The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the first issue of the Rivista di Studi Fenici provides occasion to review the importance of this journal then and now. The Editor in Chief invited a member of the journal’s scientific advisory board for his personal views on the matter. This is the 50th year of the publication of the Rivista di Studi Fenici. For our journal this special occasion marks an important milestone, a moment when we rally to celebrate the achievements of past authors and editors. The journal’s fortieth birthday was marked by a contribution written by a leading scholar of our discipline heralding these achievements. Here, I break with tradition and rather than looking back at ten fruitful years of original insights and contributions to knowledge about the Phoenician and Punic world, seven of which under the editorship of the able Ida Oggiano, I wish to pause and reflect briefly on the role that a journal like ours plays in a world of scholarship and publication that has changed dramatically since the foundation of the Rivista di Studi Fenici in 1973. Mine is a personal viewpoint; foregrounded is the relationship between noble origins of the journal’s past and the challenging times of the journal’s present. ; peer-reviewed