Tony Rawlings – A Festschrift

It is a very welcome and special honour for us to edit this special issue of the International Journal of Cosmetic Science dedicated to recognizing the contributions that Anthony (Tony) Rawlings has made to skin barrier research over the last several decades. In addition to being a collaborator for many years Tony is also a dear friend to both of us.

Tony's career can be split (very crudely) into three distinct activities: industrial R&D scientist, journal editor, and scientific consultant. Of course, while doing each of these roles Tony was always an author, a teacher, a mentor, a conference organizer, a skin barrier enthusiast, a collaborator, and a champion of young scientists among many other roles.

We thank the authors of each of the contributions to this special issue and are particularly delighted that the contributions range from the highly personal, to review articles, and new research. To those that know Tony well it will come as no surprise that although he is now officially retired, he co-authored two of the contributions to this issue.

As discussed immediately below Tony's impact as editor of this journal was immense.

We are delighted to include contributions by Clive Harding (“Dr. Anthony Rawlings: The Unilever Years. 1988–2001”) and Rainer Voegeli (“Memories of a two-decade journey with a SC Addict”) as part of this introduction. Clive and Rainer are each uniquely placed to provide personal perspectives and historical context to Tony's significant contributions to skin barrier science as an industrial scientist and as a consultant, respectively.

Tony first joined the Editorial Advisory Board of the IJCS in 1998. In 2002 he was appointed co-editor, (succeeding Anthony Dweck), with Dr. Didier Saint-Leger serving as Editor-In-Chief (EIC). Subsequently Tony was appointed EIC of the IJCS in 2003 with Dr. Claude Dubief becoming co-editor. Successive co-editors included Professor Christine Lafforgue and Dr. Karl Lintner. In 2013, Tony handed over the editorial reins to Dr. Karl Lintner and Dr. Majella Lane.

When Tony was appointed EIC in 2003, the journal was not online and content could not be easily accessed. Moreover, the journal did not have an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) impact factor, an essential requirement to attract academic researchers to publish in the IJCS. To address these issues, firstly Tony began the application process for the journal to be included in the MEDLINE database, the premier online bibliographic database for journal articles in life sciences. At the same time he also began the work necessary to obtain an ISI impact factor for the IJCS. Inclusion of the IJCS in MEDLINE was accepted in 2008 and the allocation of an ISI impact factor was agreed in 2011; however an actual impact factor was not provided until 2014. The award of an impact factor may be solely attributed to Tony's efforts on behalf of the IJCS and this achievement for the IJCS may not be overstated. The major improvements to the IJCS that were noted by the ISI under Tony's guidance included at least one state of the art review published since 2005, a double-blind fully electronic submission process initiated in 2006, an expanded and truly international editorial board and the availability of the IJCS in digital format from 2007. As recognition for his role in these milestones for the IJCS Tony was elected as an Honorary Member of the SCS in 2009 and became a Fellow to the society in 2018.

On a personal level, Tony (with various team members primarily from Unilever, mostly with Clive Harding in the early years and other company collaborators in the later years but mostly with Rainer Voegeli from DSM-Firmenich) as well as academic collaborator Majella Lane has contributed actively to the journal since 1996 with 53 MEDLINE mentions. An IFSCC award winning paper was published in 1996 and by 2004 a further 8 papers had been published. By 2014 22 papers had been published and at the end of 2024 this had risen to a total of 53 papers. Notably, two of these papers have received the IJCS publications prize and Tony is the only scientist to have published this number of papers in the IJCS. Tony regards the MEDLINE/ISI acceptances as his greatest achievement for the IJCS and pleads that the journal name never changes as both of these scientific privileges will be lost.