Even after editing for more than a decade, it was still exciting to complete another volume of The Professional Animal Scientist (PAS). The 33rd volume of 781 pages contained nine review articles, 55 research articles, six technical notes, and 15 case studies. Though not as dominant as the previous year, topics about beef cattle and meats comprised more than one-half of the articles. Dairy was followed by swine, equine, and caprine topics. There were also some articles about feedstuffs, bedding, and water.

The review articles are a major contribution to PAS. Two of the reviews were from the ARPAS 2015 Symposium: “Nutritional and management considerations for beef cattle experiencing stress-induced inflammation” and “The ruminal microbes, microbial products, and systemic inflammation.” Three review papers had been presented at the Southern Section of the American Society of Animal Science about management strategies for intensive, sustainable cow-calf production systems in the Southeastern United States: “Matching forage systems with cow size and environment for sustainable cow-calf production in the southern region of the United States,” “Bermudagrass pastures overseeded with cool-season annual grasses and legumes,” and “Issues affecting research and extension programs on cow-calf and stocker cattle production in the Southeast region of the United States.” Individual reviews were titled “Transportation of commercial finished cattle and animal welfare considerations,” “Subjective pork quality evaluation may not be indicative of instrumental pork quality measurements on a study-to-study basis,” “The link between feeding dairy cows and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese production area,” and “Advantages and limitations of dairy efficiency measures and the effects of nutrition and feeding management interventions.”

It has been over 11 years since I applied for and “won” the job of editor-in-chief, and it has been a privilege to serve ARPAS in this role. I remember well receiving several boxes of paper files with a short deadline looming for the October issue. Even with great assistance from FASS personnel, we missed that deadline—but we did complete a small issue. It was hard to recover quickly with everything on paper and relying on the postal service. After that rough start, deadlines were met for each issue. We began using Manuscript Central, and that helped tremendously. After five years I asked the Governing Board members, who had been great supporters, about my term of office and was informed that it was a lifetime appointment! The previous editor had died suddenly—and I was older than him. So I requested and was granted two associate editors. Stacey Gunter and Bob Goodband were a lot of help, and the journal grew considerably. More recently, Andy Cole was appointed and helped edit beef manuscripts. The board approved funding for electronic services, and eventually articles from all the issues became available online to members. The final step was funded by Elsevier when they became our publisher. With the support of the ARPAS Board, Kenneth Cummings, and FASS personnel, we have made a lot of progress. However, one big item that we were unable to accomplish was inclusion in International Scientific Indexing (ISI) to obtain an impact factor. (Elsevier can generate an in-house version of impact factor, if needed.) The inclusion depends upon citations of articles in PAS during the previous two years by journals currently in the ISI system. Citation of PAS articles is improving and will be quite good after more time elapses. The improved exposure given by Elsevier has helped scientists see our articles in a timely fashion, and I appreciate the excellent assistance of Emma Bruun. So, I am confident of future inclusion in ISI, and that will assist in attracting manuscripts from many additional scientists.

This leads to my expressing genuine thanks to many animal scientists in ARPAS who have submitted manuscripts and others who been available to serve as reviewers. Thank you for the support!! You have built the PAS journal on the foundation that was laid for us by earlier members of the Registry.

I am pleased that David Beede has accepted the role of editor-in-chief and am confident that he will be successful as you support him.