The first thing I want to do here is to say a big thank-you to Janna who has published this issue on the web despite the disruption of the Euroscience office move this week. Our new home is still in Strasbourg but now we share an address with the European Science Foundation. The two organisations are natural neighbours. We anticipate much cross-fertilisation of ideas and satisfying scientific companionship.

This issue of The Euroscientist covers a number of different topics. Enrico Predazzi’s team in Torino is, of course, very hard at work now preparing for ESOF2010. The event is only 12 months away now so there is a busy year ahead for them. Happily, they have taken time to write an update on the different programme areas – the science programme, career programme and science to business programme – plus plans for science-in-the-city activities and the promotion and reporting of ESOF2010. We wish them unflagging energy over the next months.

We return, too, to ESOF2008 in Barcelona. Michael Kessler, the Media Manager for the event, responds to comments in Issue 4 of The Euroscientist on media coverage of the Forum. If you thought media coverage just happens without much organisation, read Michael’s words – and change your mind.

Our series of articles on issues of interest to Europe’s young scientists continues here with two contributions from Eurodoc, the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers. We publish the text of a speech by Karoline Holländer (the outgoing president) and Nikola Macharova (the incoming president), outlining ideas and plans for six areas of concern for our younger scientific generation. These six areas are now part of the ongoing programme of action for Eurodoc. One of them is described more fully in a second article in this issue by Karoline, Nikola and their colleagues: this is an initiative to collect comparable data about doctoral training programmes across the continent. Eurodoc is the voice of Europe’s young researchers and these people are the future of Europe’s research. Any support that can be given to their activities by Euroscience members would be valuable so please read about what they are planning and participate if you can.

Increasingly, rankings are featuring in the lives of universities and research organisations. Universities may be ranked on many different bases, of course, and the ranking concept is not to everyone’s taste because no system of measurement can be perfectly fair to all. Moreover, ranking systems can skew behaviour and stimulate ‘performing to the test’. Nonetheless, they’re here to stay. Linda Wedlin discusses some of the implications in an article on the topic, implications not only for broad behaviour patterns but for the governance of university business, direction, academic offerings and possibly even the knowledge produced. Food for considerable thought.

Finally, we continue the series on scholarly communication with an article by Daniel Mietchen (and friends). Although we’ve published it as a ‘traditional’ Euroscientist article it was written on a wiki, over a period of some time, and with the input of colleagues of Daniel, as befits its subject matter. If you find the style of this article somewhat unfamiliar and perhaps even a little disconcerting, bear in mind that it was written by one of the young European scientists at the forefront of thinking and practice on the topic and that its style and shape reflect its message, which is that we live in the age of the Web and that open, networked information is the fundament of scholarly communication in the future.

Alma Swan, Editor, editor@euroscience.org