Message from the Editor
Authors: Thomas Paul 
Published: December 2011

At the time of writing, the construction of ITER is making, quite literally, visible progress; buildings have gone up, the tokamak pit has been equipped with the seismic pads and pylons have been put in place for the high tension input to the power supplies. Most of the main procurement arrangements have been let and we will see an increasing volume of deliveries to the ITER site over the coming years. In addition, the National Ignition Facility has started full operation and will undoubtedly see important results coming from it in 2012. These projects are important reminders of what a monumental endeavour we are all engaged in and the potential of nuclear fusion to improve the long-term condition of the human race.

We can be proud, therefore, that the Nuclear Fusion journal makes such an important contribution to controlled fusion programmes and is maintaining its position as the leading journal in the field. More than 350 articles are submitted each year from over 40 countries. Nuclear Fusion continues to be the most highly cited journal in the field, with an impact factor of 3.303, as listed in the ISI 2010 Science Citation Index.

The journal depends on its authors and referees for its success and so I would like to thank them all for their hard work in 2011, which should maintain the level of readership and the citation indices for years to come. I sincerely hope that 2012 will be as good.

Refereeing

The Nuclear Fusion editorial office understands how much effort is required of our referees. The Editorial Board decided that an expression of thanks to our most loyal referees is appropriate and so, since January 2005, we have been offering the top ten most active referees over the past year a personal subscription to Nuclear Fusion with electronic access for one year, free of charge. This year, three of the top referees have reviewed five manuscripts in the period November 2010 to November 2011 and provided excellent advice to the authors. We have excluded our Board Members, Guest Editors of special editions and those referees who were already listed in the last years. The following people have been selected:

Marina Becoulet, CEA Cadarache, France

Russell Doerner, University of California - San Diego, USA

Emiliano Fable, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, Germany

Akihide Fujisawa, Kyushi University, Japan

Gerardo Giruzzi, CEA Cadarache, France

Grigory Kagan, LANL, USA

Morten Lennholm, CCFE, UK

Akinobu Matsuyama, NIFS, Japan

Peter Stangeby, University of Toronto, Canada

Leonid Zakharov, PPPL, USA

In addition, there is a group of several hundred referees who have helped us in the past year to maintain the high scientific standard of Nuclear Fusion. At the end of this issue we give the full list of all referees for 2011. Our thanks to them!

Authors

The winner of the 2011 Nuclear Fusion Award is H. Urano, for the paper 'Dimensionless parameter dependence of H-mode pedestal width using hydrogen and deuterium plasmas in JT-60U' (Nucl. Fusion

48 045008). The award was presented at the Plasma Conference 2011 (Joint meeting of 28th JSPF Annual Meeting, The 29th Symposium on Plasma Processing, and Division of Plasma Physics, 2011 Autumn Meeting of The Physical Society of Japan). This is the sixth year that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has awarded an annual prize to honour exceptional work published in Nuclear Fusion. IOP Publishing has generously made a contribution of $2500 to the award.

The Nuclear Fusion Electronic Archive

The journal's electronic archive has been online since the beginning of the year. The archive has been a roaring success and has contributed to the nearly 300 000 downloads of journal papers in 2011. The archive can be accessed via http://iopscience.iop.org/0029-5515/page/Archive. It has direct links to 16 landmark papers, from authors such as Artsimovich and Mercier.

The Nuclear Fusion office and IOP Publishing

Just as the journal depends on the authors and referees, so its success is also due to the tireless and largely unsung efforts of the Nuclear Fusion office in Vienna and IOP Publishing in Bristol. I would like to express my personal thanks to Maria Bergamini-Roedler, Katja Haslinger, Stephanie Kent, Sophy Le Masurier, Yasmin McGlashan, Sarah Ryder and Dina Yarullina for the support that they have given to me, the authors and the referees.

Maria Bergamini-Roedler retired from the journal after many years of capital service to the Nuclear Fusion journal. Her attachment to the journal and the people associated with it will be sorely missed. I am sure that the readership will join me in wishing her many years of happy retirement, pursuing her many activities.

Season's greetings

I would like to wish our readers, authors, referees and Board of Editors the best for 2012 and thank them for all their contributions to Nuclear Fusion in 2011.