Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2020
It is a privilege to be Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics in 2020 as it celebrates its 40th year. This is my fifth issue as Editor. I will begin this short introduction by paying tribute, with the help of Bill Grabe (Northern Arizona University), to the founding editor of the journal, Robert Kaplan (1929–2020). Without Robert Kaplan, none of us would be reading these pages. We will then turn to some comments from each of the previous editors on a few of the highlights of their time editing the journal, along with words for the future. After this, I will describe some recent updates, go through a few of the historical successes of the journal, and then turn to the contents of the exciting current issue, “Looking back and moving ahead.”