The ANZJS editors held their annual face-to-face meeting in Melbourne on 22-23 February. It was the first time the current editors have met face-to- face and as expected it proved a very useful forum for issues that are hard to resolve by phone and email. It also allowed us to meet with the ANZJS publishers, Wiley-Blackwell, to discuss journal-publisher links and issues, and to link up with Neville Bartlett who is a member of the ANZJS Management Committee (which consists of people from both the Statistical Society of Australia, SSAI, and NZSA). Another major benefit was that the meeting allowed us all to test out ScholarOne Manuscripts, the new electronic submission system for submitted manuscripts, which is being adopted by ANZJS in 2010, and which has the potential to greatly improve the current paper tracking system.

The meeting held over the two full days covered a range of issues. These are listed, and in some cases detailed below.

Wiley-Blackwell provided a useful summary of their annual report on ANZJS; there was discussion of marketing plans, impact factors (the 2009 impact factor is not yet available), copyright, the new system at Wiley-Blackwell for publication of supplementary material for published papers on web, the joint venture between SSAI and NZSA for publication of ANZJS (which is separate from SSAI and NZSA, and for which finances are currently healthy), the publication contract renegotiations with Wiley- Blackwell, quality of papers in ANZJS, the need for clear direction for ANZJS, i.e. focused issues / invited papers / Australian and NZ content / and good book reviews. Even the occasional special issue may be a possibility. New style guides, author instructions, and key words for editors and people submitting papers were discussed; all these will need to be finalised before ScholarOne Manuscripts can go on stream. Attracting more and better papers and where possible maintaining the distinction between Theory and Methods and Applications papers were also discussed. We also considered any new Associate Editor requirements, publication ethics, evening out the flow of papers (which will be a benefit of ScholarOne Manuscripts, as will being able to acknowledge referees), succession planning for the Editors, and whether ANZJS should include obituaries.

The ScholarOne Manuscripts session on the Tuesday included both training and discussion of a number of related issues including:

• consistency and assignment of paper tracking numbers
• point in process at which authors notified
• linking of editors paper progress information
• acknowledgements from editors to managing editor of receipt and choice of AEs
• acknowledgements from AEs of receipt (with reminders)
• names of referees from AEs
• knowing who has sent what to whom and when: AE loads overall
• monitoring turnaround times for reviewing papers detail and overall
• acknowledgement of receipt process
• line spacing, font size, maximum length specifications
• reporting by AEs of paper receipt
• setting changeover date and notification to authors from anzjs@statsoc.edu.au.

These developments are at present background ones in the main, but nevertheless I hope to provide you with some sense of the editors' role and the direction in which ANZJS is moving.