It is the last issue of the year again, which seems to come round increasingly quickly as the years go by in my role as Editor in Chief. The main event this year was the World’s Poultry Congress held in China. I would like to thank the organisers, especially Katie, for their efforts in making us all welcome and making sure everything was ready for us. For myself and the Board members, it was a week of meetings, and an opportunity to meet old friends and colleagues as well as enjoy various social events, including a wonderful conference dinner. However most of us managed to find time to explore at least a small part of Beijing and its wonderful sights and history. Congratulations to Prof. Ning Yang on his Presidency for the next four years. Ning has been a very useful and approachable member of the board in his time served so far. This year, there was a new element added into the normal Board Meeting duties – with Alan Gibbins (President of Asia-Pacific region) organising a workshop looking towards the future of the WPSA and how to keep things current and encourage our membership with new and exciting ideas and projects. This is all covered in the various reports from the WPC in this issue, so I won’t go into details here – but merely wish to thank Alan for his hard work in this area and the board members for some great discussion and decisions.

As for the journal, our five year impact factor remains firm and we are still ‘up there’ and very stable in the lists of agricultural journals, despite being a much smaller publication and only taking review papers, rather than experimental reports, the former being much less numerous. We continue to address costs and accountability of the journal, always trying to maintain and improve on quality as well as deliver a great service to our readers. As such, we are now scrutinising papers where the subject matter is rather broad, as these topics need closer focus, especially in areas where there is a large body of scientific data which cannot hope to be adequately covered in a 20 page review. However, where we have submissions regarding new and interesting topics, I am always happy for authors to contact me if they wish to send in a longer review. We remain committed to encouraging young poultry scientists to publish reviews with us and are always happy to help guide authors through the system.

So I remain to wish all our readers best wishes for the New Year, wherever you are in the world. Here is to another exciting and interesting year in the world of poultry science.

Dr Lucy Waldron

Editor