With this issue, Environmental Practice and the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) begin a new relationship with Cambridge University Press as our publisher. We are delighted to be part of the Cambridge collection of journals and we believe that NAEP members and other subscribers will receive better benefits from our new arrangements.

Two features will enhance Environmental Practice. First, Cambridge Press has an active presence on the Web that will benefit this journal. Not only will NAEP members continue to receive their issues in the paper format, they will also be able to access the material via the Web. This extra electronic mode of access will enable better and easier access to material in the journal.

Second, Environmental Practice, as part of the Cambridge journals, will be in an illustrious company of other environmental and natural resource journals. For example, Cambridge Press also publishes Animal Conservation; Biological Reviews; Environment and Development Economics; Environmental Conservation; Journal of Tropical Ecology; Oryx, the International Journal of Conservation; and Systematics and Biodiversity; each of which complements the materials in Environmental Practice, which in turn complement them.

In the short term, this arrangement will not much affect NAEP members, but in the long run it will. Journals are now frequently purchased by libraries in “bundles,” which means that we expect an increase in the library subscriptions to Environmental Practice. More exposure will therefore follow for materials published in Environmental Practice, which over time will bring benefits to NAEP as an organization and to each of its members. The online presence of Environmental Practice in libraries will further enrich the circulation potential for articles published here.

Our new relationship with Cambridge University Press also allows us to pause and take stock of what has been accomplished since Environmental Practice's inception in 1999. At that time, NAEP was just coming out of a reorganizing phase and we had not regularly published our journal, The Environmental Professional, for a number of years.

Environmental Practice was a new venture with new formats and an expanded array of the types of materials needed. We wanted to sharply increase the focus on materials relevant to the work of environmental professional practitioners. Thus in our peer-reviewed materials, we created the “Commentary” and “Environmental Review” to supplement the previous focus on “Research Articles.” Our hope was that these new categories would open up additional possibilities for professionals outside of academic settings to publish the results of their work.

We have been gratified by the responses over the past six years. In that time, we have published 34 Commentaries, 15 Environmental Reviews, and 26 Research Articles, with an additional 30 refereed articles coming from recent special issues on brownfields, environmental conflict resolution, NEPA, and mercury. The corresponding authors of these 105 peer-reviewed pieces have included 20 consultants, 16 agency people, and 62 academics. We're very proud of the diversity of authors who have published with us and we hope that the materials have been of interest and use to our readers.

We also have made an energetic attempt at gathering interesting News and Information materials. These impart wisdom and analysis on important topics, but they are not in the format for peer review. Without the News and Information section, this kind of material would seldom, if ever, be shared with a wider audience, which we think would be a shame for the profession. In addition, we're proud of the fact that we have published 97 book reviews in the past half-dozen years.

At this point, it's appropriate to thank six specific groups of people, each of whom did more than we to make Environmental Practice happen. First, our publishers made Environmental Practice a physical reality. Kirk Jensen, once with Oxford University Press and now with Cambridge University Press, helped forge the relationship between NAEP and the two presses. Oxford Press, Environmental Practice's first publisher, was a very cordial partner for six years. We thank them for their many contributions, including the design of the journal.

Second, the Board of Directors of NAEP, representing the membership, has continually been supportive both morally and financially. We continue to hope that our efforts repay the trust they have shown in this journal and that it serves well the professionals in NAEP.

Third, we have been blessed with a talented and hardworking group of reviewers for our submitted papers. Only the editorial staff and manuscript authors see the enormously hard work that goes into the peer-review process. Suffice it to say that we know the reviewers have substantially improved the quality of what appears in Environmental Practice and that we could not have done much of anything without them.

Fourth, we have had the good fortune to work with an excellent, newly expanded Advisory Board (many of whom were previously Contributing Editors). Journals depend on these sorts of people, and we feel particularly fortunate to have obtained the services of our Advisory Board, one that includes professionals from all walks of environmental practice.

Fifth, our existence ultimately depends on our readership, the core of which is made up of NAEP members, although there are many others who know of Environmental Practice through their co-workers or places of business, their libraries, or the Web. These readers often give valuable encouragement and feedback, which we continue to encourage.

Finally, our thanks are due to those who are truly the most indispensable: the authors. Editors, of course, actually do very little writing in the journal. What we do is work with authors, help get them suggestions for improvement, and then select the pieces that are ready for publication. But it is the authors who actually “write the journal.” We have enjoyed working with all of them and our hats are off to these people who make Environmental Practice happen.

We now look forward to a productive relationship with Cambridge University Press. We also encourage all NAEP members to see Environmental Practice as their journal and as a repository for growing professional wisdom and skill in environmental work. May the next six years be as fruitful as the past six.