In this session we wish to project an encouraging and supportive view of the editorial role. Editors, and reviewers, are not there as all powerful, ruthless guardians of high academic rigour, putting down all authors except the lucky or highly ranked few. The more important role in relation to authors is as advocates, developers, coaches, even 'guides on the side'. Editors do have other roles that are also important to authors, so we will use a little time, in 'Journal policies', to discuss scholarly publishing as an industry and how societies, editors, libraries and the commercial world have responded to the ICT revolution.
