A year has gone by since John Gilfrich retired as Editor-in-Chief of X-Ray Spectrometry and I was asked to take over. What did this Γrst year bring ? First of all, thanks to John, the transition has been very smooth. John has still been actively Γnalising all the manuscripts he had in the pipeline, dutifully passing on all the new manuscripts that he was still receiving, and giving as much advice as possible. Secondly, the help and co-operation of Ray Boucher, Development Editor of Wiley, has proved to be invaluable. Ray has done some of the letter writing, but, in fact, many of the ideas for changing and improving the journal have also come from him. Thirdly, several members of the Advisory Board have contributed constructively, e.g. by participating in the board meetings during the Bologna and Colorado Springs conferences, by refereeing papers and by giving suggestions otherwise. Altogether, being Editor-in-Chief has turned out to be much more of a job than I had expected. In fact, it would have been impossible if Paul Veny in our Antwerp University team had not taken on some of the routine administration. At this moment, no fewer than 81 manuscripts are in the pipeline, i.e. they are either with the referees for inspection or back to the authors for revision. But being involved so much in the development of the major journal in the x-ray spectrometry Γeld is certainly a very rewarding experience.
X-Ray Spectrometry is faring well, in terms of subscriptions and of Impact Factor (which has now gone up to 1.22) (the most recent available Γgure). In the past year, I have spoken to dozens of scientists and readers about their views on the journal. In light of these comments, we have formed plans to make the journal more attractive. Therefore, from 2000 on, there will be eight issues per year instead of six. One welcome result of this is that publication times will be further decreased. But, as we mentioned before, there will also be special issues on : (1) speciΓc topics (the one on XRS in Cultural Heritage Research, with Eva Selin Lindgren of Chalmers University in Gothenburg as guest editor is the most advanced), (2) XRS in countries that are underrepresented in the journal (Yoichi Gohshi of the Japanese Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba is already editing the Γrst one) and (3) certain XRS conferences (e.g. the proceedings of the 1998 European EDXRS Conference, with Jorge Fernandez of the University of Bologna as guest editor, is in the pipeline). Moreover, most issues will contain invited tutorials (the Γrst one, on the X-ray detectors, will be in the second issue of this year), review articles (e.g. on portable XRS) and articles summarising the X-ray developments in speciΓc labs (e.g. NIST), as well as XRS Letters (letters-to-the-editor which will follow a fast-track publication schedule).
It looks like the contents of X-Ray Spectrometry will thus change considerably in the next months, and we do hope the readers will appreciate this and will continue to support the journal increasingly.