Welcome to the first issue of a new volume with, hopefully, something that will interest each one of our ever increasing number of readers. The beginning of a new volume is not only a time to look forward but also an opportune time to look at the past. The statistics for the number of “hits” over the past two years certainly illustrates both the general interest in the material published in AJCEB and also the advantages of the Open Access format. For Volume 10 (2010) the average number of “hits” per paper is 839 (median = 730), ranging from a low of 279 to an impressive 3169. For Volume 11, the figures show that although the various issues have not been around for that long, the average is still 322 hits starting from 582 for issue No. 1 and falling to 252 for No. 4.   

I also have the pleasure of announcing that AJCEB will soon become a parent. We are starting a separate AJCEB Conference Series. So far we have the first two issues of the first volume lined up and No. 1 will probably be published before the middle of the year. We are currently looking at some of the practical issues which may take some time to resolve, given the idiosyncrasies of the manuscript central system and the risk that we will have another malfunction like we had after the routine maintenance last month when the system retaliated and locked us out for almost a week. It is a very sensitive creation.

The feature article we ran in Vol 12; No.  4 on the industry after the GFC and the Euro crisis seems to have generated a great deal of interest and we will try to make this kind of discussion a regular feature of the journal. Over the next month or so we will be nominating people to volunteer for participation in a panel with the aim of enlightening us with their views on the issues of the day. We will also take genuine volunteers.   

We also need volunteers, a great number of them, for reviewing submissions to the journal. With a rejection rate of 70 per cent, and a reviewer response rate of 50 per cent, each published paper uses up the equivalent of some 20 reviewers. Hence, if you think your judgement will help in moving the discipline forward in the right direction, please contact me. If you have already enrolled as a reviewer but have not nominated areas of interest, please edit your entry to ensure you get stuff you are interested in. There is one requirement: if you get a request, please respond – accept or decline – within a few days and if you agree to do the review, please complete it within three weeks. It is essential for the quick processing I think the authors deserve. Here I would like to thank all the dedicated people who have made it possible to publish or reject every paper within six months of submission.