Anne B. Zimmermann, who has served Mountain Research and Development (MRD) as Associate Editor for the last 14 years, will retire from this position at the end of February. We are happy to announce that she will continue to contribute her expertise to the journal as a member of the International Editorial Board.
Anne’s involvement in MRD dates all the way back to 1999, when the Editorial Office moved to the University of Bern’s Centre for Development and Environment. Over the years, Anne has been vital in ensuring the smooth processing and publication of articles. In collaboration with the Editors-in-Chief and her colleagues at the Editorial Office, she has also been instrumental in driving the journal’s strategic development. She played a major role in MRD’s transition to a fully online and open access journal in 2009, at a time when open access scholarly publishing was still in its infancy. She was also heavily involved in defining the policies and review criteria for MRD’s innovative MountainAgenda and MountainDevelopment sections, which offer peer-reviewed target and transformation knowledge—forms of knowledge that are often underrepresented in scholarly publishing but are key to sustainable development.
From the very start of her career with MRD, Anne was deeply committed to helping less experienced authors improve their writing skills. Her work on papers regularly went far beyond simple editing. In fact, she informally provided scientific writing capacity building to countless authors from around the world—especially those from mountain regions with poor access to such resources. Over the years, this has become a hallmark of MRD and an official part of our mission.
In addition to her visionary and strategic work, Anne was deeply involved in the daily business of producing this international peer-reviewed journal. Holding a PhD in English languages and literatures, she started out as Assistant Editor, tasked with copyediting articles and preparing them for production. Her involvement grew over the years, and in 2007 she became Associate Editor. In this function, she was in charge of processing submissions to MRD’s MountainResearch section—and later also the MountainAgenda section—through peer review and revisions. In 2010, Anne additionally took over responsibility for the whole production process, working with our publishing partners to ensure efficient processes and attractive, but streamlined layout. Over the past 2 years, Anne has progressively handed over her many tasks to the other team members, ensuring a smooth transfer of knowledge and skills.
Besides her work as Associate Editor of MRD, Anne co-headed the Centre for Development and Environment’s Education for Sustainable Development Cluster from 2016 to 2021. MRD has benefited enormously from her widely recognized expertise in this field, and we are extremely grateful that she is willing to continue sharing it as a new member of MRD’s International Editorial Board, especially with regard to questions like: “What kind of science can support sustainable development (in mountains), and how can we transform scientific organizations to achieve it?”, or “How can we foster a lifelong commitment to learning to support transformation?” We thank Anne for her enormous commitment over the years and wish her all the best for her retirement.
