From the Editorial Team

Welcome to the first issue of Microbiology Australia for 2016.

As members of The Australian Society for Microbiology know, our electronic issues are freely available. To be notified of a new issue go to our publisher’s website http://microbiology.publish.csiro.au/ and register to get alerts when each issue becomes available.

ASM members receive print copies by mail if they have opted to receive them that way. Contact the ASM Office if you wish to receive print copies. Additional copies are often made for special issues. For example, ~1000 copies were made for delegates of the ISHAM conference in Melbourne last year. The print copies are highly valued by many members and are great to share with others.

The online issues are highly accessed as a reference and learning resource. Individual articles as well as entire issues can be readily downloaded from the above website.

Themes of issues and Guest Editors are chosen by the Editorial Board who meet by teleconference five times each year. The Board always values input from ASM members for future issues. All articles are peer-reviewed and invited by the Guest Editors who have a deep understanding of the themes they present. Themes are chosen to be topical and of interest to ASM members: authors write to reach a broad audience.

On occasions urgent updates are needed and such updates are presented as Hot Topics. However, we are aware that there is a need to have an occasional non-themed issue. Please contact us if you have suggestions for articles that will have broad interest to ASM members.

We are grateful for the support the Editorial Board and for Guest Editors who are experts in their fields. Guest Editors present the latest knowledge in their field through the selection of contributors who write compact articles that are readable and informative to the ASM’s diverse membership. We also thank the reviewers, who provide valuable comments on each contribution. They also have expertise in the articles they review, and they provide valuable comments to contributors to ensure the articles are appropriately presented. We also thank the authors for their contributions. They provide a great amount of current information about their field and seek to educate us all in the exciting developments of microbiology.

We thank The Australian Society for Microbiology and those who lead it. In the challenging world of publishing it has taken boldness to enable Microbiology Australia to be produced as a publication that is freely available to all. We know from the download data provided by CSIRO Publishing, that Microbiology Australia is highly accessed around the world, and that the articles continue as an ongoing resource many years after their first publication. Articles published more than a decade ago still enjoy thousands of downloads every year. There is no doubt that they serve as resource material for teachers, students and those seeking reliable scientific information from experts.

We trust that you enjoy your reading of this year’s issues, which will cover:

• Parasitic Infections

• Education to enhance microbiology graduate employability

• Diseases of Aquaculture

• Microbiology of Travel [a special joint issue with The Microbiology Society in the UK].