The meeting started with a presentation about the development of the Section “Bioinformatics and Data Analysis”. The following topics were discussed:

• Section status, publication and Special Issue statistics (2020–2024);
• Section marketing overview;
• Section EBM overview.

The discussion with Section Editor-in-Chief Dr. Hunter N. B. Moseley encapsulated several key insights, plans and topics for improving editorial practices and promoting collection.

Firstly, Dr. Moseley cautioned against over-reliance on COVID-era data, emphasizing the importance of including pre-COVID data to ensure a balanced analysis. He acknowledged improvements in the editorial workflow but highlighted challenges faced by reviewers due to a lack of expertise, which he mitigates by supplementing reviews.

Additionally, Dr. Moseley noted the difficulty of maintaining an engaged Editorial Board, with some prominent members often unresponsive due to professional commitments. To address these challenges, he suggested encouraging inactive board members to be more active through targeted outreach and setting a minimum expectation of one editorial decision per year. He also proposed considering early career researchers who review well for board membership. The editorial staff also made a suggestion that Dr. Moseley could contact some EBMs to try to encourage them to be more active.

The editorial staff introduced the idea of using webinars to promote the collection “Metabolome Mining”, with Dr. Moseley expressing openness to chairing a session and assisting in finding speakers. However, he emphasized the need for careful planning, considering different time zones and avoiding conflicts with other academic events.

Regarding his research, Dr. Moseley discussed his lab’s novel work in predicting metabolic pathways through new annotations for metabolite features, leading to impactful publications in metabolomics. He emphasized the importance of clearly defined Special Issue descriptions to attract quality submissions and mentioned submitting papers to the collection “Metabolome Mining” in the future.

Overall, the discussion painted a picture of an evolving editorial landscape, balancing challenges with ongoing improvements and planning for future directions.

Metabolites Editorial Office