Although the first volume of Plant Root was issued in 2007, the activities for launching this journal had started since 2006. Now, I have been the Editor-in-Chief of this journal for 5 years, and I think it is a good time to reflect on the gamut of publications in this journal so far. Our data shows that we have received a decent number of manuscripts every year and have accepted the best papers. The data on the number of ac-cepted/submitted papers in each year are as follows: 2006, 8/10; 2007, 8/19; 2008, 7/15; 2009, 5/9; and 2010, 5/16. It must be mentioned that none of the papers were spared our stringent review criteria, although we could have accepted more manuscripts. Honestly, many people, including myself, do not completely agree with the importance laid on the impact factor, but I also know that it is a politically valuable parameter especially for young scientists. Therefore, we now aim to index this journal by the ISI Web of Knowledge and get an impact factor assigned. However, the application to Thomson Reuters cannot be made immediately because we need more papers published annually to be eligible for the listing. We claim Plant Root to be an international journal. We studied the geographical distribution of our authors. The data on the distribution and number of institutes that have contributed the published papers are as follows: Asia, 37 (Japan, 35; Israel, 2); Europe, 11 (France, 4; Germany, 3; Finland, Poland, Switzerland, and UK, 1 each); America, 4 (USA, 3, Nicaragua, 1); Oceania, 1 (Australia only); and Africa, 1 (Senegal only). Therefore, our journal already has an international user base. Japan is the biggest contributor because we advertise our journal at meetings and in newsletters of JSRR, but at the same time, I realize that more advertisements are required to ensure the global presence of our journal. This year will witness the presence of Plant Root at two international meetings, namely, the 7th International Symposium on Structure and Function of Roots (September 5–9, 2011; Nový Smokovec in High Tatras, Slovakia, http://www.rootsymposium2011.sav.sk/) and RHIZOSPHERE 3 (September 25–30, 2011, Perth, Western Australia, http://rhizosphere3.com/); JSRR and Plant Root are rooting for these two meetings. If you are a participant of these meetings, your research subject definitely falls under the scope of Plant Root; therefore, if you desire publication in an international journal, you may consider Plant Root. We also classified our published papers according to the plant materials discussed. Twenty-six papers reported herbaceous plants and four, trees. The details of the herbaceous plants studied and the number of publications are as follows: maize, 9; rice, 5; Arabidopsis, 3; wheat and soybean, 2; and flax, sweet potato, pea, sorghum, and lettuce, 1 each. We are striving to help root researchers from all fields. We do not intend to exclude any material; rather, we wish to publish as many plant species as possible. With respect to the category of publications, the data are as follows: Physiology, 9; Interactions with soil, 7; Methodological aspects, 5; Genetic aspects, 3; Symbionts and pathogens, 2; Anatomy and mor-phology, Mineral nutrients and water, Ecological aspects, Cellular and molecular biology, 1 each; and Others, 2. As is obvious, papers on Physiology, Methodological aspects, and Interactions with soil are frequent. We welcome papers on methodological aspects because these may have potential implications on future researches. An interesting analogy for the category Interac-tions with soil is that soil is a medium for plant roots to grow; likewise, the journal Plant Root is a medium, a good and rich resource, for plant root researchers to grow. The Japanese word for soil is “Dojo.” Interes-tingly, “Dojo” also means a training school or a facility for martial art or combat sport “Judo,” which has originated in Japan. Don’t you feel that getting a paper published is as good as a combat sport? I definitely feel so! On a serious note, I hope that our journal actually functions like “Dojo,” and does not limit this parallelism to “Dojo” to a mere play of words. As of now, we are headed in the right direction. Great senior root scientists from across the world have joined our editorial board and they actually handle manuscripts. The most recent manuscript has been handled by Prof. Peter Barlow, who was kind enough to communicate with us even thorough winter holidays. Our managing editors and I were impressed with his ethic; this incidence is in line with our aim of being “Dojo.” Meanwhile, I have a small technical announcement to make. As you already know, we utilize J- STAGE (http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/plantroot) to show abstracts, reference lists, key words as well as other metadata of publications in Plant Root, because we upload only minimal metadata and pdf files on our own website. Recently, I noticed that the metadata of publications in Plant Root could also be retrieved via J-STAGE. When you visit a publication’s Abstract page on J-STAGE, you will find a “Download Meta of Article” link. By clicking on this link, you can download the metadata of a publication in the RIS or BibTeX format. This is convenient. I have created an Endnote style template for Plant Root, as a response to one of the authors. Soon, we will create a link on the Instruction for Authors page of our website through which authors can download the template, which will come handy when you prepare a manuscript for Plant Root. In the end, I would like to express my gratitude to all the authors for their submissions, our managing editors, and subject editors and reviewers. I would like to inscribe the names of the managing and subject editors’ of the term 2010-2011 here on their behalf.

		Ichirou Karahara Editor-in-chief, Plant Root January 2011
	I. Karahara at Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden