Peer review of manuscripts is an important process advancing science. Thoughtful and well-considered reviews can improve the quality of manuscripts substantially. Of course, this works only if the authors accept the intent of the comments. Albert Einstein published over 300 scientific papers, but most of his early seminal papers were published without anonymous peer review. In fact, the first time Einstein encountered anonymous peer review, he received a negative critique for a paper he submitted on gravitational waves to the Physical Review in 1936. Afterwards, he responded to the journal’s editor that he “had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident, I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.”Footnote 1

Today, peer review is the foundation of scientific publishing, and we at JASMS depend on the generous contributions of reviewers to help us maintain the highest of standards of our published manuscripts. Our most outstanding reviewers for 2013–2014 were Pierre Chaurand (Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada), David Dearden (Brigham Young University, Provo, UT), Peter O'Connor (University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom), and Kevin Schug (University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX). We thank Pierre, David, Peter, and Kevin for their considerable efforts and service to JASMS.

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Michael Gross with Pierre Chaurand (left) and Kevin Schug (right) (top row, photos courtesy of Sue Weintraub); David Dearden (left) and Peter O'Connor (right) (bottom row).

We thank the authors and readers for continuing to support JASMS. Send us a “JASMS selfie” to show us where you read the journal (see the Selfie Postcard for where the Editor and Managing Editor read JASMS in St. Louis). We’ll use the best pictures in future editorials, or perhaps on the journal cover. Our goal is that every time (and wherever) you read an issue of JASMS, you find the best mass spectrometry science in the articles.

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Joseph A. Loo Associate Editor, JASMS University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: jloo@chem.ucla.edu

Joyce L. Neff Managing Editor, JASMS Washington University St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: neff@wustl.edu