Scientific Journal Editing in Challenging Times

He led the journal for 15 years, and we became more friends than colleagues.Our almost daily office routine was to plan journal issues and future improvements, discuss the manuscripts' status and research integrity issues over a cup of coffee.Although he was seriously ill in the last two years, Vlado (as everyone called him) was very active, not only as Editor-in-Chief, but also as the former President of the Croatian Association for Scholarly Communication (1).Our discussions always included the Association activities, such as the organisation of the PUBMET Summer School and Conference (2), webinars, panel discussions, and similar.Vlado was a modern homo universalis, with broad interests and vast knowledge about science, arts and technology, a type of person whom you cannot easily replace, which is also evident from the published In memoriam (3), written by his colleagues from the Laboratory for Biochemistry of the University of Zagreb Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology.There are some guidelines on how to manage journals in times of crisis, such as war (4,5) or pandemic ( 6), but no one teaches you how to manage the journal in times of loss.There is no formal education for editors in Croatia, and most editors are volunteers who dedicate their time and efforts to managing the journal, a fact that must be pointed out, since it is easily neglected.It takes years to master the job, so it is very hard to replace someone who is leading the journal.Nevertheless, with the help of our Deputy Editors, we are continuing our work.In the previous year, 528 manuscripts were submitted to the Food Technology and Biotechnology journal, of which 353 (approx.67 %) were rejected by the Editor or Deputy Editors due to the lack of novelty, insufficient quality or incoherent presentation, or because the topic was outside the scope of the journal.An additional 41 were rejected based on the opinion of the Field editor, and 34 were cancelled or withdrawn by the authors.Of the remaining manuscripts, 33 were accepted for publication after the review, 33 were rejected and 40 manuscripts are still under evaluation.Average time for initial triage by the Editor and Deputy Editors was 14 days, for the Field editors' evaluation 18 days, and for obtaining the reviews 124 days.The average time to make the decision was 41 days (for all manuscripts,