This issue of the International Journal of River Basin Management marks a new era in the development of the journal as it is the first to be produced as part of a new joint venture between IAHR and the respected international publishing organization Taylor & Francis. The rationale for the change is simple: to ensure that the excellent science the journal publishes is available to the widest possible audience using the very best new developments in communication technology. We have all noted the rapidity with which the publishing world has embraced systems such as online content delivery and manuscript handling, RSS feeds and publication alerts, and the extent to which we as scientists can now use web-based services to search for papers and share links to these. The result for authors and readers alike has been a substantial improvement in the delivery and quality of academic journals. Such technologies do, however, require substantial initial investment, and for scientific societies such as IAHR the costs of ‘going it alone’ in this new publishing world are increasingly prohibitive. For this reason, IAHR last year made a fundamental decision to look for a partner to assist with the publication of its journals, and after an exhaustive search selected Taylor & Francis. Taylor & Francis has over two centuries of experience in publishing, and has grown rapidly over the last two decades to become a leading international academic publisher. Operating globally, the Taylor & Francis Group publishes more than 1500 journals and around 1800 new books each year, with a books backlist in excess of 20,000 specialist titles. Moreover, Taylor & Francis has a long and successful history of co-publication of scientific society journals, and of meeting the aspirations of organisations like IAHR. Against this background the Editorial Board are confident that, with Taylor & Francis’ help, the International Journal of River Basin Management now has the necessary platform to continue its already rapid progress.
For readers the benefits will be much wider availability of the journal, as it will increasingly be included in the ‘bundles’ of publications that institutional libraries subscribe to. A new website (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/TRBM) and online access delivered through Taylor & Francis’ state-of-the-art web platform will also enhance the reader's experience of the journal. The look and feel of the journal will remain the same, although we have updated the cover photo to mark the beginning of the new arrangements. Contributing authors and reviewers will already have experienced the benefits of Taylor & Francis’ involvement with the roll out in autumn 2009 of an electronic manuscript handling system. This uses the Manuscript Central software (see http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrbm) and simplifies considerably the submission, review and tracking of papers. Authors will also ultimately benefit from the wider distribution of the journal as this will increase the visibility of their published work, and therefore citation rates. Lastly, for IAHR the benefits are the investment in the journal being made by Taylor & Francis and the (hopefully) increased revenues that will result over the medium term. In turn, these funds can be used to support other areas of IAHR's activity for the benefit of all members. As an editorial team we are enthusiastic about the changes currently under way and look forward to a new and exciting chapter in the history of the journal.