Annual Report (2004) by the Editor of the WQRJC, Ronald Gehr.

With the enthusiastic support of our Managing Editor, Kristin Alward, we have steered the Journal through many changes. (In fact, even Kristin changed her surname during the fall, after tying the knot with Bryan May). The most obvious change has been in the format of the Journal, which now uses a more standard 8½" x 11" page size, and 2 column smaller font format. This has resulted in a significant savings in number of pages, with concomitant savings in paper use and postage without sacrificing the number of articles published. We also now send our authors .pdf files, rather than reprints of their papers, again saving costs. Another change to the Journal itself includes, for the first time, the addition of an index of Authors and Keywords, which will improve access to the articles.

Behind the scenes, the changes have been at least as important. With the help of Karen Balkwill, a data base has been created for tracking papers and reviewers, and for assisting the editors in choosing reviewers. This should help in reducing the time from receipt of a paper to its final acceptance or rejection. The Editorial Board has been reconstituted as a board of subject editors. The task of choosing reviewers for each paper, and piloting the paper through the review process, has now been entrusted to these loyal board members, who have been chosen based on the match of their expertise with the goals of the Journal. These goals have also been clarified and somewhat broadened in order to better reflect the nature of our sponsoring society, the Canadian Association on Water Quality. The tradition of promoting approximately one theme issue per year has been continued with the final issue of 2004 covering the theme "Managing Urban Wet-Weather Flows: On the Road to Sustainability"; our thanks go to the guest editors Jiri Marsalek, Sandra Kok and Hubert Colas.

For the future, we continue to strive to (belatedly) bring the Journal into the 21st century. Thanks to a very generous grant by the Tomlinson Foundation at McGill University, all previous issues of the Journal, with the only exception of those published over the most recent 2 or 3 years, are being scanned for storage in digital form. They will then be made available for free over the web. The first set of 10 volumes to be scanned, covering 1990 - 1999, should be available early in 2005, with the remainder coming on line over the course of the year. The movement towards electronic publishing is continuing, with 2005 being the first year in which subscribers will have the option of receiving only electronic copies. It will also be possible to purchase single articles from recent issues via our new secure web site. Once these electronic and web based services are fully functional, we plan to aggressively publicize the Journal to potential European and North American subscribers, especially libraries.