New era in Silva Fennica started by the end of last year when the long time Editor-in-chief Eeva Korpilahti retired. Here I want to express my warmest gratitude to Eeva for her scientifically fruitful and efficient work. Many major changes in Silva Fennica took place during her period as Editor-in-chief and she successfully solved all these challenges. As a results of Eeva’s work, Silva Fennica is graded in the top 20% of forest science journals according to the CiteScore index of Scopus.

I will shortly introduce myself. My primary position is the professor of forest mensuration science at the University of Eastern Finland. Related to earlier working experience I have, for example, also worked as a visiting professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. My own research work is most related to forest inventory and growth and yield modeling, emphasising e.g., forest structure and diameter distributions. Last 15 years I have been working mainly with airborne laser scanning data.

My own history in scientific publishing started like for most scientists. I started with the studies included in my doctoral thesis. Approximately at the time of the dissertation defense, I was also asked to conduct my first peer-review. During those times, the publication process was rather slow including manuscripts sent by mail. The first decade of the 21st century was a highly active period in my own personal research work and I also wrote numerous review statements. During the 2010’s, my main editorial role has changed from a reviewer to an associate editor, a guest editor, a book editor and a member of the editorial board in several international journals. Also in scientific work, my role has changed to a senior co-author and supervisor of doctoral thesis.

Another major change in Silva Fennica in the turn of the year is the new organization of Editors and the Editorial Board. Now we have a structure where, in addition to Editor-in-chief, Managing Editor, and Associate Editor for Biometry and Methods, we have six Subject Editors who take care of the review process and make recommendations on the manuscripts. These Subject Editors represent areas of Forest Ecology, Silviculture and Management, Forest Management Planning and Inventory, Forest Economics and Policy, Logistics and Forest Engineering, and Wood Material Science. And last but not least, we have now a new Editorial Board consisting of over 30 international scientists. All these persons are well-known and respected experts in their own research areas.

Silva Fennica is a pioneer in open access publishing. We will continue to further develop the journal towards principles of open science, e.g., transparency in scientific work. Silva Fennica is also widely internationally networked being, e.g., a member of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), while the Editors are members of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), to mention a few.

First issue of Silva Fennica’s volume 53 has just been published. As usual, it includes interesting and high quality scientific papers from the different areas of forest sciences. All these papers have passed high level scientific peer-review process. I hope you will enjoy reading them.

I look forward to the future of Silva Fennica.

Matti Maltamo, Editor-in-chief