• Annual report

In January 2003 the Editorship of Thorax changed and it is with great privilege and considerable awe and trepidation that we took over as Editors.¹ Under the editorship of John Britton and Alan Knox Thorax has achieved high standards and increased its impact factor, which now stands at 4.078 (fig 1). Thorax is currently the most successful European respiratory journal and the third among all respiratory journals (behind the two American Thoracic Society publications). The readership of Thorax, together with the whole respiratory community, owes an enormous debt of gratitude to John and Alan and the previous editorial team for their outstanding achievement.

With the advent of the new editorial team, Thorax changed to an online submission system using Bench>Press.⁵ Although there were some initial difficulties with the change over from a paper based system to complete online submission, this is now running very well and authors, reviewers, and all our editors seem to have adapted very well to the change. The number of submissions to Thorax has increased, particularly from March 2003, with a total of 1260 submissions for the 12 months from October 2002 to 30 September 2003, representing an overall increase of …