Building comprehensive knowledge based on sunflower research for over 24 years of publishing the ISJ Helia

Journal Helia started its "mission" nearly 36 years ago, very unpretentiously, as an information bulletin FAO Research Network on Sunflower, with the founders’ intention to allow a quick and easy exchange of knowledge gained from experimental field trials of improving and breeding important oilseed crop species, such as sunflower. With the time passing, the number of scientists gathered around the project development and promotion of sunflower growing under the FAO Research Network on Sunflower has risen slowly but steadily, while the projects have become more extensive, complex and serious. The abundance of scientific research results, realized in the framework of a research network, determined the direction of the evolution journal Helia in scientific journal with internationally recognized quality, peer-reviewed papers and its relatively high ranking in the scientific society. Since the beginning of publishing in Serbia (1990th), the Journal published by the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, as the publisher and editorial office headquarters, was under the auspices of F.A.O. and ISA until the 2006th when the editorial office was transferred to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Branch in Novi Sad, which also assumed the role of the main publisher, while the Institute remained co-publisher. Since 1990 a total of 24 volumes with 47 regular and two extraordinary numbers have been published in the scientific journal HELIA. That is a pretty impressive library with 6900 pages of printed material in 746 scientific papers in English. So far 2125 authors and co-authors of scientific papers from 43 countries from all continents have participated in publishing scientific papers in the journal All submitted manuscripts are subjected to anonymous international review (so-called "single-blind peer review", where the authors of the papers do not know who the reviewers are, but the reviewers know who the authors of the papers are) and published in the journal only after receiving a positive review by two independent reviewers and the final opinion of the editor. Regarding the impact factor of the ISJ Helia in the last 10 years, according to citation indicators of some papers published in the journal, it can be concluded that it has had relatively high levels over the past 10 years, with a trend of significant increase in 2011 and 2012. Focusing on that parameter, and relatively high two-and five-year impact factors in 2011 and 2012, we can be very satisfied about these trends, which have led to our journal being ranked near relatively influential journals on the global level.