Christina A. Mireles DeWitt

JAFPT by the Numbers

There are many new changes at JAFPT, and one of them is a new Managing Editor. As promised, the Managing Editor hit the ground running and put together a fabulous Publisher’s Report for the Journal of Aquatic Food Product Technology. There aremany things driving this journal in a positive direction. Global access and circulation hit an all-time high in 2017. The most downloaded article was “Characterization of Collagen from Different Discarded Fish Species of theWest Coast of the Iberian Peninsula” by Carmen G. Sotelo, Marí Blanco Comesaña, Patricia Ramos Ariza, and Ricardo I. Pérez-Martín, with 1,583 downloads. An interesting part of the Publisher’s Report is theAltmetric Score. This score is ameasure of the quality and quantity of online attention based on mentions from social media sites, newspapers, policy documents, blogs, etc. It is color-coded based on the type of media attention an article received. I am still not quite sure what a “good” score is, but the leading article, “Mechanical Separation of Green Crab (Carcinus maenas) Meat and Consumer Acceptability of a Value-Added Food Product” by Joseph A. Galetti, Beth L. Calder, andDenise I. Skonberg received anAltmetric Score of 431. Based on the color coding, this article was picked up most by news media outlets. Included in the Publisher’s Report is the author survey. Out of 128 authors who responded, almost 50% gave “overall satisfaction” a score of 9 or 10 out of 10. Over 70% of respondents scored “overall satisfaction” as a 7 or better. There is still room for improvement, but it is good to see most authors are satisfied with the publication process for their papers. Overall, the report is very positive, and the Editor-in-Chief team is enthusiastic about learning from the report to make further improvements to the journal.

Journal Impact Factor is Improving

The Journal of Aquatic Food Product Technology (JAFPT) is in its 26 year. There have been many changes over time, but one goal that all of the editors have consistently worked towards is improving the quality of the science reported in the journal. I was in the process of updating my CV and, nowadays, researchers are not only having to publish but also show the impact of their research. This means there is a plethora of sites that attempt to provide metrics that effectively capture and demonstrate research impact. Examples are Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), Clarivate, Research Gate, and InCites Journal Citation Reports (InCites). I decided to look at the data for JAFPT in InCites and SJR. The first thing I noticed is the growth in number of publications over the past 10 years. From 2009 to 2010, the journal averaged almost 30 publications per year and had only four issues per year. In 2012, the journal moved to five issues and then to six issues in 2013 and 2014. Again, in 2015, the number of issues increased to eight and stayed at eight until 2017, when the number of issues increased to 10. JAFPT is currently on pace for 10 issues again this year. I think this point to a significant growth and interest in aquatic food research. Total cites for the journal have consistently increased year over year. According to SJR, total cites in 2017 were 160, compared to 119 and 121 in 2015 and 2016, respectively. This brings me to impact factor. The journal impact factor is calculated using the total number of citations from the previous 2 years divided by the number of items published in those same years. As number of articles increase, there needs to be a similar increase in the number of articles cited in order to maintain the impact factor. For InCites, the journal impact factor is only reported through 2016 and dropped from 0.653 in 2015 to 0.478 in 2016. For SJR, data is only reported for 2017 and indicates the impact factor is now at 0.69, which is very encouraging and points to the efforts authors and editors are making to improve the journal’s impact. When compared to the journals that I would consider peer journals, Journal of Food Science (IF 2.01) from the USA and Fisheries Science (IF 0.83) from Germany, there are several positive contrasts that suggest JAFPT is headed in a good direction. Both are broader in scope than JAFPT, but both include aquatic food products and food science within their scope. Since 1999, citable documents and cited documents have been steadily increasing for JAFPT. Total cites and citations per document are also trending upward. In contrast, total cites for Journal of Food Science trended steadily up and peaked in 2013. Since that time, total cites have been decreasing steadily with only a brief indication of a reversal in trend in 2017. Fisheries Science has been trending downward in terms of total cites, citable documents, and cited documents. They are trending upward in citations/ document. Their ratio of cited documents to uncited documents has been pretty steady, however, and is currently at 1.1. Comparing the metrics for all three journals, Iam very excited about the direction JAFPT is moving and grateful for the efforts of current and past editors and staff to grow and improve this journal.

Impact of Feeding Status on the Efficacy of Depuration for Decontaminating Vibrio parahaemolyticus in Pacific Oysters (Crassostrea gigas)

ABSTRACT Vibrio parahaemolyticus causes acute human gastroenteritis and is often linked to consumption of raw oysters. Previous investigations indicated that refrigerated seawater depuration at 12.5°C could significantly reduce V. parahaemolyticus contamination in Pacific oysters; however, further optimization is necessary to achieve the regulatory target of >3.52 log most probable number (MPN)/g reduction. The current study investigated influences of algal feeding on efficacy of depuration to reduce V. parahaemolyticus in raw oysters. A V. parahaemolyticus cocktail (10290, 10292, 10293, BE 98–2029, 027-1c1) was mixed in artificial seawater (70 L) to inoculate oysters (n = 35) at 4–5 log MPN/g. Inoculated oysters were subjected to depuration with feed (algae = 0.036 ml/gram of oyster) and without feed at 12.5°C. Oysters (n = 5) were analyzed for V. parahaemolyticus using a three-tube MPN method after 0, 1, 3, 5, and 6 days of depuration. Depuration (6 days) achieved average V. parahaemolyticus reductions of 2.75 log MPN/g and 3.03 log MPN/g in the fed and unfed systems, respectively; however, feeding status did not significantly impact the efficacy of depuration to reduce V. parahaemolyticus in Pacific oysters. Further optimization of depuration is necessary to achieve the regulatory target for V. parahaemolyticus decontamination in raw oysters.

Polyphosphates and Natural Alkaline Buffers

There has been an interesting discussion on the Seafood HACCP Listserv lately centered on whether any methodology exists to detect the use of non-phosphate additives, such as citrate and carbonate, in seafood. As we know, polyphosphates are used in the seafood industry for many reasons: water holding improvement, cryoprotectant, antioxidant, shell removal (for shrimp), etc. Arguably, the primary use for polyphosphates is to alter muscle protein functionality by raising pH. This causes the protein structure to be more open because it has shifted further away from it’s pI. Addition of salt facilitates polyphosphate action by shifting the pI lower. The result is an improved ability of themuscle protein to hold water through shelf-life and cooking. Unfortunately, this same alteration can be easily abused and result in a tremendous increase in water holding capacity and thus increasing yields to a point where they are fraudulent. Polyphosphates are typically detected in meat by hydrolyzing them to the ortho form and then separated out as quinolinium phophomolybdate, with a reagent called quimociac (QUInoline, MOlybdate, CItrate, and ACetone). Replacement of polyphosphates with more label friendly citrates and carbonates makes it difficult to determine whether abuses in brining are occurring. Seafood protein does have an amazing ability to hold water, and it can hold much more, in my experience, than land animal protein. Addition of water to meat has physical and sensory limitations. When the water holding capacity of “meat” is increased too much (>15-20%), the texture of the product becomes noticeably altered and “ham-like.” Significant changes in appearance (both color and structure) of the fibers also occurs. However, with fish, especially white muscle fish, it is much more difficult to discern these visual and textural changes. I have been astounded with our own experiments to see how easily fish muscle handles >20% added water, acting like a veritable sponge. The result of this addition is also not “unpleasing” from a visual perspective. The fish appears “plumper” and more firm. I can understand the concerns expressed for finding a means to verify the presence and amount of alkaline alternatives in order to insure fair practices.

A milestone for the OSU Surimi School

ISSN: 1049-8850 (Print) 1547-0636 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wafp20 A milestone for the OSU Surimi School Christina A. Mireles DeWitt To cite this article: Christina A. Mireles DeWitt (2017) A milestone for the OSU Surimi School, Journal of Aquatic Food Product Technology, 26:5, 501-501, DOI: 10.1080/10498850.2017.1335078 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10498850.2017.1335078