The way ahead

With this issue, we complete our twenty-first year of publication. So Happy Birthday to us, we have come of age! Seriously, in the last 21 years we have developed from the UK Journal of Valuation into an international journal covering all aspects of property investment and finance.

However, one of the problems with this expansion is that we have moved away from our central focus of commercial property. Thus, at the last editorial board meeting it was agreed that we should ensure that all papers published in Journal of Property Investment & Finance concentrate upon commercial property in its purest form.

We have also scheduled a number of themed issues for the next volume. There will be a special issue on behavioural real estate; a special international issue; a European Real Estate Society issue and a commemorative issue in memory of my co-editor, Gerald Brown, who died last year. We are also going up to six full issues per year from Vol. 22 onwards.

In addition, we will be putting out a call for papers on the subjects of capital markets and property; valuations and bank lending and uncertainty in valuation with a view to publish themed issues in 2005.

So in 21 years, we have come a long way and we hope that we will continue to provide an outlet for innovative and insightful papers related to property investment and finance.

Nick FrenchThe University of Reading