We have now completed three years of our editorship and this past year has been the busiest, but also very rewarding. We are pleased to let you know that, over the past year, Thorax has continued to flourish as a successful high quality respiratory journal.^1–3

One of the highlights of the year has been that our impact factor has risen from 4.188 in 2003 to 5.040 for 2004 (table 1).^4,5 The impact factor that was published in 2005 reflects the number of citations in 2004 divided by the number of original papers and reviews published in Thorax in 2002 and 2003. Thorax is the second highest ranked respiratory journal in terms of impact factor, behind the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The number of articles (excluding editorials and letters) published in Thorax has remained relatively constant, with 183 articles in 2001, 210 in 2002, 198 in 2003, and 195 in 2004. Thus, the improvement in the impact factor has reflected the increased number of citations in the medical literature to Thorax papers and this is a result of the high quality papers that you have sent to the journal and the rigour of our peer review process.

Over the past year the number of submissions to the journal was at 1503, of which 913 were full original papers and the remainder were editorials, reviews, case reports, Images in Thorax, and letters. Table 2 shows the geographical spread of submissions to Thorax over the past 6 years. The numbers of papers coming from the UK, Europe (excluding UK), Japan and Australasia have remained steady while, over the past year, we have observed a welcome increase in submissions from North America, Canada, and Asia. Our acceptance …