The Last (Printed) Page

As volume 74 closes, we mark the last print issue of Plant Pathology. The first issue was published on 27 March 1952, by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and Her Majesty's Stationary Office (HMSO). This original issue was just 36 pages at the price of 4 shillings (£0.20) per issue, with a print run of 1000 copies. The journal continued from 1982 in the hands of the (newly created) British Society for Plant Pathology and Blackwell Scientific Publications. Today, we are proud that our circulation has grown to around 12,000 institutions (8000 with access by licence or subscription and about 4000 with low-cost or free access in developing world institutions). Our latest volume contains as many pages as the combined total for the first 17 volumes. Plant pathology is clearly a dynamic and important field to be working in! Online publication first started in 2007. After printing over 56,000 pages, our next volume, no. 75, will be online only under a ‘continuous publication’ model. This will mean a faster time from acceptance to publication (no more waiting in a queue for the print run for one of the nine issues in the year) and a change from page numbers to article numbers. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the hard work of all our Editorial Board members, technical readers and production team and also the efforts of all the anonymous reviewers that we have used during the past years. We thank them all for their invaluable contributions and for helping to maintain the standards and continued success of the Journal.