This issue of HEPATOLOGY is the third produced under the imprimatur of our new publishers, W. B. Saunders Company. Perhaps the highest praise I can bestow on our new Philadelphia colleagues is that the transition passed virtually unnoticed by our readers. The outstanding quality of the journal in purely publishing terms, as represented by such items as copy editing, layout, typesetting, clear reproduction of figures, printing, and binding, was established by the journal's first publisher, Williams & Wilkins, continued through our tenure with Mosby, and, if these first three issues provide any clues about the future, will be maintainedif not enhanced-with Saunders.
The decision to change publishers was based, however, on other issues. As our contract with Mosby approached its end, simple managerial prudence led the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) to explore whether it was in the journal's and the Association's best interests to remain where we were or to move to a new publisher. Meetings were held both with Mosby and with a number of alternate publishing houses. We came away from these meetings convinced that Joan Blumberg, President of the Periodicals Division at Saunders, and Christine Battle Rullo, who was designated to be HEPATOLOGY'S Publisher if we moved to Saunders, were uniquely in tune with the AASLD's views of this journal's role, its future, and how a publisher could help to enhance both. As publisher of the AASLD's new journal Liver Transplantation and Surgery and of Gastroenterology and of such distinguished textbooks in the field as Bockus Gastroenterol-ogy, Saunders' position in the disciplines of hepatology and gastroenterology is unique, and will certainly be constructive.
It is 18 months since I last examined the state of HEPATOLOGY, the journal, and hepatology, the discipline, in an editorial published in August 1993.' That editorial was meant to be a progress report prepared at the midpoint of an anticipated 5-year term as Editor. My term has now been extended by 1 year to accommodate prior commitments by my designated successor, Dr D. Montgomery Bissell, who will assume the editor-HEPATOLOGY and Hepatology: The Trends Continue