Dear EWRS Members,
It is a great pleasure for me to send you my personal message, and to inform you of the novelties the Society is implementing. This year is extremely busy for the EWRS Board and active members, and we hope to finalize our joint efforts positively.
As you know, this year the principal event for EWRS is the Symposium, which will be held in Lleida (Spain) from 1st to 4th July. We are fully involved in its organization, and all the positive signals allow us to predict a bright success. We received almost 350 abstracts that Husrev, our Scientific Secretary, organized and assigned to the group of the Session Organizers, who have revised them and allocated them into the numerous sessions. The Symposium programme is now almost defined, and a considerable number of speakers have been selected and informed. The Local Organizers are perfectly finalizing the excellent facilities to host the expected numerous attendees, defining the details of the excursions, gala dinner, lunches and coffee breaks, poster and meeting rooms, to guarantee the success of the event. Several important ‘side-programme events’ – Working Group meetings, General Assembly, Welcome reception, Students’ welcome, prize-winner ceremony, etc. – will be organized, and all symposium participants are invited to attend them. The Communication Team is working well, in connection with the Local Organizers and the Boards, timely spreading the news regarding the Symposium. Very soon, the Board will travel to Lleida and meet the Local Organizers to check if everything is in order and to define the latest details.
Several students and early career researchers will receive a grant to support their symposium attendance, and prizes for the best presentations and posters will be offered. The presence of young and enthusiastic scientists is crucial for the future of weed science and for the EWRS, too.
In this regard, EWRS will continue to support students to travel abroad and spend some weeks at another weed science institute, by re-launching and improving for this year Travel Grants for Bilateral Cooperation, already successfully organized last year, which allowed us to support the travel of three students.
Concerning our Journal, Weed Research, as you know, we are trying to support it in various ways. The publisher is introducing a new system for the submission, revision and publication of the articles, which should greatly improve and speed up the whole process, guaranteeing a better service. Moreover, more and more opportunities to publish Open Access articles for free will be offered, thanks to agreements of Wiley with many research institutes and organizations all over the world. This should greatly increase the attractiveness and the quality of Weed Research. Please check if your articles can benefit from this chance by clicking the following link: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/affiliation-policies-payments/index.html.
We are in progress to launch new Special Issues, also in conjunction with the Symposium. We received very positive feedback from symposium participants to submit an article. So, stay tuned and be ready to do it. We have also created a task force to support the Journal and facilitate the EiC, Alison Haughton. We plan to invite more Subject Editors to support the Publisher, to help organize Special Issues, etc. This is not an easy task, also because the group is composed of voluntary people, and we must also consider our ‘real’ job.
As you might know, we also have a Heritage Committee, which cares for the EWRS archive containing all the documents that were produced as printed material for decades. For a long time, the committee (recently partially renewed) has collected and classified the material, and physically preserved it. We are now trying to digitalize the archive, starting from the proceedings of previous symposia, making this precious material available to members. Preserving the EWRS material is not only an attempt to preserve its history, but also an occasion for future generations to ‘study’ the evolution of weed research, to know the groups working in the past, the research fields that received more attention during the decades, and to get much precious information to renew the interest in weed science.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Society. The event will be celebrated not only during the Symposium, but also by organizing a special ad hoc event in Autumn, probably on the day of the official foundation. Making the printed material available in a digitalized form is a further opportunity to celebrate the important event.
Part of the EWRS Board will be renewed by the end of the year, and members will be invited to elect the Vice-President (who will become the President after two years), the Scientific Secretary and two Additional Board Members. Voting for your preferred representatives, or proposing colleagues or yourself as representatives, is another way to take part in Society’s life.
Many service contracts have been revised, and now the whole financial management of the Society has been better defined and improved, making the administrative costs more sustainable. This will help to maintain the economic stability of the Society, which is crucial for its long-term survival.
Thus, the European Weed Research Society if active, weed science is not an ‘old’ science and weed management doesn’t only mean chemical control. New technologies such as omics, robotics, modelling, AI, biotech and novel natural approaches already widely implemented in other research fields can greatly support research and offer novel solutions for weed management, guaranteeing environmental and economic sustainability. Thus, young researchers can find many interesting research fields in which to be involved. It’s our task to support them.
And with this wish and looking forward to meeting you in person at the Symposium, listening to your interesting presentations and seeing your precious posters, I thank you for your consideration and for supporting the Society, whose doors, remember, are open to any volunteer and willing researcher.
All the best
Maurizio Vurro
3rd April 2025