Thorax had a good 2013. We were all buoyed by a large rise in our impact factor from 6.525 to 8.376, by far the largest rise seen in our specialty area, cementing our position as the second-ranked respiratory journal behind the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (impact factor 11.041). We suspect this has led to an increase in submission of high-quality manuscripts and are hopeful that gains in impact factor will increase. In part our improved impact factor reflects a reduction in original articles published per edition from 10–12 to 8–10 with the introduction of new content published in the ‘Chest Clinic’ section aimed at the jobbing clinician without a major research interest. However, the tremendous hard work of the associate editors, deputy editors, reviewers and the editorial team and the high-quality manuscripts sent in by you, our readers, have been much more important and hugely appreciated factors.

The acceptance rate for original articles is now 11% and the overall acceptance rate is 23%. Editorial turnaround times continue to improve. The average time to first decision in 2013 was 19 days for all papers and the average time to first decision for reviewed papers was 40 days, a modest improvement from 2012. The instant reject rate has reduced from 43% to 37%. We have seen an increase in time from on-line publication to paper publication …