Volumes 5-7, July 2008- December 2010

FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

In Volume 4 which was published in 2007, I reported that in our first four years, we turned out 652 pages of original research papers contributed by 132 authors from various countries around the globe. Since then, every attempt to go to press was marred by one reason or the other. First is the issue of high rejection rate which has discouraged many authors from sending papers to us for peer review. Second is the load of administrative duties I have been saddled with since 2008 when I became the Vice-Chancellor of a brand new university. Ordinarily, I ought to have relinquished the position of Editor-in-Chief immediately I became Vice-Chancellor. This step was not taken not only because the position of Managing Editor did not exist for Environtropica but also because, as the person who dreamt the dream, it was problematic for me to ask somebody who did not dream the dream to step into my shoes at short notice. As the saying goes, only the visionary can actualize his vision. The bulk of the administrative and editorial work therefore rested on my desk as a pioneer Vice-Chancellor. It is gratifying to note that the Editorial Board has now been restructured. The position of Managing Editor has been created and it is being shared by two colleagues in the two broad disciplines of environmental sciences – biological & physical. Three outstanding volumes have now been combined into one but with each paper retaining the actual dates of acceptance. Environtropica has indeed woken up from a deep slumber and sprung back to life not like the phoenix, but like the hibernating dormouse whose soul and body physiology remained intact while in hibernation. I am taking this period of relative inactivity as the pupal stage of the journal’s development. A quiescent stage when all metabolic activities of transformation of larvae to adult takes place without any visible external activity or morphological changes.

In this publication, 103 pages of original research papers have been added to the 636 pages in the first four volumes to make 739 pages which is 261 pages short of our target of 1,000 pages this year. As I write this piece, more than 60 academic papers have been submitted for presentation at a national conference titled: Soil protection in Nigeria and the rest of the tropics in the first decade of the 21st Century – Linking food, hunger and climate change problems with ecosystem malfunctioning underground.” This conference which will take place from August 02 to 06 in 2008 will be hosted by Wesley University of Science and Technology (WUSTO) whose Senate has approved as an academic event which will be a annual ritual for tropical researchers and technocrats from within and outside the country in the immediate and remote future. Proceedings of this first conference will be published in a special volume of the journal later this year.

The Managing Editors are now in the process of migrating our old website at http://www.oauife.edu.ng/faculties/science/environtropica.htm. to the new one at http://www.wusto.edu.ng/environtropica while registration with African Journals on Line (AJOL) will soon be completed.

I hereby humbly invite you to join the Environtropica family as a contributor and/or subscriber.
 
Prof. ‘Tola Badejo