Meet the editor of... British Food Journal
An interview with: Chris Griffith
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In this interview
Professor Chris Griffith is Director of Research & Enterprise and Head of the Food Research & Consultancy Unit at University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, UK. Chris has had a lifelong interest in food and catering, having been brought up in a hotel and having had 25 years’ experience in consulting for the food industry. His work with the Food Research & Consultancy Unit is concerned with multidisciplinary research to improve food safety at all points within the food chain from primary production, through processing, retailing and catering to consumption. In so doing, he uses a range of both quantitative and qualitative techniques to examine issues ranging from the hard science of surface cleanliness and cross contamination to training efficacy, the psychology of food handling behaviour and organizational food safety culture.
British Food Journal (BFJ) covers a wide range of food issues including the microbiology of food safety through to nutrition, food production and marketing, supply chain management, consumer perceptions, health education and many other food related topics. Interdisciplinary and international, it aims to provide research that is both academic and applied, in a form that is accessible to a wide range of audiences. Now in its 107th year, it is one of the oldest and longest established of all Emerald journals. Recent topics include advances in the processing of red meat, bacterial contamination of domestic kitchens, consumer perceptions of the quality of shrimps and cheese, the ethics of fast food, food terrorism, genetically modified food, and synthetic food colours in festivals in Hyderabad. Internationally, food safety continues to be a popular topic and was the subject of two special issues in 2005, but the diversity is illustrated by an international themed issue in 2006 on wine.
Editorial philosophy
BFJ must be one of the oldest journals around. What are some of the main changes in its 107 year history?
Food has changed so dramatically in the last 100 years: there's been the growth in retailing, greater interest in food safety and nutrition, while marketing and trade has become far more international with import and export from and to all over the world. In addition, anything to do with food and its delivery is much more structured, economically and scientifically. The journal reflects these changes.
You have been Editor since 2003. What changes have you made in that time and how would you like to develop the journal?
The most crucial thing that I have done and continue to do is to further enhance BFJ’s academic status as one of the premier research journals. As part of this process I am working with Vicky Williams, the Managing Editor, to put the journal forward for ISI [Thomson Scientific] listing[1]; and we have submitted all issues for 2005. ISI listing is particularly relevant to British academics, because of the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), but it’s also important for authors from other countries such as South Africa.
Another important quality issue (and also one that the RAE is very keen on) is the journal’s international element. A good percentage of our authors come from outside the UK but I am also looking to make the Editorial Advisory Board even more international. It’s important to educate people to look beyond the "British" in our title and see the breadth of our research: we have articles on cheeses from Italy, food safety from a US and Canadian perspective, to name just a couple of examples. I’m constantly looking at ways of furthering the journal’s international research status, by which I mean research that is read internationally and is of an international calibre.
Would it be true to say that you cover all aspects of food and food related research, from its microbiological and biochemical aspects to the business and management angle?
It’s true to say that the journal has a very broad range. This approach has strengths and weaknesses: the strength is that the readership is broad and the papers attract interest from all corners of industry and the world. The weakness is that we are constantly competing with the more discipline specific journals, so a biochemist might prefer to see a scientific paper published in a biochemical journal. The way I get round this is by focusing on the practical applications of the research to food, so that in considering a paper which contained microbiological research I would look at whether that research had been applied to food including food safety or spoilage, although we do also publish on the use of microorganisms in food production, especially for new foods produced from novel substrates. In the business and management field, we have a strong application to food, ranging from food production, new product development, quality assurance, food marketing or management of the supply chain. We also publish extensively in the area of consumer education and choice, including nutrition and health education, and consumer perceptions of food, such as genetic modification, as well as topical areas such as organic food, etc.
What are some of the main challenges in researching and publishing in such a multidisciplinary area?
The main challenge is that people may be undecided as to whether to publish with us or with a more discipline focused journal. To give an example, I as a microbiologist have supervised students doing PhDs in the area of the psychology of food safety. When considering where to publish this research, we had to think whether people would be more interested in the research as discussion of psychological theory, in which case we would publish in a psychological journal, or in the application of the theory to food handlers. We decided in the end that the greater degree of interest would lie in the food angle so we published in the British Food Journal. When considering the merits of particular journals to publish in we have to consider where the greatest interest, the widest readership, and the greatest benefit to the reader is likely to be.
Another dilemma is the fact that the journal’s defining element is food, which by its nature crosses boundaries, and as a result the journal may not have the same perceived status as a "pure" disciplinary journal. How do you overcome this? By the type of paper we have in the journal, by going out and attracting authors, by having different themed issues. In 2005, we had an issue on consumer food safety, and in 2006 we will be extending the application of this to consumer food safety education. We are fortunate in having attracted the world’s leading researchers to contribute. The editorial board is also highly valued for the role it plays in broadcasting the journal's message.
Who are your key primary and secondary audiences?
Universities worldwide, who purchase the journal via their libraries, are probably the main audience, but we also have demand from a practitioner audience, for example environmental health practitioners, health educationalists, consumer and related organizations, and the food industry itself.
What are the most common academic/discipline areas from which authors come?
We have contributions from nutritionists, health educationalists, applied microbiologists and food safety experts, management specialists with an interest in food marketing, retailing, the supply chain, or product development, as well as people writing for us on consumer perceptions and other issues of consumer concern.
Editorial coverage
How do you ensure that work reported in your journal reaches beyond an academic audience and that its implications for practice are clear? Do you try and attract practitioner authors?
We definitely want to attract a practitioner audience – see my earlier comments about audiences. And we want practitioners to write for us. The problem we have here is that we don’t have a different standard for practitioner research; all research has to reach the same high standard. For example, we may do a special issue from a conference, where speakers included practitioners, some of whom might need help in writing up the research in a form suitable for an academic journal.
You ask your contributors to "bear in mind the international readership of the journal" – how in practical terms can they do this and how else do you ensure that your coverage remains international?
Much of this has been covered earlier. One point to add is that while we are happy if the research is located in one country, as in for example a study of Italian cheeses, we like authors to bring in the broader implications of their research by for example situating it within the context of other similar studies, as well as highlighting generic applications.
You work a lot with conferences. Can you give examples of successful partnerships of this nature and say what it brings to both parties?
An example of this is the conference held in South Africa, "Breaking News on HACCP and Food Safety", which looked at both local and international issues concerning food safety, and which was convened by the Consulting Microbiological Laboratory, a leading provider of testing services in the southern African region. Papers from this conference will be published in a themed issue early in 2006: "Thinking Globally Acting Locally", and will reflect the conference’s preoccupation with global trends and their application to local operations.
It is good marketing for the conference and it means that journal’s readers get both an international and regional insight. The issue contains two papers from US authors, including one who is a leading world authority on the safety of fruit and vegetables, one from the UK, and three from South Africa.
Do you welcome all article types or do you have a preference for a paper which shows good solid research?
There will be a number of review type papers in the next few issues, although the balance will not change hugely. This is perhaps due to a perception in some circles that anything that is not pure research is somehow "lower grade". We do publish quite a number of research papers based on case studies, and Vol. 107 No. 9 contained "Food industry case studies: a suitable medium for publication" intended as a guide to authors.
Along with many other journals we do publish some literature reviews; we look for very good quality, breadth, some forecast of where the research is going, and a summary statement of the position of the discipline. As an example of the latter, I co-published with one of my PhD students a comprehensive review of consumer food safety studies over the past four decades, which was among the top 100 cited papers for 2003[2].
Do any particular research approaches stand out for you as being particularly noteworthy?
We accept papers which use either qualitative or quantitative approaches, although we particularly like papers that combine the two approaches – the sum of the two parts is bigger than the whole. The quantitative approach gives numerical data, while the qualitative approach gives underlying reasons. One approach which I’ve seen a couple of examples of and which I’d be happy to consider again is the Delphi technique which uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.
The article "Fast foods and ethical consumer value: a focus on McDonald’s and KFC" won an outstanding paper award. What qualities in the paper made you offer it this award?
The three things that make an article really stand out are innovation, quality and topicality.
Publishing issues
What is the role of your Editorial Advisory Board?
To consider whether or not something is fit to publish, to suggest themed issues, to encourage submissions by spreading the word about the journal, and to come up with the names of reviewers.
How do you ensure timeliness to market of your research and other articles in a very fast moving area?
If something is very topical, we fast track it so that will appear in the next available issue, so the time lag between submission and publication can be as little as four months.
How do you ensure academic rigour?
There are two approaches to quality: quality control, and quality assurance. Quality control is based on reviewing. I have an "unofficial" system for assessing reviewers, using the methodology of the American Journal of Infection Control, which assesses all reviews against five criteria. Quality assurance means getting the right stuff in the first place, which means doing the background work mentioned earlier around encouraging submissions.
Looking to the future
What plans do you have for the next 18 months, for example for themed issues?
We will continue to publish a wide range of papers, as well as to have themed issues including the one based on the South African conference mentioned above, one on consumer food safety education which will be linked into the UK Food and Drink Federation and the UK Food Safety Agency, and one on wine.
What are some of the key issues in food research you see coming up in the next 18 months?
In general it is "Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose!"
Food safety, nutrition, genetic modification of food, consumer confidence in food, and retailing will remain the subject of many papers, although two possible increasingly important themes will be food and ethics, and bioterrorism.
- The journal was accepted for inclusion in the Science Citation Index (Expanded) and Current Contents (Agriculture, Biology and Environmental Sciences) in November 2005.
- Redmond, E.C. and Griffith, C.J. (2003), "Consumer food handling in the home: a review of food safety studies", Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 66, pp. 130-61. Why this article had such a wide appeal was its interest not only to food safety researchers but also to public health professionals and health educators, and the fact that it provided the basis for future research as well as for food safety education initiatives, and contained useful information on similarities and disparities of consumer knowledge, attitudes, intentions, self-reported practices and actual behaviour. It also evaluated studies in terms of research methods used for data collection, study size, country of origin, and year of completion.
Publisher's note
Professor Griffith was interviewed in September 2005.
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