With the arrival of Volume 9 of Advances in Physics: X, it is high time to bring new energy and new ideas to the journal. Thus it is a pleasure to announce that Riccardo Ferrando now takes over as Editor-in-Chief. Riccardo has been the deputy EiC for several years, overseeing the refereeing system. Moreover a second senior Editor is to be appointed in due course, ideally from north America, to boost the journal’s service and visibility to that community. Expressions of interest are welcome! The undersigned will remain on the Editorial Board to offer whatever help and advice he can, after almost 10 years, first of conceiving and then of realising the APX project. He will do so with a feeling of immense gratefulness for all the contributions made by editors, staff and authors over this foundation period.
Our previous editorials have quoted Nevill Mott, Jane Austen, Dodie Smith, Moses, Albert Einstein and William Shakespeare. For a final word, however, we turn to Alexander Tilloch, who founded our grandparent journal the Philosophical Magazine 225 years ago in 1798. He wrote that ‘the grand object’ of the journal was to ‘diffuse philosophical knowledge’ to every branch of society. One could say that APX has adopted the open-access model in this same spirit - and certainly contrary to commercial advantage. Furthermore he said that ‘we would be deficient in gratitude did we not return thanks to the public, in general, for the favourable reception our labours have experienced’. Sentiments that we happily echo, dear Reader.