| Welcome to the new IS-MPMI Interactions issue format! This enhanced publication, updated quarterly, will provide members with a glimpse of topic research developments, current events, opinions, and career opportunities. We are hopeful that Interactions will become a forum for serious (and occasionally less-than-serious) thoughts that stimulate new interactions between members. To achieve this, Interactions has a new editor-in-chief ( Dennis Halterman) and a group of distinguished senior advisors: Fred Ausubel, Paola Bonfante, Alan Collmer, Allan Downie, and Dan Klessig.
A major goal of Interactions will be to provide opportunities in particular for our young members to increase their participation and visibility within IS-MPMI. We believe that promoting such participation will have many benefits to their careers. Members just starting out and developing their research program can use Interactions to initiate and foster cooperation and collaboration with others studying similar systems or others who can contribute necessary technical expertise. For those who are searching for a permanent research or teaching position, Interactions will open possibilities to identify compatible career environments and to publish content to demonstrate effective communication of your ideas and opinions. Senior scientists will be able to use Interactions to interact with a broader community of junior scientists and to identify outstanding individuals for possible recruitment into graduate, post-doctoral, or faculty positions.
In order to fulfill our vision and make Interactions a success, we will rely heavily on member participation. We expect the majority of published content to be provided by the IS-MPMI community. Our hope is to make Interactions an accommodating forum for members to share views on “hot topics,” anecdotal stories about research findings published in the MPMI journal, or science-related events within the community. As IS-MPMI is a premier international society, we foresee Interactions as a means to showcase the tremendous diversity within our membership and provide viewpoints on what matters to us most.
If you have ideas for content that you think will be appropriate for publication in Interactions, please contact us by using the online submission form or by e-mail to dennis.halterman@ars.usda.gov. Are publications in Interactions something you can put on your CV? Of course! Interactions publications will not be peer-reviewed articles per se, but they will be reviewed and edited (possibly) by our advisory board and could be listed as trade-journal or outreach-type articles to demonstrate that you have some writing experience outside of typical research journal formats. So, if you would like to get some experience in writing (PIs should encourage students/post-docs to take advantage of this) and have ideas for potential articles, please reach out to us through the online submission form. We would also like to increase the number of senior advisors to Interactions and hope for volunteers, in particular from countries other than the United States in order to broaden our worldwide presence and provide global insights.
Finally, we expect that the content and layout of the Interactions site will be evolving as we determine what works best to effectively communicate content. Please feel free to provide feedback (both positive and critical are welcome), as it will help us to improve Interactions.
Regards, Dennis Halterman, Interactions Editor-in-Chief Regine Kahmann, IS-MPMI President
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