Editorial

Welcome to another round of Evolution: Education and Outreach. This issue, Volume 3, Number 1, marks the start of another year of publication (our third). With this milestone comes the opportunity to look back at our growth and achievement through our first eight issues, and also gives us happy occasion to look forward to the future of this journal.

One of our proudest achievements over the first two years is that we have been able to provide free access to the entire contents of the journal online (available at http://www.springer.com/life+sci/journal/12052). Although future issues of the journal will no longer be offered entirely free of charge, we are happy to say that all of the first nine issues, including this current issue, will remain available online free to all in perpetuity. We are also happy to announce that some selected content from future issues—including all lesson plans—will be offered free online, in a continuing effort to live up to the outreach and education part of our name. Springer is also a founding member of the HINARI program (known as the Access to Research Initiative) that endeavors to provide free access to academic books and journals to under-developed nations around the world. We here at Evolution: Education and Outreach are committed to promoting sound science and effective teaching in classrooms around the world and continue to strive to find ways to put the journal in the hands of those who can use it, at as little cost to teachers, students, and scientists as possible.

As with some of our most successful issues from our first two years, Volume 3, Number 1 has been organized around a specific theme and guest-edited by experts in that field. Past examples of this approach have yielded special issues on the evolution of the eye (our complexity issue) guest-edited by Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, the transitional fossils issue edited by Dr. Donald Prothero, and an issue dedicated to evolution education guest-edited by Dr. Kristin Jenkins of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Each of these issues offered our usual unique mix of cutting-edge scientific and educational research papers on myriad evolutionary topics, lesson plans, and instructional approaches for classroom teachers, reports on the state of evolution education from around the world, essays from scientists and teachers reporting from the field, book reviews, editorials, and columns from regular contributors. Additionally, these special issues offer readers an extra layer of organization by bringing together papers from many authors under a common theme.

This issue has been organized around the concept of coevolution and guest-edited by two leading experts in that field, Dr. John N. Thompson of the University of California Santa Cruz and Dr. Rodrigo Medel of the University of Chile. Thank you, gentlemen for your hard work and contributions—together we have assembled another fine issue. Well done!

Although we are confident that this coevolution issue will be another hit, we still love to get feedback from you, our readers. As we mentioned above, we welcome contributions and submissions of many different kinds, from many different perspectives in a variety of styles. We are also alwayson the lookout for essays, stories, experiences, and, of course, lesson plans from classroom teachers. This is of particular importance now that the free content of the journal has been reduced and will focus mostly on lesson plans andother educational materials. So send your submissions! Instructions for submitting can be found at the URL above. If you have any questions before you submit, don’t hesitate to write to us at gregeldredge@hotmail.com. We look forward to many great years of providing free content through our website, and we look forward to your help in providing it!

Speaking of looking to the future, we have a great year planned. Volume 3, Issue 3, well underway (and the inspiration for our choice of cover art for this year), focuses on human evolution and is sure to be a fantastic issue. Our next issue, Volume 3, Number 2, is another special theme issue, but the theme happens to be a tremendous secret! We are really looking forward to this one as we begin to put the finishing touches on it. Looking farther down the road we are working on an issue on the evolution of the face (which will be a really cool way to introduce evolution to primary and secondary level students) and one on phylogenetics. We are also looking forward to expanding our editorial content, including essays from the field and the Editor’s Corner column that can serve as a soapbox for any passionate scientist and/or educator or student who has something to say. We also look forward to more great work from our regular contributors including Anastasia Thanukos, Sidney Horenstein, Adam Goldstein, Glenn Branch, Louise Mead, and, of course, Eugenie Scott. The regular columns from these great minds have become a main pillar that this journal stands on. So to all of them, to all of our contributing authors, and to all of you, thank you for a great first two years of Evolution: Education and Outreach. And to all of the teachers of the world, keep up the great work!