Animals | Interview with the Author—Dr. Csaba Szabó

We recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Csaba Szabó about his paper “Gut Health and Influencing Factors in Pigs”, which was published in Animals (ISSN: 2076-2615) in 2023 and has received a significant amount of positive feedback from our readers.

The following is an interview with Dr. Szabó Csaba:

1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your current research?
I graduated from the Kaposvár University in Hungary and my bachelor’s degree dates back to 1989. Due to the special organization of higher education in Hungary, I had already started to work after that, and I was so lucky to work at the university where I had been studying. During my work, I was able to complete my master’s degree in 1992 at the same university, but at a different faculty. I was very lucky to have a mentor, Prof. Dr. László Babinszky, who had returned from the Netherlands. I did ask for the possibility to start my Ph.D. program, and his condition was to write my Ph.D. thesis in English and go abroad to conduct research and study different methodologies. As a result, I did my Ph.D. in cooperation with the Wageningen University in the Netherlands and also with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Norway. Later, I also had the opportunity to gain a scholarship in Australia, at Melbourne University, so I was really lucky because I could learn from high-profile scholars from Australia, from the Netherlands, and from Norway. I think these opportunities meant a lot in my research area, which is the field of animal nutrition. About 10 years ago, I moved to the University of Debrecen, where I am based at the moment. This is the largest university in the countryside in Hungary. It has fourteen faculties, and I am heading the Department of Animal Nutrition and Physiology.

Currently, we work mainly on poultry and pigs. We conducted a large project with pigs regarding the effect of heat stress and how to mitigate it. That was somewhat the beginning of the initial idea for this review. At the moment, we have nearly finished a big project where we are testing the effect of different feed additives on the colostrum quality of sows. And another recently accomplished project was to test the effect of in ovo methionine supplementation on layer genotypes.

2. What inspired you to write this review?
While we were conducting the research with pigs, we mainly focused on the small intestine. Researchers are mainly interested in the absorption of nutrients; therefore, the target of the small intestine. However, other parts of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) also have a significant role in digestion and in the metabolism of the animal. Our aim was to somehow define or describe what the normal function of these parts of the GIT is, what kind of disruptions can happen, and what the nutritional tools to overcome these problems are. So, actually, our aim was to give a kind of organized overview of this topic. Such a review would be a good compilation and base for research articles.

3. What do you think made the academic community respond to your review so positively?
My approach to preparing the review was to always try to present information that has not been gathered before. Preparing a review is like doing a puzzle. You have to think about a puzzle, and one piece of a puzzle is a research paper. So, you then see the results, but you may not see the picture. You try to put together the picture, and that is very important. The second important factor is to find a good structure for your paper and a good organization for your review, because then it is more appealing to the readers, and they can quickly gather what kind of information they can expect from this review. I see that these kinds of things can make a review good and well received, and we always try to achieve these things.

4. What can readers learn from your review?
The good thing is that readers can have a kind of overview of information on the digestive tract, what happens there, and what can cause a problem. Even someone who doesn’t work with digestion in the stomach itself can still gain some information from this review, and it is easily accessible. People can read this review without any specific purpose, but they can run into an interesting fact that will inspire them to dig deeper or use this information in a different way. To conclude, it is a summary that can help people gain an overview of knowledge, and if they are interested in a certain detail, they can check the references or even look for more recent publications.

5. What do you think the future directions for your research are?
We are planning research on the effect of different feed supplements on the calcium metabolism of laying hens. We have noticed that some human nutritional supplements, such as poppy oil, are thought to have a very positive effect on calcium metabolism. However, there is not much research in the literature, so we would like to examine it and check if it really works with poultry. I also have been involved in equine research. I’m a horse enthusiast, and I am also a qualified trainer and judge at jumping shows, heading two equine study programs at the University of Debrecen. We have horses for educational purposes, and we are planning to do some research on them regarding feed supplementation, energy sources, and how they change with different factors. These are my plans for the near future.

6. Why did you choose Animals as the platform for your work?
As an academic person working at a university, we are under a kind of pressure to publish, and if we look also at other practical considerations, all Ph.D. students in our system need to finalize their Ph.D. program in 4 years, and in Hungary, they have to publish their papers. From a practical side, preparing the thesis and going through the evaluation process, including, for example, the reading committee, the pre-defense stage, the final corrections, and, later, the final handling and final defense, and so on, takes almost a year. If you think about it, going through this journey is very time-consuming, and time is an important factor. The feedback from journals is also very important here, and in some traditional journals, waiting for feedback takes a lot of time. In short, we do not have much time to wait for responses from journals. We take into consideration the speed of publishing, and Animals is doing very well in this aspect. Reputation is also an important factor for us, and we need to publish in Q1 journals.

7. Did you encounter any problems with your paper, and if so, how did you solve them?
I didn’t encounter any issues during the peer review process. As for the writing of the review, you always want your paper to be understood by a reader. Sometimes, the way you write your idea is different from what reviewers express in their reports, but the point is that other people can understand your idea, even if it’s not in your own words. While writing my Ph.D. thesis, I learned that the process of writing and revising a paper is continuous, and you always find something to improve. In the end, you want your paper to be understood by the readers, so you follow the process. You also need a good team in your research to avoid possible problems. We have different approaches, we see different perspectives, and that’s why it is important to work in a team. Sometimes it is difficult. There also needs to be a leading researcher, someone in control of the quality, structure, and coherence of the information put together in the research paper. So, this part, I would say, is more difficult than answering the reviewers’ comments.

8. What advice would you give to young scholars seeking to get into academia or publish their work?
One of the most important pieces of advice is to find the opportunity to go abroad. From my experience, these study trips contributed a lot to myself and to my scientific journey. What we see nowadays in the world is that it’s very difficult to maintain our mental health. It is good for researchers to visit different countries and meet new people. You can always learn something new, and you can make new connections—see new approaches and perspectives. These things can help you to place yourself on the correct shelf, in the correct position. I encourage young researchers to find scholarship opportunities and go abroad to study, to see, and join research groups. This is a great way to gain knowledge and contacts. It is also important to go to conferences in person to meet new people, do background talks, have dinners together, and spread your network of contacts.

The other important thing is to have a correct evaluation of yourself and your research work, and to then trust yourself. Trust yourself that you can prepare a paper. Always try with more difficult journals. What is the worst thing that can happen? Even if you get rejected, you are lucky because you got reviewers’ opinions, and then you can already improve your paper based on that. What I used to say is that if we submit a paper and it has been sent to reviewers, it’s already a success. You have a chance to improve even if it doesn’t get accepted. Trust yourself, and if you then gain good knowledge about it, meet the expectations, and you fulfil yourself, you can achieve a lot.