I am traditionally writing an Editorial for the first issue of the Journal of Separation Science or JSS how we often call it. Each time, I am thinking about what was good in the previous year, what we did not do extremely well, and what we plan to do next. This year is not any exception from this rule. I am here again, and the following lines are my thoughts.
The first question first: How did we in 2008? The answer is simple: Extremely well. The 31 st volume was again larger than all the previous. Altogether, 445 papers were printed on 3,980, โฆ pages in 22 issues, which was a significant increase compared to 18 issues published in 2007. The number of submitted manuscripts grew again and with the help of our reviewers we could be pickier in selecting those whose high quality warranted publishing. Publication of such works that also introduce interesting topics attracts scientists to download or read those papers in the internet edition. This is confirmed by an exponential growth our web site traffic. We also monitored a further increase in the impact factor that reached 2,632 in 2007. Although the impact factor may not be the most objective criterion of quality of a journal, its increase certainly indicates that JSS is being read, the publications found useful, and therefore, referred to. This is in fact the major reason why we are publishing our journal. Obviously, these significant improvements would not happen if not for our authors and reviewers. The former fill the journal with their exciting work while the latter guard that all what is published is scientifically sound. They certainly deserve our recognition and many thanks for their help.