Message from the Editor

Abstract

To begin, I would like to wish our readers, authors, referees and Board of Editors a successful and happy 2008 and thank them for their contributions to Nuclear Fusion in 2007.I took over the editorship of Nuclear Fusion in January, and the year has been one in which the community as a whole has been busier than ever with a variety of duties associated with the ITER project.It was with pride that we published the Progress in the ITER Physics Basis in the June issue of the journal (stacks.iop.org/NF/47/i=6). The task undertaken by the coordinators, authors and referees was a daunting one but one which led to an outstandingly successful issue. The response from readers has been phenomenal and there were in the region of 10 000 downloads of papers in the first month following publication.Looking to 2008 and beyond, the journal will endeavour to continue to support the work of the fusion community. Refereeing As we have done since January 2005, we would like to thank our top ten most loyal referees who have helped the journal with its double-referee peer-review procedure in the past year. At the Nuclear Fusion Editorial Office we are fully aware of the load we put on the shoulders of our referees. At the end of 2004 the Editorial Board decided that a gesture of gratitude should be made to our most loyal referees. We offer them a personal subscription to Nuclear Fusion with electronic access for one year, free of charge.To select the top referees we have adopted the criterion that a researcher should have acted as a referee or adjudicator for at least three different manuscripts during the period from summer 2006 to the end of 2007. We have excluded our Board members and those referees who were already listed in the top ten in the last two years.According to our records the following people met this criterion. Congratulations and many, many thanks! H.L. Berk (Texas University, USA) J.S. DeGrassie (GAT, USA) C. Deutsch (Paris University, France) N. Hayashi (JAEA, Japan) P. Ghendrih (CEA, France) E. Gusakov (Ioffe Institute, Russia) T.C. Luce (GAT, USA) N. Oyama (JAEA, Japan) J.J. Ramos (MIT, USA) H. Takenaga (JAEA, Japan) In addition there is a group of several hundred referees who have helped us in the past year to maintain the high scientific standard of Nuclear Fusion. At the end of this issue we give the full list of all referees for 2007. Our thanks to them! Peer-review process We are pleased to report that further progress has been made in speeding up our publishing process, without any compromise of quality. Those authors who regularly submit work based on contributions to the Fusion Energy Conference (FEC) will, perhaps, have noticed the reduction in times compared to earlier years.We believe that Nuclear Fusion maintains its position in the field because of the perceived high quality of the submissions, the refereeing and the editorial processes. This position of strength will be built upon as we endeavour to further improve the service to the journal's authors and readers.