As the new chief editors, we feel extremely honored to follow in the big footsteps of Prof. Wolfgang Mieder, the founding editor of Proverbium. Wolfgang Mieder served as editor-in-chief from 1984 to 2021 and brought Proverbium wide international recognition, thanks to the high quality of published papers submitted by proverb scholars from various countries and institutions around the world. We are also very grateful to Prof. Mieder for having faith in us and we will do our best to maintain and increase the scientific value of the Yearbook in the subsequent years.

As it has already been announced, Proverbium is from this volume issued as an open access double-blind peer-reviewed online journal. It is hosted by the University of Osijek, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Croatia. The submission of papers, reviewing and editing is done online in the OJS (Open Journal System), which corresponds to the current demands regarding online journals. However, after careful consideration we have decided that not everything had to be new and that numerous valuable features and traditions established by Wolfgang Mieder should be carried forward in the same way. For instance, the volume numbers should be continued with, so the first volume edited by the two of us is numbered 39 (2022). We have also kept the well-known and very popular Proverbium layout, added some improvements and decided to continue to accept manuscripts in five languages - English, German, French, Spanish and Russian. The journal is open to original scientific papers, preliminary communications, obituaries, book reviews, and bibliographies dedicated to the broad field of paremiology. The newly launched website corresponds to the journal’s policy and is accessible in the journal’s five languages as well. In the Archive section of the website, there are some older paperback issues currently available as full electronic .pdf files. All articles are planned to be displayed on the website as separate electronic files as well, with all the accompanying metadata, but all the volumes will continue to be available for download in a single .pdf file as well. 

As the requirements for scientific journals have changed and become more rigorous, several important changes and innovations had to be introduced to meet the strict demands of the publishing and scientific world. Proverbium with its new website, publication and ethical standards, has fulfilled the strict criteria to be indexed in the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the Croatian Database of Scientific Journals (HRČAK), where you can find the last ten volumes of the Yearbook, even as the rest is planned to be uploaded presently. An international Editorial Board consisting of well-established paremiologists from fourteen different countries and three continents ensures that the articles submitted to the Yearbook maintain the scope and purpose of the journal, meet the high quality standard and report the latest developments and research results in the field of paremiology. In order to boost the citation and visibility of the articles published, Proverbium is using the ORCID numbers, and has become a member of the International Crossref Agency. This means that all manuscripts from the Articles sections will get assigned a unique DOI string, making them easier to cite and share through electronic media.

To sum it up, this is only the beginning, a very short summary of all the challenges Proverbium has faced in the last few months. There are many more to come which can be achieved with your help as well. It is our great hope that we can become worthy successors of Prof. Mieder and together, with his support and the support of fellow paremiologists all over the world, will carry on our beloved Proverbium with honor. We hope you will enjoy reading this, the 39th volume of Proverbium, as much as we enjoyed editing it and working on it.

Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga