Message from the Editor
Authors: Thomas Paul 
Published: December 2008

The end of 2008 cannot pass without remarking that the economic news has repeatedly strengthened the case for nuclear fusion; not perhaps to solve the immediate crises but to offer long-term security of energy supply. Although temporary, the passage of the price of oil through $100 per barrel is a portent of things to come and should bolster our collective determination to develop nuclear fusion into a viable energy source. It is with great pride, therefore, that I can highlight the contributions that the Nuclear Fusion journal has made to the research programme and the consolidation of its position as the lead journal in the field.
Of course, the journal would be nothing without its authors and referees and I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to them all for their work in 2008 and look forward to a continuing, successful collaboration in 2009.

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 loyal referees over the past year a personal subscription to Nuclear Fusion with electronic access for one year, free of charge.
To select the top referees we have adopted the criterion that a researcher should have acted as a referee or adjudicator for at least two different manuscripts during the period from November 2007 to November 2008 and provided particularly detailed advice to the authors. We have excluded our Board members and those referees who were already listed in the last four years.
According to our records the following people met this criterion. Congratulations and many, many thanks!

T. Hino (Hokkaido University, Japan)

M. Sugihara (ITER Cadarache, France)

M. Dreval (Saskatchewan University, Canada)

M. Fenstermacher (General Atomics, USA)

V.S. Marchenko (Institute for Nuclear Research, Ukraine)

G.V. Pereverzev (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, Germany)

V. Philipps (Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany)

S. Zweben (Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, USA)

Y. Hirano (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)

Y. Takase (Tokyo University, Japan)

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 2008. Our thanks to them!

Authors

The winner of the 2007 award was Clemente Angioni for the paper entitled `Density response to central electron heating: theoretical investigations and experimental observations in ASDEX Upgrade' (Nucl. Fusion
44 8277–845).
The winner of the 2008 Nuclear Fusion award is Todd Evans et al for the paper `Suppression of large edge localized modes with edge resonant magnetic fields in high confinement DIII-D plasmas' (Nucl. Fusion
45 595–607).
The awards were presented by the IAEA Deputy Director General, Werner Burkart, and the Chairman of the Board of Editors, Mitsuru Kikuchi, on 16 October 2008 at the 22nd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Given the topicality of these papers for the ITER design, it is a matter of pride to the journal that the work should be published in Nuclear Fusion.

Reviews

Like many who have worked for a long time in the field, I still make use of Nuclear Fusion Reviews that go back 20 or 30 years. It is particularly useful, therefore, that the Board of Editors has been working to re-activate the review programme. The first fruits will appear in this issue, in the form of `A review of zonal flow experiments', by Akihide Fujisawa. The special procedures for Reviews should be noted: most specifically that they should normally be commissioned by the Board of Editors. However, not only is the Board of Editors working on a programme but I am sure that they would be pleased to consider suggestions for review subjects.

Letters

The reputation of Nuclear Fusion is based on high quality full length articles. However, in the words of the journal home page, `Nuclear Fusion welcomes Letters as a means to quickly communicate new, maybe preliminary, results which make a significant advancement of the knowledge in the field. Letters should be comprehensive and short, aiming for four printed pages including figures.' I would like to take the opportunity to reiterate this message and to say that, as Editor, I would welcome the submission of high quality Letters.

Publishing procedures

In-house, Nuclear Fusion's publishing procedures are subject to continuous scrutiny for potential improvements. Of particular note from 2008 are faster than ever peer review and publishing times that have been achieved despite the very rigorous processing to which submissions are subject. Readers may have noticed the implementation of the new article numbering system, announced by the Publisher, Yasmin McGlashan in 2008 Nucl. Fusion
48 010101. This new scheme gives us more flexibilty and has led to faster online publication.

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, Katja, Sophy, Sarah, Rachael and Yasmin for the support that they have given to me, the authors and the referees.

Season's Greetings

I would like to wish our readers, authors, referees and Board of Editors a successful and happy 2009 and thank them for their contributions to Nuclear Fusion in 2008.