Welcome to the 2021 volume of the Group Decision and Negotiation journal. For many of us, 2020 was an eventful year. Due to the challenges from the worldwide Covid-19 scare, work practices changed, digitalization efforts were tested, collaborations took a different format, and remote work and videoconferencing were at the forefront. The GDN 2020 Conference in Toronto had to be postponed due to the pandemic and also the GDN 2021 Conference will have to take place virtually.

Last year was also a tragic year for the journal. Gregory Kersten, our Editor-in-Chief, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in May 2020. He was a leading member of the GDN community and worked effortlessly on improving the journal. As a community we are immensely grateful for his dedication and we will honor his memory.

We were asked to take over the role as interim editors-in-chief after Gregory’s passing and we are grateful for the broad support from the GDN community that helped us in keeping the journal on track. We would like to thank the GDN board, the GDN members, and Springer for entrusting us with the journal when we became the permanent Editors-in-Chief in November 2020. We are convinced that working together as a team will benefit the journal.

1 The 2020 Volume and Beyond

The GDN 2020 volume produced a strong collection of submissions and published papers. We received a total of 257 submissions. The 6 issues of the journal published a total of 46 papers. The journal’s metrics are also strong: The average time to a first decision dropped from 92 to 52 days, which represents a remarkable improvement. The journal’s h-index is 55. These metrics are testimony to Gregory’s dedication and hard work during his tenure as Editor-in-Chief.

We aim to strengthen these metrics as we move into the 2021 volume. We will endeavor to continue to build on the journal’s reputation as a top journal in its area. Specifically, we will invite and welcome review papers and research agenda papers, organize special issues on current topics, and actively share each issue’s contents on various listservers and social media.

While the average time to a first decision has dropped considerable, we will continue to improve this metric as well as the overall time it takes to reach a decision. It is an important service to our community that authors will learn about the decision on their manuscript in a timely fashion, regardless of whether it is the initial decision or a decision on a revision of a manuscript. We will aim to improve these metrics by actively monitoring papers’ progress and getting support from our editorial board members.

2 The Editorial Board and Reviewers

The Group Decision and Negotiation journal is fortunate to have a committed editorial board and group of reviewers. They work tirelessly to assess the contributions and quality of each submission that is entered into the review process. They assist the authors through constructive criticism to ensure that each published paper makes a significant contribution to the Group Decision and Negotiation body of knowledge.

We are extremely grateful to our current editorial board members, several of whom have carried a heavy load. We truly appreciate their hard work and dedication during the past year. In 2021, there are going to be some changes to our board as a number of board members have indicated their desire to retire. Also, we will invite new colleagues to the board in an effort to optimize the coverage of the journal’s various research areas and to pursue diversity on the board in terms of global regions, gender, career stage, and ethnicity. We will report on the changes to the editorial board in a future issue.

We wish to acknowledge the many reviewers for their efforts that made last year’s volume possible. In particular, the Editorial Board and us are happy to recognize the following individuals as the “Best GDN Reviewers of 2020” for going above and beyond in their efforts to strengthen the quality of the papers considered for the journal:

  • Ulle Endriss

  • Alexander Karpov

  • Muhammed-Fatih Kaya

  • Aleksei Y. Kondratev

  • Thomas Alexander O'Neill

Finally, the Editorial Board and us would like recognize all reviewers for the 2020 Volume. Without their commitment to our journal it would not have been possible to produce timely, high quality issues:

Mark Aakhus

Hillie Aaldering

Anand Abraham

Marc Adam

Abdelkader Adla

Juan Aguarón

Muhammad Akram

Emel Aktas

Naif Alawi

Jose Alcalde

Jorge Alcalde-Unzu

Fuad Aleskerov

José Maria Alonso Meijide

Mikel Alvarez-Mozos

Adriana Amaya

Pedro Antunes

Deniz Appelbaum

Michal Araszkiewicz

Ryuta Arisaka

Aram Bahrini

Ying Bao

Abul Bashar

Lorenzo Bastianello

Jan Bazan

Femke Bekius

Emilia Bellucci

Sarah BenAmor

Gustavo Bergantinos

Peter Berggren

Paweł Błaszczyk

Zorica Bogdanović

Surajit Borkotokey

Mathieu Bourgais

Jeanne Brett

Matteo Brunelli

John Bryson

William Caballero

Francisco Javier Cabrerizo

Christopher Califf

Guy Camilleri

Fabio Caraffini

Davide Carneiro

Zhen-Song Chen

Yu-An Chen

Zan Chen

Xusen Cheng

Zhor Chergui

Yeri Cho

Jason Choi

Eileen Chou

Deborah Cohn

Thomas Connolly

Joao Costa

Larry Crump

Suzana Daher

Francesca Dal Mas

Mats Danielson

Andreas Darmann

Vincent de Gooyert

Lihi Dery

Luis Dias

Stephen Diasio

Ru-Xi Ding

Yucheng Dong

William Donohue

Viktor Dörfler

Bram Driesen

Juan Dubra

Peter Duersch

Gourav Dwivedi

Tom Eich

Hillary Anger Elfenbein

Kyle Emich

Aysegül Engin

Pedro Falcão

Michael Filzmoser

Keaton Fletcher

Vito Fragnelli

Eduarda Frej

Ray Friedman

Chao Fu

Naoki Fukuta

Ricardo Gabbay de Souza

Jianwei Gao

Arindam Garai

José Manuel Giménez-Gómez

Henner Gimpel

Zaiwu Gong

Erick Gonzalez

Dorota Gorecka

Martin Gregor

Michele Griessmair

Bushra Guenoun

Elisabeth Guenther

Weixiao Guo

Rafik Hadfi

Raimo Hamalainen

Fieke Harinck

Luciana Hazin

Shawei He

Carla Henriques

Uta Herbst

Stijn Hoppenbrouwers

Shih-Cheng Horng

Jack Shih-Chieh Hsu

Joachim Hueffmeier

Ilwoo Hwang

Nima Jafari Navimipour

Simon James

Daisung Jang

Arshad Javed

Andrés Jiménez-Losada

Antonio Jiménez-Martín

David Johnstone

Peter Jordan

Eric Kamwa

Serguei Kaniovski

Daniel Karabekyan

Emin Karagozoglu

Konstantinos Katsikopoulos

Parmjit Kaur

Jessica Kennedy

Victoria Kennel

Mary Kern

Yann Kervinio

Werner Kirsch

Usha Kiruthika

David Kocsis

Jacqueline Konaté

Dejun Tony Kong

Kathy Kotiadis

George Krimpas

Serkan Kucuksenel

Konrad Kułakowski

Sascha Kurz

Álvaro Labella

Jonathan Lee

Picheng Lee

Frieder Lempp

Ernesto Leon Castro

Alexandre Leoneti

Ilkka Leppanen

Juan Leyva Lopez

xuemei Li

Bingsheng Liu

Hu-Chen Liu

Jinpei Liu

Renato Lopes da Costa

Sofia Lundberg

Pasi Luukka

Nicola Friederike Maaser

Andreia Machado

Rahul Marathe

Ricardo Marcão

Luis Martinez

Bilyana Martinovski

Nick Mattei

Alexander Mayer

Jens Mazei

Marleen McCardle-Keurentjes

Paulo Melo

Philipp Melzer

Jose M Merigo

Adrian Miroiu

Arunodaya Mishra

Alexandra Mislin

Danielle Morais

Patricia Moravec

Jose Maria Moreno Jimenez

Jadielson Moura

Issofa Moyouwou

Uday Murthy

Syibrah Naim

Lukas Neville

Mehrbakhsh Nilashi

Stefan Olander

António Oliveira

João Oliveira

Ilaria Orlandi

António Osório

Jennifer Parlamis

Brian Phillips

Krzysztof Piasecki

Daniele Porello

Richard Potthoff

Friedrich Pukelsheim

Dan Qin

Mukhunth Raghavan

Francisco Ramos

Laura Rees

Leandro Rêgo

Julia Reif

James Rodgers

Albérico Rosário

Vahab Rostami

Ewa Roszkowska

Etiënne Rouwette

Sankar Roy

Joyce Rupert

Joaquin Sanchez Soriano

Marina Sandomirskaia

Jorge Santos

Shubhro Sarkar

Vanessa Schramm

Gregor Schwarz

Stefan Seifert

Seyoung Seol

Alkmini Sgouritsa

Wen Shan

Sergey Shvydun

Ruchi Sinha

Andrzej Skulimowski

Dominik Sondern

Izabella Stach

Arnaud Stimec

Peter Stoeckli

Pamela Strickland

Andrey Subochev

Rangaraja Sundarraj

Gao Taiguang

Halbana Tarmizi

Andrew Tawfik

Oriol Tejada

Chanta Thomas

Nuriddin Tojiboyev

Evangelos Triantaphyllou

Abhishek Tripathi

Ece Tuncel

Joseph Valacich

Luis Vargas

Jorge Velez-Castiblanco

Jian-qiang Wang

Justin Wareham

Ashley Whillans

Arnold Wibmer

Frederik Wiedmann

Nannan Wu

ShiKui Wu

Tung-Hsien Wu

Nannan Wu

Zhibin Wu

Yi Xiao

Haiyan Xu

Xuanhua Xu

Yejun Xu

Huiru Yang

YiYu Yao

Tak Wing Yiu

Vahidreza Yousefi

Angela Yu

Bo Yu

Alexei Zakharov

João Zambujal-Oliveira

Quanbo Zha

Jun Zhang

Bowen Zhang

Hengjie Zhang

Huanren Zhang

Xiaoqin Zhang

Zhen Zhang

Ronghuo Zheng

Wei Zhou

We wish everyone a healthy and successful 2021!