A new year is beginning after an odd, to say the least, 2020, when the COVID‐19 pandemic disrupted activities all around the world, and we are all still trying to cope with it not knowing what 2021 is going to be like. We have spent our time talking about and living with social distancing, self‐isolation, changing habits, and making sure we were safe. As quoted by Wiley's CEO Brian Napack speaking to EdTech Digest (https://edtechdigest.com/2020/09/16/we-are-all-living-today-through-an-extraordinary-moment), “We are all living today through an extraordinary moment.” We changed the way we work, many of us doing most of the work, if not all, from home, creating new alternatives such as webinars, online conferences, online teaching, and so forth. It was not all bad, but the human contact and face‐to‐face conversation is essential.

Research activity has certainly been affected and the extent of it is to be seen in the next few years. On the other hand, Annals of Applied Biology had an increase in submissions in 2020, not seen for a long time. Such an increase appears to also be the case for most journals, which is great. We can only hope that the effects of the pandemic in the short term do not lead to a reduction in submission in coming years due to the reduced research activity in 2020 and possibly in 2021 as well.

But I have some news for our readers. Annals Senior Editors have discussed further changes to the journal. One of them is the new section named “Interviews,” which should be published twice a year. This new type of article will be an interview with a selected scientist. The first Interview article was published in the November issue of 2020 (177:3) with Prof. Simon Leather, outgoing Editor‐in‐Chief of Annals (Azevedo & Millman, 2020). I recommend you read it and get to know a bit more about Simon's work in Entomology and his extensive experience as editor. I am pretty sure you will enjoy it.

Annals is also starting a new series of “Special Issues” on hot topics in agriculture. These special issues will be organised by our editors with invited guests. The first special issue was published in March 2020 (176:2) on “International Advances in Plant Virology” with 12 papers and an Editorial, organised by the Senior Editor for Virology, Miguel Aranda (see the Editorial: Plant Virology: Alive and Kicking! Aranda, 2020). Another special issue will be published in the March issue (178:2) and was organised by the Annals editors Tihana Teklić and Maria Patricia Benavides, together with myself. We have already over 20 papers for the issue: “Plants under attack – surviving the stress,” with Original Research articles and several Major and Minor Reviews on a number of abiotic and biotic stresses in plants. Plants are, and have always been, subjected to environment challenges and in this special issue a wide range of topics related to abiotic and biotic stresses are included (Azevedo et al., 2021). Do not miss it! It is important to mention that all special issues will be published Free or Open Access, so please do visit the website and make the most of it. Feel free to share with your colleagues.

Another new project for 2021 will be a new section entitled Descriptions of Plant Viruses to update the Association's database of these (https://DPVweb.net). The DPV website will also be updated. New or updated descriptions will be published in Annals and after publication, added to the database.

The other categories of articles remain unaltered and Annals will continue to publish Original Research, Minor and Major Reviews, Forum and Opinion Papers, and Plant Phenological Growth Stages. Also, new Virtual Issues will be published, starting in 2021 with one on “Advances in Biological Control and IPM.”

I am glad that Annals has new faces on the board of editors. Two of them have already been introduced by Simon Leather in previous editorials (Leather, 2019a, 2019b): Joanna Staley from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology at Wallingford, UK, joined the board in 2018 as Senior Editor on Ecology and Biodiversity; and Philip Robinson from the Harper Adams University, was appointed in 2019 as Senior Editor for the new section on Farm Animal Health and Welfare.

In 2020, we also appointed a Senior Reviews Editor, who as well as handling submitted reviews will be actively seeking out potential authors, and for this job Antonino Malacrino from the Ohio State University was appointed.

We also welcome other new colleagues on the board of editors from 2020: Maria Patricia Benavides from Argentina, Ivana Maksimovic from Serbia, Marcia E.A. Carvalho, and Paulo Mazzafera from Brazil, Vassilis Fotopoulos from Cyprus, Mengji Cao from China, Duncan Westbury, Lucy Ridding, and Arran Greenop from United Kingdom. I thank you all for joining Annals and we are counting on your expertise and commitment to the journal.

Our thanks are also due to the editors who resigned from the board in 2020: Gary Barker, Rene van der Vlugt, Gancho Slavov, Arthur Tugume, Amy Charkowski, Hanu Pappu, Maurice Moens, and Christoph Peterhaensel. We truly appreciate your contribution over the years. Thanks to all authors who submitted their work to Annals, and the work of thousands of reviewers who have an essential role and are a key player in making sure journals publish good quality papers. Quoting here the words of Dr. Igor Chirikov, Academic Director for the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) project, UC Berkeley, to Nature News “Peer review in academia is a story of love and hate”—but reviewers are invisible heroes in science” (Schiermeier, 2017). As editors we have a major task of making sure the reviewers feel appreciated for the important work they do, and warrant that our peer reviewing process is not a burden, but easy and friendly to the user. They can certainly count on the support and assistance of our editorial team.

I would like to express my special thanks and gratitude to Simon Leather for all that he has done for Annals over the last 16 years. Simon has been on the board of Annals since 2005 as a Senior Editor and since 2015 as the Editor‐in‐Chief. I am taking over from Simon as Editor‐in‐Chief from this January. It is a tremendous responsibility but I am excited and totally committed to Annals. I have been on the board of Annals since 2007 and worked with top‐notch scientists and editors and have been mentored by people of the calibre of Peter Lea, Martin Parry, Jari Valkonen, Simon Leather, and Carol Millman. Working with them and with so many editors of the board for such a number of years has been something special, nice, a terrific experience. But good news, I am very glad to let you all know that Simon will continue with us as Senior Editor.

I would like to thank the Association of Applied Biology (AAB—https://www.aab.org.uk) and Wiley for putting their trust in me to guide Annals for the next 5 years. Such as the previous Editors of Annals, the support of AAB and Wiley is essential and I will work as hard as ever to make sure Annals keeps on track publishing quality research in all field of agriculture. We have some goals and with the help of our Board of Editors, I hope to see further increases in submissions and more articles published each year, as long as the quality is high and fresh new information are presented to our readers. I do hope we can also introduce other changes in order to make the journal even more attractive and bring new authors and readers. I will also make sure we have an even more dynamic and close relationship with our editors, promoting periodic online meetings apart from the annual Senior Editor's meeting (Figure 1). With the now largely available platforms for online conferencing, I want to promote these meetings and be able to talk to all editors and listen to their views and ideas for the journal. Their input is paramount.

I wish you the best for 2021 and I ask you to keep on checking our publications and visiting our website, Twitter and Facebook pages for more news. Consider Annals for your next article. Take care and stay safe.