In 2018, Reproduction, Fertility and Development is celebrating 30 years of publication and we have decided to celebrate this milestone with a ‘Virtual Issue’ – an online collection of papers.

Clearly, the selection of the papers was largely subjective, being based initially on the consensus opinions of the editors. We were informed by hard data (citations and downloads) but we also chose papers that reflect other criteria: landmarks in important aspects of reproductive biology; recognition of an influential individual; showcasing the breadth of the journal’s output (species studied; the stages in the process of reproduction); balance between biology and technology; and the international nature of contributors to the journal. One paper was chosen simply because it was the most highly cited paper in 1989, the first year the journal was published, allowing us to cover all three decades. Most of the papers are reviews, but we have also included two discovery papers, both supported by citation and download data.

Importantly, this Virtual Issue has been timed to coincide with the 2018 Annual Conference of the (Australian) Society for Reproductive Biology. This timing is appropriate because the Society (particularly through the efforts of Jock Findlay, working with CSIRO Publishing) was instrumental in remodelling the Australian Journal of Biological Science to focus on reproductive biology in vertebrate animals. This close relationship, begun 30 years ago, is evident in the publication by the journal of the history of the Society, written by a founder of the Society, the late Brian Setchell.

Graeme Martin