The Editorial Board of Environment Systems and Decisions is pleased to celebrate an important milestone in the journal’s history–ten full years in print. The journal’s first issue was published in 2013, and has published quarterly issues ever since, with this being our forty-first issue. Founded in 1981, Environment Systems and Decisions has published research, review, and perspective articles at the intersection of systems engineering, decision making, and risk analysis.

Over the last ten years, a total of 443 articles have been published in the journal. These papers have covered a diverse array of topics, from sustainability to cybersecurity. Figure 1 shows a word cloud based on the titles of the published papers from the last ten years. The words “decision” and “risk” were the most commonly used, with others like “systems”, “resilience”, “environmental”, and “management” also being common.

Fig. 1
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Common topics generated from paper titles, 2013–2022

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Environment Systems and Decisions has published eighteen special issues over the last ten years on a number of current and emerging topics, as well as selected papers from conference proceedings. Table 1 lists the special issues and their associated year and volume/issue.

Table 1 Special issues, 2013–2022
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As the journal has grown in readership, the bibliographic metrics have increased. Figure 2 shows the increase in Google Scholar’s h-5 index and h-5 median scores from 2016 to 2022. One can see a clear upward trend in metrics, which reflects the quality and impact of the research articles submitted to the journal.

Fig. 2
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Trends in Google Scholar h-5 Index and h-5 Median Scores

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The success of the journal could not have been achieved without the support from our Editorial Board members, authors, reviewers, and the staff at Springer, most especially Melinda Paul who has been instrumental in guiding the journal toward success since we started on this journey in 2013.

What is in store for Environment Systems & Decisions moving forward? First, the Editorial Board plans to introduce Area Editors starting in 2024. Tentatively, we plan to create these positions in the following areas: Engineering, Technology, Decision Analysis, Economics, Risk and Resilience, Environment, and Social Science. If you are interested, nominations are welcome and can be submitted to the Editors-in-Chief. Second, we plan to continue the Best Paper Award, which will be announced at the Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting in December 2023. Finally, we plan to continue publishing special issues on relevant topics. In particular, we currently plan a special issue on “Bridging the Gap Between Engineering and Public Health”, with submissions open until 31 July 2023.