The year 2009 was an especially remarkable one filled with lots of changes, which have caused much excitement.

After 20 years, the Production Department of Lexica Ltd. has finished copy-editing and type-setting the manuscripts, and these tasks have been transferred to one of the co-publishers, Springer. Along with these changes, we have been connected to a manuscript submission system called Editorial Manager, used by many internationally acknowledged Publishers, in our case Akademiai Kiado and Springer. As a result of the new procedure, we can accept papers exclusively through Editorial Manager, and all the necessary steps (the selection of peer reviewers, the peer reviewing process, contact with the authors, evaluation of the scientific contents of the manuscripts and the unified outlook which fits the Journal’s requirements) are executed in this system. Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited and type-set by Springer creating the page proofs and forwarding them to the authors for final approval. In other words, everything has entirely changed compared to the previous procedure. It was difficult both for us and for the authors.

The biggest change concerned the figures. Authors have to be aware of the fact that the figures are inserted into the text as received, and there is no possibility to change or correct anything in them as it happened before.

We have to admit that there was a considerable delay in the publishing of the electronic and paper journal due to the difficult transition period; however, the accepted manuscripts were published earlier as OnlineFirst papers.

We do hope that the advantages of the newly introduced system proved to be acknowledged because authors are continuously informed about the processes concerning their papers, so they can keep track of their articles.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the technical staff of Lexica Ltd. for their conscientious work during the past 20 years, which contributed to the world-wide acceptance of the Journal.

Last but not least, special thanks are due to the vast number of peer reviewers, who have volunteered their knowledge without any financial compensation and have devoted their activity to increase the scientific level of the Journal. It is reflected in the impact factor which has constantly been increasing with the latest reaching 1.63 for 2008.

Special thanks to the Guest Editors of the 2009 issues or chapters, namely, Profs. S. Mojumdar, D. Lőrinczy, L.-X. Sun, M. LaTorre, J. R. Matos, L. D. B. Machado, F. L. Fertonani, M. R. Tiné, P. Relkin, C. Bourgaux, S. Lesieur, M. Gahleitner and A. Danch.

I do hope a prosperous year is ahead of us.

Finally, I wish health and success in every aspect of your lives to all of you.