The Friends of the IJSD is an open community of persons engaged with and around the International Journal of Sustainable Development, in various roles.  These include but are not limited to: the Associate and Regional Editors, the members of the IJSD Advisory Board and, the members of the IJSD Editorial Board.  

In 2016 the IJSD — International Journal of Sustainable Development — celebrates its 20th year.  

The objectives of the IJSD since its creation by Inderscience Publishers in 1997, have been to establish an effective channel of communication between policy-makers, government agencies, academics and research institutions, and professionals working in the field of sustainability studies, and to provide a forum for the thinkers and actors of sustainability to disseminate information and to learn from each other’s work.

• Given the character of sustainability challenges, the IJSD is necessarily cross-disciplinary in character and intended for a wide readership.  It targets professionals, academics, researchers and policy makers interested in sustainability issues.  This means that articles must be of interest to, and accessible to readers across specialists’ boundaries.
• In line with the general Inderscience policy, the international dimension of academic community is emphasised in order to cross cultural and national barriers and to confront in their diversity the challenges of accelerating technological change, environmental change and mutations in the global economy. 

These transversal features remain important for the vision of the IJSD’s place in the world-wide academic community.  Yet, many things have changed since the pioneering decision by Inderscience in 1997.  

• The terms “sustainability” and “sustainable development” have entered into almost every semantic field of our societies, their sense being sometimes diluted even while the moral, scientific, economic and political dimensions of a “triple bottom line” remain among the urgent challenges of our times.  
• The IJSD editorial office, based continuously since its first issues with Professor Sylvie Faucheux at the C3ED of the Université de Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France, has moved during 2015 with Professor Faucheux to the CNAM (Conservatoire national des arts et métiers) in central Paris.  T
• The penetration of digital technologies into scientific publishing (as in everything else) imposes the need to renew completely the academic, technical and professional support structures around the IJSD, so as to rebuild conviviality and visibility.  

​The IJSD editorial policy is, pragmatically, to engage with social networking opportunities, seeking to compose and contribute to islets and alleys of conviviality within the seas of the world wide web. 

The Inderscience publishing operations, and the manuscript submissions, refereeing and processing procedures, are already completely digitalised.  There is complete up-to-date information on the contents of published and forthcoming issues of the IJSD, freely available on the Inderscience website; see: www.inderscience.com/ijsd.  The website invites people to sign up for new issue alerts and, to subscribe and/or buy access to specific articles and issues.  Nonetheless, the "digital revolution" has a paradoxical effect of rendering more anonymous and opaque, the processes of sharing in "old" academic community associated with the era of paper and books.  We need to compose new forms of visibility and conviviality. 

This challenge for the 3^rd decade of the IJSD, will be taken up with the members of the newly constituted IJSD Advisory Board, the Associate Editors and the Regional Editors.  

• The renewal of the IJSD Editorial Board will be accompanied by the creation of an interactive website (complementary to the Inderscience Publishers site) and selected social networking mechanisms whose purposes will be (1) to enhance the visibility of the journal itself, and (2) to rebuild the visibility of academic, professional and educational community around the journal.
• This website will be maintained by the IJSD Editorial Team and, will be hosted by the ‘ePLANETe’ platform created and maintained by the KerBabel team and the Association ePLANETe Blue.
• Through cross-linked social networking procedures (including some functionalities of LinkedIn and ResearchGate, and perhaps also Twitter….), we will build upand maintain, in addition to the IJSD Editorial Board itself, a wider network of “Friends of the IJSD” who choose to support the journal in various ways and to encourage its visibility and usefulness in educational, scientific and professional contexts. 

​It is envisaged that several nodes of The Friends of the IJSD might be be developed or renewed -- perhaps in reciprocal collaboration with established scientific societies or thematic groups: including ecological economics, post-normal science, environmental justice, social economy and responsable management ....