Editorial

As is prominently displayed on the cover, the International Journal of General Systems publishes this year its 40th volume. The journal began its publication in 1974 as a quarterly, expanded to a bimonthly in 1998, and eventually to publishing eight issues per year in 2009. Due to its focus on cross-disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and foundational issues associated with systems, the journal has been a medium for publishing contributions that do not fit into most other journals.

In addition to original, peer-reviewed research papers, the journal has also published invited overview, tutorial, and autobiographical articles, as well as book reviews and occasional letters to the editor. Moreover, 31 special issues and a few debate issues have been published, most of them on emerging new areas. It seems reasonable to view the 40 volumes of the journal as a narrative of the evolution of systems ideas during the last four decades. It chronicles not only advances in general system theories and methodologies during this period, but also the emergence of new types of systems as well as new multidisciplinary application areas.

Each year, since 2007, one of the papers published in the journal is selected to receive the Best Paper Award for that year. The selection is based on nominations from the Editorial Board and the editorial team. The winner is the paper that receives the largest number of nominations. The award consists of a certificate and a cheque from the publisher, Taylor & Francis, for US$500. I am pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2010 Best Paper Award is Mihai Nadin for his paper, ‘Anticipation and dynamics: Rosen's anticipation in the perspective of time’ (Nadin 2010). This paper received a total of seven nominations. A runner-up, which received five nominations, is the paper by Jon C. Helton and three co-authors (Helton et al. 2010). The paper by Ayyub (2010) received four nominations, and each of the following papers received three nominations: Belohlavek and Krupka (2010), Klir (2010), and Zafiris (2010). My congratulations to Professor Nadin for receiving the 2010 Best Paper Award and to the other authors whose papers received at least three nominations.

Let me now turn to announcing two changes regarding the journal. First, it is my pleasant duty to introduce five new members of our Editorial Board:

• Andreas Deutsch, Department for Innovative Methods of Computing, Technical University of Dresden, Germany;

• Andy Ilachinski, Operations and Tactical Analysis, Center for Naval Analysis, Alexandria, Virginia, USA;

• Pawan Lingras, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada;

• Dominik Slezak, Institute of Mathematics, University of Warsaw, Poland; and

• Shingo Takahashi, Graduate School of International Management, Waseda University, Japan.

They will represent some important research areas on the Editorial Board and I look forward to cooperating with them.

The second change I would like to announce concerns our section Book Reviews and Abstracts, which has been published in the journal since its commencement in 1974. This section reflects my conviction that critical reviews and abstracts of selected new books on relevant subjects provide readers of the journal with useful information. Thus far, I have handled the section as part of my editorial responsibilities, but in a somewhat ad hoc fashion. Recently, I have increasingly felt that the section deserves a dedicated editor. I am pleased to announce that Ellen Tilden, who is well known to authors as well as readers of the journal, has accepted my invitation to serve as Book Reviews Editor.