The Australian Ceramic Society was incorporated in 1964, and the first editors of the journal were Dr K.D. Reeve and other initiating members. Since then, we have had a number of improvements in both style and contents and the journal was published under the society’s banner, Pergamon Press, and later by Trans Tech publishing group until the year 2000 when we took over. During the years, we have had a number of guest editors and editors-in-chief, namely Dr. Keith Reeve and Mr. Richard Bowman under which the journal reached to a good-standard scientific journal in the ceramic field, covering clay technologies and glass and advanced ceramics and accepting papers in both scientific and engineering aspects.

There were ups and downs during the years, and the Austceram meeting papers saved face by supplying the number of papers required. As stated above, in the Austceram 2000 meeting, Prof. Ben-Nissan and Dr. Lou Vance were volunteered by our Mr. David Taylor who was the president at that time to take over the co-editing and publishing of the journal which opened a new phase in size and more colourful journal.

During the last 16 years, we have moved from a 6 to 10 papers a year to over 100 papers submitted this year, not including Austceram papers. The papers are received from various regions of the world, and we are now a fully international ceramic journal serving mainly Australia and Asian countries. A new impact factor was assigned 3 years ago and showed also an excellent increase from 0.0 to 0.36, 0.66 and now this year to 0.96. In July 2017, we will get our new impact factor and let us hope that it will be higher than the previous ones.

Last year, we were approached by the Springer company followed by preliminary meetings with Dr. Ramesh Premnath. At a later stage, Prof. Christopher Berndt and Mr. Brian Lynch as presidents of the society at that time moved ahead with the negotiations and we reached an agreement on publications and the future of the journal.

We feel the new look and the editorial submission online method will be appropriate and help our contributing authors. New DOI numbers will allow early online publication, and the refereeing process will be accelerated. With these improvements, we hope to become a more internationally recognised journal and assist scientists and engineers around our region.

We could not have done this without help of a number of individuals including the editorial board but specifically one that shaped the journal and helped day and night to finish the issues on time. He is our associate editor Dr. Innocent Macha, and we both would like to thank him for all of his efforts during the years that he was in Australia.

For our editorial board members and reviewers and the authors that contributed during the last 16 years, we both thank you for your support, efforts and contributions that brought the journal to this level.

We are privileged to have you given us this trust to go ahead with the work and succeed to bring the journal to the level it is. We have come long way since our beginning 53 years ago, and we hope that this new approach with the Springer Nature Group will elevate us to a better and brighter future.

We thank you all.

Prof. Besim Ben-Nissan and Dr Lou Vance

Co-Editors-in-Chief

The Journal of the Australian Ceramic Society