Year: 2019
Type: editorial
Abstract: In some cultures, you will encounter the superstition that 13 is an unlucky number. This is certainly the case for Germany, where Molecular Nutrition & Food Research (MNF) has its roots. Black cats, broken mirrors, and well, yes—the infamous number 13. However, for MNF this certainly does not seem to apply; in fact, it is quite the contrary. In 2018, the journal received its official 13th ISI impact Factor since the major relaunch from Food/Nahrung and finally made it above the magic number 5 (Clarivate Analytics, Web of Science of 2017: 2-yr: 5.151; 5-yr: 5.232). It is the first non-review type journal in the ISI category of Food Science & Technology to do this, and it is a testament to the high-quality science that our authors have published in the journal over the years. This provides a good opportunity to take a look at the topics that have recently become more and more prevalent in the journal. The word cloud depicted in Figure 1 describes the predominant topics in the journal. Longstanding keywords such as “oxidative stress”, “polyphenols”, “cancer”, and “resveratrol”, among others, are now joined by more recently upcoming research topics, e.g., inflammation, gut microbiota, metabolism/metabolomics, obesity, and bioavailability. Certainly, the biggest shift in the last couple of years has been the focus towards the gut microbiome, metabolic diseases, metabolomics, and bioavailability of dietary compounds. Looking at the ten most cited papers in the journal from 2017, seven report on the influence of the diet on mammalian gut microbiota and its implications on health (for a review, see ref. [1]). Two papers look into the inter-individual differences in human nutrition,2, 3 and one is a meta-analysis evaluating clinical studies regarding flavonoid intake and cancer risk.4 As mentioned above, a journal is obviously only as good as the authors who publish in it. High-impact science from an internationally diverse origin to reflect global nutrition research is the key. Figure 2 shows the country distribution of corresponding authors of all published articles between 2016 and 2018. Top countries are the US, China, Spain, Germany, and the UK, followed by Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea. On an editorial note, authors will be pleased to hear that MNF has stopped charging for color publications as of 2018. The change in publication frequency to 24 issues per year was also implemented successfully. This reflects the growing number of accepted papers (which has accelerated since the announcement of the impact factor increase as of June 2018) and ensures faster turnover. Also in 2018, we have updated our author guidelines to include a mandatory section on dosage information of applied active compounds (including the human equivalent dose (HED)) for in vitro and vivo experiments and clinical trials. After this rather extensive look back into the recent past of the journal, it is now time to see what lies ahead in 2019. Issue 1/19 is a topical issue entitled Metabolomics: A Powerful Tool to Enrich our Understanding of the Impact of Food on Health, guest-edited by Lorraine Brennan (University College, Dublin). This issue reflects the emerging trend of metabolomics as one of the most recent nutrigenomics techniques that are now more and more frequently employed to construct a more holistic view of the impact of diet on health. Later in the year, we will publish a special issue on a topic that is not regularly found in MNF—brain and eye nutrition—assembled by John Nolan (Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford). This issue will focus on carotenoids, macular degeneration, cognition, and more. Finally, towards mid-year, the annual special reviews issue is planned. Finally, a project in its infancy at the moment is a new collection of manuscripts provisionally called the “pitfalls” series. The aim of these papers is to set gold standards of various techniques in nutrition research and, probably even more importantly, the all-too-often encountered pitfalls that researchers might fall into. The first of this series is in fact featured in this year's Issue 1 and is entitled “Nutrimetabolomics: An Integrative Action for Metabolomic Analyses in Human Nutritional Studies”. Authored by a consortium of mainly European metabolomics researchers, this “white paper” collects the do's and don'ts in biomarker and metabolomics analysis with practical tips for sample collection, data analysis, etc. More topics are on the way, and it is our wish to help raise the awareness of the community towards potential experimental design flaws as well as the standards in nutrition science reporting. Last but not least, to close the editorial, it is time to thank all our authors, associate/senior editors, members of the editorial board, and reviewers for their continued support and effort in achieving the high scientific quality and the continuing success story that is Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. Chris Mayer Kerstin Brachhold
Authors: Christine Mayer, Kerstin Brachhold
Language: English
Topic: Gut microbiota and health
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2913638682