At the Spring meeting of the Thoracic Society in 1970, I summarised some of the work done after receiving over 700 papers, of which 53% had come from the UK and 45% from 40 different countries. About 40% of all papers were rejected, the acceptance rate being 64% for those from the UK and 56% for those from elsewhere. I do not think we ever refused anything which should have been taken, although we had almost certainly taken some which we should not have accepted.

In those 10 years our circulation rose by over 40%; two thirds were exported and nearly one third of our issues went to the United States. I introduced abstracts at the beginning …