EDITORIAL

This year marks the transfer of Protist into Elsevier’s “ScienceDirect” digital library, an electronic resource of science, technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information covering over 1,800 journals. Protist has not been among the first journals of the Jena publishing office that moved into the ScienceDirect system. The Editors of Protist wanted to ensure that the print layout, which is distinctive and one of the hallmarks of the journal, remains unchanged following the transition. This has been achieved. There are considerable advantages of being part of ScienceDirect, e.g. in the section “Articles in press”, recently accepted articles are published online much earlier than in an individual issue.

Protist continues to enjoy the support of authors, subscribers and hopefully also readers and maintains its position as a premier outlet for high-quality publications about protists. Again this is mainly due to the effort and dedication of Protist’s Editorial Board and Office, the publisher’s staff, expert reviewers, but most importantly our authors, who continue to publish some of their best work in the pages of Protist.

I especially wish to thank Iain Wilson who retired from the Editorial Board after seven years of dedicated service. Iain was not only a founding member of Protist, but with his group also contributed some of the most highly cited papers published in the journal to date. I welcome Barry Leadbeater and Frank Seeber as new members on the Editorial Board.

January 2005    
                                                                                               
Michael Melkonian 
Editor, Cologne