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Development of this book
The development of this book has extended over more than four years. When the Editors and Editorial Board were selected in 
2007, they quickly began working to establish a detailed set of editorial guidelines and procedures. These were published in 
September of that year. Prior to submitting any manuscripts, prospective authors were required to submit an outline/prospectus 
for preliminary review. Pre-submission discussion with the book editors was recommended. By March 2008, 33 initial submis-
sions had been received. The Editors carefully reviewed and made extensive comments on all of these submissions and recom-
mended either that a second, revised prospectus be submitted or suggested to the submitting authors that the intended paper 
would be better suited for other publication venues. 
In the second round of review, 18 revised prospectuses were submitted and again carefully reviewed by the Editors. Further 
review of each prospectus was carried out by at least two members of the Editorial Board supplemented occasionally by inde-
pendent reviewers solicited by the Editors. A fi nal consensus review refl ecting the judgments and comments of the Editors and 
Editorial Board was then provided to each submitting author, with suggestions as to whether the intended manuscript might be 
suitable for the book and, if so, what further revisions and additions might be necessary before publication would be possible. It 
was made clear that authors had the prerogative to submit their manuscripts for journal publication independent of and without 
prejudice from any editorial consideration regarding publication in the book. This phase of the process was completed in July 
2009. Authors were asked to submit their full manuscripts to one of the journals by November 2009.
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Ultimately, 10 of the second-round prospectuses resulted in submission of full manuscripts to one of the two targeted journals, 
AJP and PRST-PER. At that point, all submitted manuscripts went through the standard journal review process with reviewers 
selected by the journal editors. The journal editors and reviewers either decided against further consideration of the manuscripts 
or, in all other cases, required the authors to submit revised versions; in some of those cases, multiple revisions were required. 
Papers that were considered acceptable or potentially acceptable by the journal reviewers and editors went through yet another 
stage of review by the book editors to decide on suitability for the book and adherence to the published book guidelines. In all 
cases, additional revisions were required to bring the papers into full conformity with the guidelines.
The fi nal result was that fi ve of the original set of prospectus submissions ultimately resulted in papers that were accepted by and 
published in one of the journals and also accepted by the book editors for publication in this book. The fi ve papers were published 
in the journals during 2010 and the fi rst half of 2011. These have been supplemented by reprints of six additional papers that had 
previously been published either in AJP or PRST-PER. The reprints were selected by the Editors and Editorial Board based on 
their relevance to the book’s theme and their consistency with the book guidelines. The Summaries were written either by the 
Editors or by the original authors, but in all cases reviewed and approved by the authors.