2017 has been an exciting year for SoSyM, which has now passed its 16 year of publication! We have continued to intensify our collaboration with the MODELS conference by presenting the annual SoSyM Awards at MODELS and strengthening the SoSyM “Journal-First” arrangement with MODELS. The first issue of this new year’s volume summarizes the status of SoSyM in terms of recent statistics and milestone events over the past year. As an additional testament to the interest and growth in our field, recent full professorship positions have been offered in the area of software and systems modeling, which means the area has now advanced from a subdomain of software engineering, data modeling, formal methods, and related areas to its own sustainable research domain.

Unfortunately, in 2017 we also lost one of our best friends who was one of the early members of our community. Bernhard Schätz passed away from cancer in July, 2017. As a memorial to Bernhard, this editorial is also accompanied with a scientific appreciation of his life.