Transition

Four years ago, in October 2014 I started my journey as the Head of the journal Aviation Psychology and Applied Human Factors. The journal was launched in 2011 and led by Don Harris until 2014, with the support of the European Association for Aviation Psychology (EAAP) and the Australian Aviation Psychology Association (AAvPA).

This is the last issue edited by me and my Associate Editors: Cristina Albuquerque, André Droog, Hinnerk Eißfeldt, Harald Kolrep, Monica Martinussen, Michaela Schwarz, and Matthew Thomas. I am proud to look back at all the achievements we have accomplished in the past 4 years: In 2015, we introduced the annual Best Paper Award that has already been selected 3 times by the Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editors. The first authors of the awarded papers were invited to present their research keynote speeches at the conferences of the EAAP in 2016 and 2018. We managed to attract a record number of high-quality manuscripts and our published articles are well cited in the scientific community. In addition to these continuous improvements, the journal and its editors adhered to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) standards (http://publicationethics.org). As an important step to increase transparency, we implemented the online editorial system Editorial Manager (http://www.editorialmanager.com/apahf) in 2018: Authors, reviewers, managing editors, and editors, as well as the production staff at Hogrefe Publishing, are now using the platform to further improve the high-quality standards of the journal. Finally, we continuously enriched the content of the News Section by publishing book reviews and reports of scientific meetings.

These 4 years as Editor-in-Chief of the journal were sometimes challenging and demanding, but I am proud that we could shape the editorial work in the manner as I have envisioned it. I enjoyed communicating with the researchers and practitioners in the field, feeling the pulse of research front runners worldwide, and seeing how manuscripts develop in the peer-review process. I am happy that my editorial team and I can finally say that we made a difference. I experienced the great solidarity, passion for science and sense of duty that keeps the peer-review system alive, and I have a profound respect for all the people that participate in it on a purely voluntary basis.

I use this opportunity to thank my Associate Editors for their professional engagement and competent editorial work during the past 4 years. Hogrefe Publishing was a resourceful partner during all these years and I thank especially Robert Dimbleby, Regina Pinks-Freybott, and Juliane Munson for our fruitful collaboration. Special thanks to the members of the Editorial Board and many anonymous reviewers for their review work. I also thank the authors for submitting their manuscripts and making the selection of manuscripts extremely competitive. Last but not least I gratefully acknowledge the European Association for Aviation Psychology and the Australian Aviation Psychology Association for their support of the journal.

We are happy to announce that we won Harald Kolrep for the role as the new Editor-in-Chief, who started in October 2018. He is a Professor at the HMKW University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Management in Berlin, Germany, having experiences from his position as an Associate Editor of the journal for 8 years. I wish Harald Kolrep and his Editorial Team all the best and I am sure that they will do a great work to master the new challenges and shape the future of Aviation Psychology and Applied Human Factors in a positive manner.