Appointment of new chair of editors and new editors from China and Switzerland

We are delighted to announce the appointment of George Jackson to the role of the Chair of the Editors from May 2016. George was an Editor of Molecular Physics from 1994 to 1997, and rejoined as an Editor for a second time in 2013 [1]. George has been actively involved with the journal since his return, overseeing publication of three Thermodynamics Conference special issues [2], as well as issues honouring Tomas Boublik and Ivo Nezbeda, Jean-Pierre Hansen, and Yiping Tang [3]. George was also the driving force behind the gathering of the past Editors in April 2016, which he recounts in the following editorial [4].

We would like to express our thanks and appreciation for the contributions of Tim Softley as an Editor and Chair of the journal over the last 13 years. Tim stepped down from his role as Chair in May, and finishes his term as Editor at the end of 2016. Tim's association with Molecular Physics dates back to his first article, published in the journal 35 years ago [5]. He joined the editorial board in 1999, became an Editor in May 2004, and succeeded Jean-Pierre Hansen as Chair of the Editors in January 2009.

During his seven years as Chair, Tim provided a steady guiding hand as the journal embarked on a range of new initiatives, including the Topical Reviews series, the annual Longuet–Higgins Young Author Prize [6], the New Views series [7], and the introduction of graphical abstracts. In addition, Tim has overseen numerous special issues (including several issues on high-resolution molecular spectroscopy [8–10]), and has continued to contribute articles as a co-author [11–16]. We wish Professor Softley well for the future and every success in his role as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Birmingham, and we hope he will continue his association with the journal through future decades.

The editorial team was expanded in 2016 with the addition of a sixth Editor, Wenjian Liu, from the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University. Wenjian's appointment reflects and reinforces the journal's strengths in quantum chemistry and electronic structure theory and emphasises the international reach and appeal of the journal. Wenjian's review on ‘Ideas of relativistic quantum chemistry’ was one of the journal's first Topical Reviews and holds the accolade of being the most highly cited article from the 108th volume of the journal [17].

Finally, we look forward to welcoming Stefan Willitsch, from the University of Basel, who will follow on from Tim as the Molecular Physics Editor for Chemical Dynamics, Photophysics and Spectroscopy in January 2017.