The Review of Regional Research has undergone a remarkable development in recent years. The number of submissions per year has risen to more than seven times the number of five years ago. Starting from this year, there is an official impact factor for the journal. The publication frequency will increase to four issues per year from 2024.

The success of the journal is tightly related to the people in the editorial team. We had changes in the team of Editors-in-Chief as well as in the Editorial Board this year. Therefore, this is the right time to thank the former Editors-in-Chief as well as all members of the Editorial Board, who helped improving the journal during the last years.

The Editorial Board members helped us with good strategic advice, organized successful special issues, acquired high quality submissions, and kindly acted as reviewers. We are very grateful to all of the former and remaining board members and we warmly welcome new Board members, who joined the journal this year.

We use this opportunity to express our deep gratitude to Georg Hirte, who stepped down from the editorial team after ten years of service to the journal. In his role as Editor-in-Chief, Georg Hirte successfully initialised and guided the process of internationalising the journal and improving its visibility and attractiveness. The whole advancement of the journal in the recent years is based on his original initiative and vision. Over the past decade, Georg Hirte formed the Review of Regional Research into an internationally established, well-ranked, interdisciplinary journal in the field of regional science. It is always a pleasure to work with him and we are very thankful for all the effort he put into the journal.

We wish to thank Mikaela Backman, who also left the editorial team this year. She joined us three years ago and brought in, besides the editorial work for the journal, ideas for the strategic development, network expansion, and relevant topics. One of the special issues she initiated is the issue at hand. The current issue on Population aging and regional science has been edited by Johannes Hagen, Orsa Kekezi and Ting Zhang. This special issue addresses how demographic transformation with aging population becomes a relevant development factor for firms, local communities, and regions.

We further take this opportunity to welcome the new members of the editorial team. Kristina Nyström and Artem Korzhenevych joined Thomas Brenner and Iris Wanzenböck as Editors-in-Chief of the Review of Regional Research in 2023.

Kristina Nyström is a professor of economics with focus on microeconomic drivers for technology development, innovation, economic growth and entrepreneurship at KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Her research focuses on firm dynamics and entrepreneurship in a regional context. A special area of interest is labour market dynamics related to entrepreneurship and displacement. A very current research topic is recruitment of competence in a regional perspective. Recruitment problems and skill mismatches are identified as some of the main current challenges facing the Swedish economy, and thus attracts a lot of attention. The Swedish regional labour market is currently changing with the ongoing large investments in the green transition. After decades of urbanization and migration from industrial areas, in particular in the Northern part of Sweden, some of these regions are now facing labour shortages and difficulties to recruit. In addition, significant investments in infrastructure, schools and housing are necessary to attract employees to these regions.

Artem Korzhenevych is a professor of environmental, urban and regional economics at the Dresden University of Technology and a research group head at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development. He has an established track record in regional and transportation economics research, particularly in the refinement and application of spatial computable general equilibrium models. His current research interests bridge the domains of spatial economics and sustainability transformations, encompassing topics such as ecological-economic modelling, urbanization dynamics, sustainable land use, climate change adaptation at the regional level, and sustainability-oriented innovation.