The nomination as an editor for a scientific journal is certainly a public recognition of the scientific reputation of a person. But in return for the honour, one has to make a strong commitment to serve for the journal in various respects, such as handling manuscripts, choosing referees, evaluating the papers and the referee reports, communicating with authors, settling the various cases of disagreement and disconsent between authors and referees. This takes time, but requires also a profound knowledge about the recent achievements in the area, upcoming trends, etc.

The situation becomes even more demanding for the editor-in-chief who in addition also takes responsibility for the journal's scientific profile and attractiveness to authors, its further development and standing in the competitive market of scientific publications.

On the other hand, it is great a opportunity to shape the future of such a journal, by addressing the right trends at the right time, by attracting the right authors, and by making the journal known for its distinct profile and quality. We are very happy to have such different opportunities as listed below.

The particular emphasis is on journals with a strong interdisciplinary profile, which allow researchers with different scientific background to publish in the same journal for the mutual benefit of the contributing areas. The impact of such a `bridge' cannot be simply measured in numbers such as the impact factor, rather the value is seen in fostering the collaboration of a multidisciplinary community.

Publisher World Scientific, Singapore

Website http://www.worldscinet.com/acs/

The journal ACS is a classic in the area of complex systems research. It was established in 1997, and Frank Schweitzer was an editor of ACS since the very beginning. He became the editor-in-chief of ACS in the end of 2006 and took responsibility for a major overhaul of the journal. Changes involved a complete new editorial board of 20 editors, a refined aims and scope, a faster publishing schedule and, after all, a completely new cover layout.

Ever since, ACS has grown both in visibility and reputation and is now considered a major outlet for truely interdisciplinary research. Different from EPJ-B, which is still a physics journal, ACS, in addition to physics and mathematics, also covers computer sciences, biological systems, social and economic systems, and traffic and environmental systems. ACS is published as a bi-monthly journal, the 6 issues contain more than 50 papers per year. Currently, ACS receives about 160 submissions per year, with an acceptance rate of about 30 percent.

Notably, ACS publishes topical sections on hot interdisciplinary topics such as `Language Dynamics' or `Artificial Life', but also topical issues from major conferences in the area of complex systems research. For example, the European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS) and the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) publish topical issues in ACS on a regular basis.