Reflections

This issue of Reflections considers some of the challenges with the Journal of the Institute of Brewing switching from a global publisher to being self-published. Whilst some were obvious and (reasonably) easy to address, others were unexpected and were revealed over time. In the ‘unexpected camp’, the visibility of the Journal in university libraries and citation databases was affected with the switch. This was bad news! Publications need to be easily found, read and (hopefully) make an impact. Although a steep learning curve, JIB is now part of EBSCO (used by libraries) and has returned to Scopus (citation database). Going forward, JIB is hopefully joining DOAJ - an index of open access journals. A requirement of the DOAJ application is that the JIB must be digitally archived. It now is, should all be lost with a ‘trigger event’! Comparing the journal’s key performance indicators is a favourite subject, and for this year three of the four process KPIs have improved over 2023. Finally, this issue contains four research papers. One, on the survival of pathogens in non-alcoholic beers, has made an immediate impact and has been downloaded over 500 times in just 30 days from publication.