Ten years of Bio-Based and Applied Economics: a story of successes, and more to come

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Bio-based and Applied Economics, the official journal of the Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics, has been established in 2011: the Journal has constantly hosted high quality manuscripts, published by scholars aiming at contributing to the debate on topics that have been relevant for the Association.
In less than ten years BAE has become a wellestablished international journal, indexed in several scientific databases, such as Scopus and Emerging Sources Citation Index™ of Web of Science. Across years, the Journal has repeatedly devoted attention to innovative aspects for the profession, with a special attention to the definition and evolution of the bioeconomy (Schmidt et al., 2012), lately as the "evolutionary process of transition from systems of mining nonrenewable resources to farming renewable ones" (Zilberman et al., 2013). The importance of bioeconomy is increasing more and more exactly because its objectives are converging towards those of the new paradigm of economic growth: the circular economy (Aguilar et al., 2018). As from the very first articles hosted in the opening and in subsequent issues, such as those authored by Viaggi (2012), Romano (2012) and Esposti (2012), among others. The large number of submissions that the Journal has attracted has allowed to publish research papers from many very traditional areas such as agri-food system analyses, demand and production economics (e.g. Sckokai and Varacca, 2012), price, trade and policy analyses (e.g. Matthews, 2013; Jafari et al., 2018; Santeramo and Cramon-Taubadel, 2016). In addition, the Journal has hosted several manuscripts analysing fields closely connected with the agricultural and applied economics, such as environmental economics, behavioural economics, political economy, development economics, health economics, or focused on important and timely topics such as changes in the agri-food systems and methodological challenges in analysing them (e.g. Heckelei et al. 2012;Donati et al., 2013;Scoppola, 2015). Such a broad range of topics has allowed the Journal to become an agora for the scientific debate, and such a prominent role is very much strengthened by the Open Access nature of the Journal that, coupled with absence of submission and publication fees, guarantee that manuscripts are accessible to all interested readers, without limitations of any kind.
After a decade of great achievements, the Board has launched several initiatives (Moro et al., 2019) such as, among others, words mention to the most impactful papers hosted in BAE and the recurrent recognition of one "Best Paper in BAE". The first edition of these awards has been in 2021. Starting from the next years a special mention will also be dedicated to the reviewers that have excelled in their (extremely valuable) reviewer activities. The support of competent reviewers has been one of the main resources on which the Journal has counted to become a very well-established field Journal.
BAE is not only a fast-growing Journal, but also a resilient, fast-changing environment. After a deep reorganization of the Board, composed by the two Editors in Chief, five Associate Editors, and the editorial assistant, and a major transition to a new online platform, BAE has just renewed its graphical aspect to provide more information to the readers, and emphasize the rigor and transparency of the double-blind peer review process, a mechanism that ensure the high quality of the manuscripts hosted in BAE. Furthermore, the Journal will host more articles, organized in four issues per year: a signal that the growth in quality is solid and promising.
The best has yet to be described. Among the new initiatives we proudly announce, starting form the following issues, BAE will host a series of invited reviews aimed at synthesizing the topics debated in BAE as well as at emphasizing the status of the art of the Bioeconomy, a repeated tradition for the Journal (e.g. Romano, 2013;Viaggi, 2016;Sckokai, 2016). Following the debate on bioeconomy is of utmost importance, due to the vivid attention that the topic is receiving not only in Europe Last, but not least, the Journal will dedicate space to review the state of the art on the rural development and on nutrition and health issues, whose debate has deep roots in BAE and it is quite promising and vivid (e.g. The Board is proud of the journey that the Journal is facing and will continue to work to ensure that BAE will continue to be an independent and Open Access environment to debate and disseminate rigorous scientific findings, and authoritative critical views. As closing note, the Editors in Chief express their gratitude to the scientists who have made possible the ambitious project of Bio-based and Applied Economics to become a solid reality. Bio-based and Applied Economics 10(1): 5-6, 2021 | e-ISSN 2280-6e172 | DOI: 5 Ten years of Bio-Based and Applied Economics: a story of successes, and more to come