It is my pleasure to state that, we have successfully brought out 9 volumes of our journal “International Journal of Food and Fermentation Technology” and presenting volume 10 to you. It has been rated by NAAS and Index Copernicus, which is though quite encouraging needs improvement to achieve the set standards by taking measures by all those involved, especially the Editorial Board members and the Publisher to increase the visibility of the Journal.

During the past 10 years, we have published papers on various aspects of food and fermentation technology, which could be achieved only with the active cooperation of all especially the Editorial Board members. I would welcome suggestions from the readers, contributors and peers of the field in the form of letters to the Editor-in-Chief for its for possible improvement.

The year 2020 witnessed an un-precedent Covid−19 pandemic affecting more than eight crores people all over the world. India is also equally affected but our problem was not only due to virus infection and deaths but the loss of job and consequently, the hungry mouths lacs of people especially the migrants became jobless and their sufferings became horrible for the years to come. Like all other aspects,the publishing industry has been effected very seriously. The journals did not get the adequate papers or the reviewers, hence in running the problem of publishing the journal. The journal with lot of efforts could cope up and manage its publication.

I earnestly believe that the Journal would develop by leap and bounds in future also. I siege this opportunity to request all the members of editorial board to exert more so that the journal gets high recognition among the peers. I am sure that through your efforts we would get not only more number of papers but of better quality. They are welcome to contribute papers of high quality and to encourage others to do so. They are expected to write at least once conceptual editorial, and review or a research paper when asked to do so.

From Volume 2, we had introduced conceptual editorial which is being continued. I have been inviting all the members of editorial board to contribute liberally to various issues. It is your journal and you should make efforts to make it excellent. Certainly, there would not be any page charges for this invited contribution. However, there is somewhat slower response to my request. I again request all of you to please send conceptual editorial with your photo. We are planning to publish some special issues of the journal. Anybody in the field can propose a special issue. He alone or with other can become The Guest Editor(s),with facility to publish free his or her papers and have some honourarium also. The editor-inChief can be consulted with more details.

We had also started ‘Open Forum’ for the readers, peers, educations researchers and general public to express their views which would be published. However, no response to the same has been received. The topic for the same for this issue is appearing just after conceptual editors. There are several issues raised in the open forum where the ethics of paper publication, large number of journals, papers, quality of papers, predatory journals, fees etc have been raised. There is also a provision of publishing of book reviews in the journal for which all readers, scientists, editors can review the book of their choice except their own books and send their contributions to the Editor-In-Chief. Similarly, the publishers of the scientific books have opportunity to submit their books for review to the Editor-in-Chief, for which no page charges are levied. The publishers, however are a bit shy, perhaps they think sending out a complimentary book for review would be too costly for them through in reality they could earn many times more than one copy of the book. Needless, to say that book reviewed get overwhelming recognition and in many cases more sale orders. A review would shortly be made to assess the performance of all the members of the editorial board after this volume (8) and would only be continued to be a member if at least once they have responded positively to my request in a befitting manner. From volume nine the editorial board would be restructured to make more effective..

On behalf of the editorial board and the publisher, I assure the readers and the contributors that we would strive hard to ensure high level of scientific integrity, transparency, impartiality and accuracy in selection of articles and finally, printing of the journal. Comparatively, the number of reviews submitted are very less and definitely, more reviews are welcome. The contributors of review or mini-review can consult the editor-in-chief, any member of the editorial board for the topic of review to contribute. I must express very clearly that just because of some page charges we will accept and publish substandard articles, but would accept and publish only peer reviewed and accepted papers. All the contributors are requested to check their contributions for the copy right problems, as we have a software to check the same. Besides, rejecting the paper, where violation is detected, it may lead to black listing of such authors. Similarly, I must say the many contributors want to publish their papers very quickly. Since, it takes time in review process of the paper and getting it reviewed, time is always consumed for publishing a paper. We strive to select papers for publication to cover as much as possible the entire spectrum of food and fermentation technology and the papers with some novelty get preference. Not only this, some authors get their papers reviewed and after getting the same improved or reviewed then publish in other journals, which is highly improper and unethical, would lead to black listing and publishing their names on website of the journals. I think such scientists are slur on the scientific community..

I understand very well that the final scientific quality of any journal would be determined by the type of papers submitted to the journal and published, so the cooperation of all would be a pre-requisite in this endeavour and would be welcomed especially from all all the contributors to contribute liberally.