Editorial
Beginning with Volume 9, it will be my privilege to serve as Editor-in-Chief of Machine Learning. At present, Jaime Carbonell and I are occupying this position together to make a smooth transition before he steps down. I want to thank both of my predecessors: Pat Langley, who so ably launched the journal anil set high standards for quality, and Jaime Carbonell, who has presided over the rapid growth of the journal to the point where we are now publishing eight issues per year. I have four goals for Machine Learning over the coming years. First, I want to maintain and strengthen the quality of the research reported here. Machine Learning will continue to seek papers that make a substantial, novel contribution to our knowledge of learning in machines. Clarity of writing will remain an important criterion as well. Second, I want to shorten the total time required to move from the initial submitted manuscript to a published paper. This requires more aggressive tracking of manuscripts thrgugh the review process. It also means that manuscripts will be expected to be wellpolished at the time they are submitted. Authors should not rely on the comments of the reviewers to help them write their papers. Third, I am already working with our publisher to improve the production process so thai: we can accept manuscripts for final submission in electronic form (most likely in LaTeX or TeX format). This should reduce errors introduced when the manuscripts are typeset. It should also help reduce the time-to-publication by reducing the need for proofreading typeset material. Finally, I hope to continue broadening the scope of Machine Learning to form bridges witch other disciplines that study learning methods, such as artificial neural networks,