Welcome to the September issue. We have a range of topics covered in this issue – including diseases, traditional and novel feed ingredients, immunity, emulsifiers and vaccines. At the editorial office, we do aim to provide a broad spectrum of topics in each journal issue, within what has been submitted, to give our readers variety.

We have made some changes in accepting papers for submission recently, so the following is an update that I hope is useful for authors. Recently, for some reason, authors have stopped uploading their copyright forms on the submission site and sending them to me instead. Please note that all copyright forms must be uploaded online at the time of submission by the authors. It wastes a lot of time at our end chasing down these forms and then having to manually upload with the publishers. Also, any revised papers must be uploaded directly using the link on the email advising of reviewer decisions. It is important that authors understand that we cannot upload revisions for them, and the system effectively stalls if this isn’t done directly online. We cannot move any papers on until this is done, and have no access to do this manually. In addition, revisions have to be uploaded via the revision link – otherwise it appears on the system as a new submission and goes back to the start of the process. I hope this is helpful to all our authors – as we try to prevent any delays in publishing as much as possible to get their papers completed in a timely manner.

As stated before, we have had a lot of papers regarding antibiotic alternatives as these are a hot topic in many countries currently. As we cannot have lots of reviews saying the same things, we have asked authors to focus on just one aspect of either a products mode of action or effects on the animal. In addition, it was decided in the latest Board meeting that summaries must be a succinct (300 word) condensation of findings of the review. This will enable others who are searching papers online to get good levels of detail from viewing abstracts.

The latter part of 2017 sees a number of conferences, including Working Group 6 Fertility at the end of August, the Meat and Egg Quality Symposium at the start of September back to back with the WVPA conference. Our Polish Branch holds their meeting mid-September, followed by the 6th World Waterfowl conference towards the end of October. Details for all related WPSA events can be found online at www.wpsa.com/index.php/calendar-home/calendar. Could anyone submitting a paper that may be suitable as a potential review for the WPSJ please contact any WPSA Board member present at the meetings, or email me. I hope all delegates enjoy these meetings, and would encourage members to attend conferences associated with WPSA. Without attendance and sponsors, such meetings would not happen, and we thank everyone for their support.

Dr Lucy Waldron

Editor