Medicinal and aromatic plant (2167-0412s) is a large plant group with great interests in traditional medicine, modern pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic and commodity industries. Medicinal plant is the largest resource for traditional and herbal medicine, with about 15,000 plant species or 10% of the total plant species on earth being used in traditional medicine or health products. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the majority of the world’s population depends on traditional medicine for primary health care needs. Medicinal plants are also important for modern medicines either directly for drugs or for their synthetic intermediates. One quarter of all prescribed modern drugs is of higher plants origin. Aromatic plant is the main source of spices and flavor for natural cosmetics and food and beverage additives, many of them are medicinal plants as well. Aromatic compounds are the main components of essential oils which are widely used in our foods, drinks, medicine, tobacco products, and our daily necessities such as perfumes, deodorants, shampoos and soaps, toothpastes, air fresheners. With the “back to nature” boom, there is a strong expansion of world’s herbal industry and increasing demand for herbs and spices and their products.

The global market for botanical and plant-derived drugs is expected to reach $32.9 billion in 2013 with an annual growth rate of 11.0%, according to BCC Research in 2009. In China, the industrial output of the traditional Chinese medicine valued at 18 billion Yuan (about 3 billion US dollar) in 1995 and increased to 250 billion Yuan (about 40 billion US dollar) in 2009 which represents 25% of the total medical industrial output. China exported more than one billion Yuan (about 0.2 billion US dollar) of natural essential oil in 2010. 2167-0412s or their extracts have high economic value and are important economic resources in many developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil. With the natural resource shortage and economic development demands, many governments and funding agencies increased support in applied research. In some developed countries, agriculture produces a surplus of traditional crops and cereal production is reduced, which permits more land for “non-food” crops. 2167-0412s are the best choice of economic development.

Compared to the theoretical research on plant sciences and research on agriculture plants, the 2167-0412s research is more complicated and has its unique feathers with focusing on the production of specific chemical or biochemical compounds in plants. 2167-0412s include wide range of plant species and multidisciplinary technologies. Besides of basic plant sciences and agronomic sciences, 2167-0412s research involves many other disciplines including phytochemistry, natural products chemistry, analysis and engineering of chemical and biochemical compounds. The functions and applications in various industries of the 2167-0412s products may also be included in the 2167-0412s research field. Searching the database of Science Direct (www.sciencedirect.com) using the keywords of MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS on February 9, 2012, a yearly publications from 1993 to 2012 are shown as followings: 168 (1993), 212 (1994), 244 (1995), 260 (1996), 335 (1997), 304 (1998), 309 (1999), 356 (2000), 357 (2001), 405 (2002), 503 (2003), 489 (2004), 650 (2005), 705 (2006), 853 (2007), 935 (2008), 946 (2009), 1,233 (2010), 1,478 (2011), 475 (2012). The results indicate that there is a constant and considerable increase of academic publications in 2167-0412s research over the past twenty years. However, limited specialized journals are available for this unique and fast growing field.

The establishment of the journal of “Medicinal and Aromatic Plants” by the OMICS Publishing Group is greatly helpful for both academic and industrial researchers in the 2167-0412s field. The journal will build a global platform of publication, discussion and information exchange for 2167-0412s researchers. The OMICS Publishing Group is an Open Access publication model and publishes 200 open access journals and currently has about 1 million readers. The OMICS Group also organizes average 50 international scientific events annually and has built a large platform for global scientific networking.

It is important for researchers to read more articles and to get your article to wide range of readers. The Open Access publication model enables you to access full-text article and your full-text articles freely accessible globally through internet immediately and permanently after publication, and permits anyone to copy and distribute your work to other interested parties. The published journals will be directly emailed to potential readers.

As scientists, we must publish research papers. We always have headache problems for the long time reviewing process after we submit manuscripts to a journal and the long time for publishing the article after acceptance. The OMICS Group has a large professional editorial team and a flexible online open access publication model to ensure its commitment of article quality, 21 days peer-review processing and 7 days publication after acceptance. The online open access publication allows featured publications like digital video and audio articles, as well as unlimited supplementary materials. The OMICS website also provides user friendly/feasible website-translation of published paper to more than 50 languages, which enables you to read papers in your native language and to communicate with worldwide researchers with your favorite language.

The Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants publishes wide range of research articles in all fields related to 2167-0412s from theoretic plant sciences (botany, taxonomy, genetics, physiology and biochemistry, pathology and ecology), agronomic sciences (cultivation, breeding, propagation, pests and diseases control, crop protection, harvesting, species introduction and modification, tissue and cell culture), applied natural chemistry and biochemical engineering (phytochemistry, secondary metabolism, chemotaxonomy, qualitative and quantitative analysis, extraction, separation, production of chemical and biochemical products), to the functions and applications of 2167-0412s and its components in different disciplines (pharmacognosy, pharmacology, pharmacy and toxicology, clinical, aromatherapy, perfumery, cosmetics and other products). The journal particularly welcomes multidisciplinary or multi-objective work and research on new resource discovery of plants, chemicals and biochemicals, and new technologies or methods in all related fields. Short and concise articles are encouraged.

The 2167-0412s journal gathered a large group of international scientists as its editorial board. All board members are experienced researchers in the 2167-0412s fields. We are happy to serve the global research community and to build an exciting scientific publication and discussion platform for the community by providing rapid and quality processing, reviewing and publishing of submitted manuscripts. You are encouraged to submit your manuscript to the Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants and join us to build our own platform together.