Dear Reader,

We are looking forward to seeing many of you very soon at our upcoming annual IMWA meeting in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA, which I have been helping to organize. Although it is too early to be sure, we anticipate that this will be one of the largest mine water conferences in at least the last decade. Please remember to renew your IMWA membership before you register so that you get the member’s discount. Also, please consider bringing your family as we have arranged a nice accompanying persons’ program for them as well (www.IMWA2024.info/conference-details/accompanying-persons-programme). And lest I forget, please consider becoming a sponsor, an exhibitor or both. Generally, sponsors have the option, if they wish, to also be an exhibitor without paying extra for that option. For more details on both options, please go to www.IMWA2024.info/sponsors-and-exhibitors. And if you are planning to be an exhibitor, please reach out to Ben Faulkner at benbfaulkner@gmail.com so that he can help you decide which location you wish.

We also want to alert you about an upcoming special issue centered on: “Striking a Balance between Mineral Mining and Water Resource Protection in Ecologically Fragile Areas.” It is being organized by two of our associate editors, Prof. Yifan Zeng (our newest associate editor) and Dr. Wanfang Zhou. They are looking for more manuscripts on this topic from all around the world. If your research fits into this niche, please submit a manuscript after consulting our website (www.IMWA.info/notes-for-contributors.html). If you have any questions, please email them to our guest editors for this issue at: zengyifan_1011@sina.com and zhou_wanfang@yahoo.com.

I have already mentioned our newest associate editor. Unfortunately, I must add that Dyllon Randall, who has been a wonderful associate editor for nine years now, is stepping down from that role. It is funny—I still remember first meeting him at an IMWA meeting while he was still a graduate student (and where he was awarded the prize for best student presentation). Since then, he became a professor at the University of Cape Town, joined our editorial staff, and now has accumulated so many administrative responsibilities that he feels he must step away from being an editor. So, if you are interested in joining our team of volunteer editors, we could use someone from Africa to take Dyllon’s place. And while we are at it, the journal would also benefit from having someone from South America. Please email me if you have an interest in joining our team and want to learn more about what is involved.

Next, as has become a tradition for our March issue, we thank and recognize the 137 individuals who reviewed papers for us during 2023. On behalf of the entire editorial team and all of the authors, I thank all of those listed below for taking the time to provide good constructive criticism. We depend on your input to help the authors improve their manuscripts and to help us decide which submissions should be published. If you don’t see your name on this list, and you would like to help, please go to our journal’s web site (www.IMWA.info/em) and make sure that your areas of expertise are clearly identified, as we use those to select our reviewers. This enables us to select manuscripts for you to review that you may find very interesting. If your areas of expertise are described and you have not yet been asked, just send us an email and we will make sure that you receive an opportunity to help in 2024.

Thanks to Ahmed Abdelaal, Philip Adene, Azadeh Agah, Mohammad Arzoo Ansari, David Arcos, Hasan Arslanoglu, Gholamreza Asadollahfardi, Andres Bazaine, Hassan Benfetta, Arkoprovo Biswas, Jean-Francois Blais, Bo Li, Michael Borowitzka, Joseph Bwapwa, Ian Callow, Alejandro Carrillo Chavez, Tao Chen, Ronan Courtney, Andy Davis, Akram Deiminiat, Luis Carlos Díaz, Ludo Diels, Dimitris Dimitrakopoulos, Craig Divine, Dong Shuning, Fan Gangwei, Cui Feng, Francisco Jesus Fernandez Morales, Roberto Flores Jimenez, Philippe Gombert, Ruth Griffiths, Pingye Guo, Jose Gregorio Gutierrez-Chacón, John Harman, He Yujiang, Amy Hudson, Jérôme Jacob, Hadi Jafari, Henning Jasnowski-Peters, Soren Jensen, Chunlu Jiang, Raymond Johnson, David Richard Jones, Candace Kairies-Beatty, Jackson Kawala, Duk-Min Kim, Lisa Kirk, Jair Koppe, Thomas Lachmar, Bruno Lemiere, Bo Li, Mark Lund, Abdelkabir Maqsoud, Broder Merkel, Ricardo Millán Becerro, Ferenc Moricz, Szabolcs Muráth, Farrokh Nadim, Ning Jianguo, Niu Xiaohong, Joscha Opitz, Natalia Orekhova, Sanjit Kumar Pal, Eric Perry, Gregor Petkovsek, Anita Punia, Matthew Purvance, Wei Qiao, Asif Qureshi, Oscar Restrepo Baena, E. Santofimia, Valerie Schoepfer, Martin Schultze, Robert Seal, Peter Sottnik, William Strosnider, Jacek Szczepinski, David Tait, Brent Usher, Inaki Vadillo, Marcello Veiga, Tony Wahl, Katherine Walton-Day, Craig Wickham, Mark Williamson, Xu Ke, Yin Huiyong, Yin Shangxian, Abdulhalim Zaryab, and Paul Ziemkiewicz, who each reviewed one paper. Farshad Alijani, An Pengtao, Tim Aubel, Elke Bozau, Bruno Bussière, Chen Shi, Chen Luwang, Sarah Doyle, Lucila Dunnington, Johnbosco Egbueri, Rodrigo Embile Jr., Gwendelyn Geidel, Andrew Hursthouse, Andrew Johnstone, Yaser Kianinia, Jeff Langman, Denise Levitan, Liu Shiliang, Liu Zhaoxing, Dan Ma, Raul Mollehuara Canales, Kevin Myers, Teresa Pi-Puig, Walter Pohl, Eduardo Ruiz, Shen Jianjun, Douglas B. Sims, Sui Wanghua, Javad Tavakoli, Eleni Vassiliou, and Miran Veselic each reviewed two papers. Carlos del Alonso, Ben B. Faulkner, Cleber Gomes, Brandon Holzbauer-Schweitzer, Nural Kuyucak, Li Peiyue, Liu Weitao, Kevin Morin, Kym Morton, and Jorge Zafra each reviewed three papers. Heidi Cossey, Duan Hongyu, Liu, and Zaibin Liu each reviewed four papers, while Zhen Guang and Stephanie Somot each reviewed five. Finally, Liliana Lefticariu gets special honors—she reviewed six papers for us during this past year.

In addition to all of these reviewers, we also thank our authors, without which there would be no journal, and you, our dedicated readers, without whom there would be no reason for this journal to exist. I, and the rest of the editorial team, are grateful for your interest and participation in this journal and the IMWA.

Best Regards,

Bob Kleinmann, PhD; Editor-in-Chief

editor@MWEN.info