This issue is assigned to the 25-year jubilee of Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research. The first issue of the journal was printed in 1986, and since then, over 1300 peer-reviewed articles have passed through the reviewing and publishing process. A separate article describes the history of the journal.
How should such an important anniversary be recognized? The journal board made an early decision to celebrate the event with a seminar at the IUFRO World Congress to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in August 2010. The recently elected editorial board continued the planning at a meeting in December 2009, and came up with the suggestion to supplement the seminar with the production of a set of review articles. These would look at the scientific achievements over the past 25 years, and also look forward to what will be expected in about 25 years from now.
The overall theme “Looking beyond to shape the future” describes the idea. Progress in research is seldom the result of a single genius suddenly coming up with an invention. Everyday research is instead mostly the laborious process of building one piece of knowledge on top of others. A successful scientist should look forward, but must also master the already published scientific achievements. This issue has both perspectives.
A list of current topics was selected for the reviews. The topics reflect issues of concern for practical forestry, but also issues where research has moved the frontier during the last quarter of a century. Research in all these topics has also been presented repeatedly in articles in Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research.
Leading authors were invited within each of the selected topics, and were asked to write a comprehensive review of the literature and experience over the past few decades. They were also asked to give their own perspectives for the future. The lead authors were asked to draft their own teams, and we are proud to have engaged many of the top scientists within their respective fields.
The results are eight review articles, covering aspects from nature conservation and silviculture, through forest operations and inventory technology, to a presentation of small-scale forest research. Some of the articles have a purely northern Europe perspective, while others aim at a more global overview. We are confident that the articles will become important sources of information for all who wish to gain an overview of a specific field. Some of the articles also provide primary information that has not previously been accessible to an international audience.