Introducing <i>WIREs Forensic Science</i>: A new resource for the community

The Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs) series, first launched in 2009, was envisioned to combine the most powerful features of encyclopedic reference works and review journals in an innovative online format. The idea was to publish invited review and opinion articles in standard journal volumes and issues and populate an updating encyclopedia that covered an interdisciplinary but collaborative set of fields to assist researchers, educators and students, policymakers, and other interested readers in learning about allied research areas. The end goal was to be both cutting edge and authoritative, both searchable in the Web of Science and having the ability to browse by topic and subtopic. Eleven successful WIREs titles are now in publication in areas as diverse as nanomedicine, climate change, and data mining. All are interdisciplinary at different levels, with some bridging life, physical, health, and social sciences. In 2010, the American Publishers Awards for Professional & Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Awards) named WIREs a joint winner of the 2009 R.R. Hawkins Award, the association's top prize, established in 1976 to recognize outstanding scholarly works in all disciplines of the arts and sciences (https://proseawards.com/winners/2009-award-winners). In 2018, all titles became signatories of the Center for Open Science's Transparency and Openness Promotion guidelines (https://cos.io/our-services/top-guidelines). To kick off the WIREs series’ second decade, we are pleased to launch the 12th title: WIREs Forensic Science. Forensic science is a natural fit for the WIREs program, and the new publication will focus on the interdisciplinary nature of the subject area, including but not limited to anthropology, chemistry, biology, medicine, crime scene investigation, digital sciences, and jurisprudence. We aim to contribute to knowledge and skills related to the use of science and technology in law enforcement, particularly as evidence in the trial process, the evaluation of evidence, standards of practice, and in forming legislation or policy. We hope that WIREs Forensic Science becomes an invaluable resource for forensic scientists, law enforcement agencies, toxicologists, pharmacists, biochemists, microbiologists, organic chemists, separation scientists, employers operating drug screening programs, homeland security agencies, policymakers in industry and government, and clinical physicians including psychiatrists. We especially want to help these people talk to and understand each other, such as a forensic geneticist who wants to learn about toxicology or a prosecutor who needs information on forensic chemistry. To work toward this goal, we have established an outstanding team of editors, all esteemed contributors to their communities and all of whom understand the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in forensic science. They have dissected a broad table of contents into navigable subtopics and have already started assembling an outstanding list of authors. Our inaugural issue covers hair toxicology, the Internet of Things, nucleic acid sequencing, and a primer to guide forensic service providers to improve the quality of pretrial and trial presentation of forensic evidence. All article topics and authors are selected and invited by the editorial board. The WIREs model serves readers at different levels with a variety of article types, including Opinions, Overviews, standard Advanced Reviews, and Software Focus. In addition, part of the encyclopedic aspect of WIREs is the ability for authors to update their articles to include new findings or references. This will keep the publication up to date as opposed to an encyclopedia that can only publish new editions every few years. We hope that WIREs Forensic Science becomes an indispensable resource for the community. Interested readers can sign up for article alert emails by registering for or signing into Wiley Online Library at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doUpdateAlertSettings?action=addJournal&journalCode=25739468.