discussions with the international community of comparative biochemists and physiologists have been warm, encouraging and enthusiastic--in fact, so positive that we have taken them as resounding endorsements of the new directions into which we are trying to move CBP. These affiliations are crucial first steps towards the goal of CBP becoming the international flagship journal of our discipline. • Finally, we have changed the journal format (inside and out), we have modestly remolded and redefined the three ClIP sections, we have moved directly into a full and expanded refereeing system, we have broadened CBP's "aims and scope" to better accommodate late 20th Century conditions in the field, and we are committed to a policy which is not set in stone but which can evolve with time to meet the changing needs of the field. iii

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Editorial Note

Whereas these new developments are encouraging to us, by themselves they cannot carry the day. Whether or not the new CBP will be successful in the long haul will be determined by our colleagues in the discipline of comparative biochemistry and physiology--by submitting quality manuscripts to the new CBP. We hope we can count on your help in promoting the next and obvious evolutionary steps of the only international journal published whose name captures the exact and full essence of what most of us do. As we embark on this new endeavour, we would be happy to receive feedback and to entertain new ideas from our colleagues in comparative biochemistry and physiology. Finally, we wish to take this opportunity to thank Professor Gerald Kerkut, the past Editor of CBP, for the energy and insight he committed to sustaining this journal through the last three decades. He helped us get to where we are today. In fact, although we were already in a kind of apprenticeship position, it was his editorial office that processed all of the manuscripts for Volume 107. Manuscripts processed by our editorial office will begin to appear in Volume 108. CBP Editorial Office University of British Columbia 6371 Crescent Road Vancouver, B.C. Canada, V6T IZ2 (November 1993)

Peter W. Hochachka Thomas P. Mommsen