The Journal of Physiology annual report 2014–15: a year of change and celebration

We have had another busy year at The Journal of Physiology, continuing to promote physiology as a discipline to our loyal readers and also new communities with an interest in physiology.

We would like to extend our congratulations to Consulting Editors Sir Colin Blakemore FRS and Sir John Irving Bell FRS, who have both been awarded an honour by the Queen in the last 12 months. In addition, Consulting Editor Professor Dame Carol Robinson FRS won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science 2015.

Sir Colin, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London (formerly Waynflete Professor of Physiology, Oxford), received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2014 for services to scientific research, policy and outreach.

Sir John (Regius Chair of Medicine at Oxford University, UK) has been appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 Queen's New Year Honours for services to medicine, medical research and the life science industry.

Dame Carol is a Royal Society Research Professor and Dr Lee's Professor of Physical Chemistry at Oxford. The first female Professor of Chemistry in the history of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, her recent front cover work in Nature was featured as a Topical Review in The Journal (Landreh & Robinson, 2015) to celebrate the landmark centenary of women joining The Physiological Society.

Sadly this year we lost two great physiologists and supporters of The Journal: Professor Abe Guz (1929–2014) and Professor Bengt Saltin (1935–2014). Their loss was greatly felt by colleagues at home and abroad. Abe Guz trained several generations of respiratory physiologists and pulmonary physicians; indeed, many went on to become Chairs and have successful academic careers. He published some of his most noted work with us and it was fitting his memorial event was held in Huxley Hodgkin House (The Physiological Society's headquarters in London, UK) where his life was celebrated with family, friends and colleagues. Abe's In Memoriam was published in The Journal (Morrell, 2014). Bengt Saltin was a world leader in muscle and cardiovascular physiology, and part of the long established lineage of Scandinavian physiologists that have shaped the area of exercise physiology. He published over 50 articles with us, and considered The Journal the finest place to publish physiology. Indeed Andersen & Saltin (1985) is one of our citation classics, being in the top 0.5% of all papers published, cited over 750 times. Bengt's In Memoriam was also recently published (Bangsbo et al. 2014). Their legacy lives on in The Journal of Physiology for future generations.

In 2014 we undertook an exhaustive review of our online submission and review system which led us to switch systems from Bench>Press to eJournalPress. The new system, launched in December 2014, is a bespoke site that is better suited to our needs. We hope that our authors, reviewers and editors will all benefit from this change.

Another big change has been our decision to drop our HighWire platform and to publish exclusively on Wiley Online Library. This change has many benefits for our users. All archive content back to 1898 will now be hosted on one platform, readers can benefit from Wiley's ‘Anywhere Article’ (an enhanced HTML article version) and, perhaps most importantly, librarians now only have to analyse one set of usage reports, which will help them to assess the importance of The Journal to their institutions’ researchers and ensure the renewal of subscriptions. We urge our readers to update their bookmarks to the new site.

Below is a summary of our recent activities which have served to raise the visibility and profile of The Journal to an international audience and to engage with our loyal readership and supporters.

We have also outlined our plans for 2015, which we hope will build on our recent activities and result in better awareness of The Journal and physiology as a discipline.

Our impact

The Journal of Physiology remains the number 1 top-cited journal in the Physiology category with citations totalling 47,233 in 2013. Moreover, we are pleased to report that The Journal now ranks in the top ten of all citation metrics in Physiology. The Journal ranks joint first in Cited Half-life (>10.0), second in Eigenfactor Score (0.06260), third in number of articles published (386), fifth in Article Influence (1.825), eighth in both the two-year Impact Factor (4.544) and Immediacy Index (1.368) and ninth in the five-year Impact Factor (5.021).

Although these metrics are very encouraging, we are still of the view that citation metrics, and the Impact Factor specifically, are not accurate measures on a journal's performance and success. We are therefore also pleased to report that some other metrics that are growing in popularity also show that The Journal is one of the leading journals in its field; Google Scholar ranks The Journal as fourth in both the h5 index and the h5 median, and the SCImago Index ranks the journal as the 7th most important original research journal publishing human and mammalian physiology.

In addition to these impressive statistics, we are also pleased to report that downloads made to The Journal’s articles once again exceeded five million in the calendar year, showing the continual demand for the research we publish and reassuring us that the work that we select to publish is of great interest to the community. With such a demand for the online edition of The Journal, we are continuing to explore more ways in which we can build our online presence and add value to our online content.

Our publisher, Wiley, has recently enabled Altmetric – a tool that helps readers and authors to gauge the impact of an article by looking at the number of times it has been shared via social media and other internet-based channels. It isn't surprising that a lot of our articles get shared widely to interested parties.

Below is a list of The Journal of Physiology's top articles from 2014:

Altmetrics score	Article title
533	Vitamin C and E supplementation hampers cellular adaptation to endurance training in humans: a double-blind randomized controlled trial. Paulsen G, Cumming KT, Holden G, Hallén J, Rønnestad BR, Sveen O, Skaug A, Paur I, Bastani NE, Østgaard HN, Buer C, Midttun M, Freuchen F, Wiig H, Ulseth ET, Garthe I, Blomhoff R, Benestad HB & Raastad T. J Physiol 592 (8), 1887–1901.
424	A cellular memory mechanism aids overload hypertrophy in muscle long after an episodic exposure to anabolic steroids. Egner IM, Bruusgaard JC, Eftestøl E & Gundersen K. J Physiol 59 (24), 6221–6230.
316	Exercise counteracts the effects of short-term overfeeding and reduced physical activity independent of energy imbalance in healthy young men. Walhin JP, Richardson JD, Betts JA & Thompson D. J Physiol 591 (24), 6231–6243.
258	Resveratrol blunts the positive effects of exercise training on cardiovascular health in aged men. Gliemann L, Schmidt JF, Olesen J, Biensø RS, Peronard SL, Grandjean SU, Mortensen SP, Nyberg M, Bangsbo J, Pilegaard H & Hellsten Y. J Physiol 591 (20), 5047–5059.
237	Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans. Burgomaster KA, Howarth KR, Phillips SM, Rakobowchuk M, Macdonald MJ, McGee SL & Gibala MJ. J Physiol 586 (1), 151–160.
231	‘Metabolic syndrome' in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signalling and cognition. Agrawal R & Gomez-Pinilla F. J Physiol 590 (10), 2485–2499.
169	Timing and distribution of protein ingestion during prolonged recovery from resistance exercise alters myofibrillar protein synthesis. Areta JL, Burke LM, Ross ML, Camera DM, West DW, Broad EM, Jeacocke NA, Moore DR, Stellingwerff T, Phillips SM, Hawley JA & Coffey VG. J Physiol 591 (9), 2319–2331.
143	Physiological adaptations to low-volume, high-intensity interval training in health and disease. Gibala MJ, Little JP, MacDonald MJ & Hawley JA. J Physiol 590 (5), 1077–1084.
123	Glucose utilization rates regulate intake levels of artificial sweeteners. Tellez LA, Ren X, Han W, Medina S, Ferreira JG, Yeckel CW & de Araujo IE. J Physiol 591 (22), 5727–5744.
107	Short-term sprint interval versus traditional endurance training: similar initial adaptations in human skeletal muscle and exercise performance. Gibala MJ, Little JP, van Essen M, Wilkin GP, Burgomaster KA, Safdar A, Raha S & Tarnopolsky MA. J Physiol 575 (3), 901–911.

With sustained popularity and ability to secure the most important research we are confident that The Journal will continue to be considered one of the best and most authoritative journals for the physiology community.

Journal content

The Journal of Physiology continues to cover all areas of physiology, from molecular and cellular to whole-organism studies. Submissions remain steady, with a third of research submissions coming from the neuroscience community (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.

Research submissions in 2014 by Table of Contents category

We are pleased to see that submissions from the cardiovascular community remain strong, which may well be due to our presence at international meetings such as the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions and the European Society of Cardiology meetings in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

Part way through 2014 we changed the ‘Skeletal muscle and exercise’ category to ‘Muscle’ and now encourage our exercise papers to be submitted to the ‘Integrative’ category.

We are keen to encourage more submissions from researchers in renal and endocrine physiology, which we feel are very important, but currently underrepresented, areas. We hope that our special issue entitled The kidney – an organ of critical importance in physiology (volume 592, issue 18) will show to our readers our continued interest in these key areas.

As mentioned in last year's report, we think it essential that authors are able to see where their research fits within the broad scope of The Journal. We have revised our scope pictogram to ensure greater clarity for authors (Fig. 2). As you will see, The Journal welcomes submissions across the range of tissues and systems (vertical bands), and also publishes papers that cut across these systems (horizontal band). We hope that this visual representation will act to consolidate The Journal's current research priorities.

Figure 2.

The Journal of Physiology’s scope pictogram

Special issues and invited content

A new initiative in 2014 was to set up a Topical Reviews Panel with representation from each of the key focus areas for The Journal. The panel consists of Reviewing Editors who will have the extra responsibility of encouraging reviews in their area of expertise and developing a pipeline of reviews that will cover their most important and topical areas of research.

Ian Forsythe will continue to play an important role in invited content in a new capacity of Senior Reviews Editor. The Topical Review Panel will therefore be able to draw on Ian's expert knowledge to ensure consistent, top-quality reviews are published. We hope that with more people actively involved in the procurement of review articles, we may reach our target of having invited reviews constitute over 15% of our published content by this time next year.

In addition to stand-alone review articles, we have also secured a large number of Symposium Reviews throughout the year, and have published several special issues. A full list is provided below.

	Physiology and pathophysiology15 January 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 2Reviews from the symposium Physiology and pathophysiology, the Bioscience Birthday Symposium for Ole Petersen, which took place at the National Museum Cardiff, Wales, UK, on 6–7 March 2013.
	Mechanisms regulating breathing during exercise1 February 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 3Reviews from the symposium Recent advances in understanding mechanisms regulating breathing during exercise, which took place at Experimental Biology 2013, Boston, MA, USA on 24 April 2013.
	Fishing with flies, worms and bacteria: emerging models for mammalian membrane transport and trafficking1 March 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 5Reviews from the symposium Fishing with flies, worms and bacteria: emerging models for mammalian membrane transport and trafficking, which took place at Experimental Biology 2013, Boston, MA, USA on 21 April 2013.
	The integration of evolutionary biology with physiological science1 June 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 11Reviews from the symposium Physiology and evolution: has physiology become relevant again to evolutionary biology?, which took place at IUPS 2013, Birmingham, UK on 22 July 2013. ‘A Conversation with Denis Noble and Michael Joyner on the Integration of Evolutionary Biology with Physiological Science’ is a special session on the Experimental Biology meeting programme Monday 30 March 2015, 5.30–6.30 pm.
	Neurohormonal signalling in the gastrointestinal tract – new frontiers15 July 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 14Reviews of key new findings in gut neurohormonal signalling, with a focus on the integrative physiological context of these signalling mechanisms in health and disease.
	Intracellular signalling microdomains in heart1 August 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 15Reviews from the symposium Intracellular signalling microdomains in heart, which took place at IUPS 2013, Birmingham, UK on 25 July 2013.
	Sensory end organs: signal processing in the periphery15 August 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 16Reviews from the symposium Sensory end organs: signal processing in the periphery, which took place at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA, USA on 12 November 2013.
	The kidney – an organ of critical importance in physiology15 September 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 18Reviews highlighting examples where defects in renal function impact widely, underscoring the critical role of the kidney in whole-body function.
	Synaptic properties and functional consequences of cholinergic transmission in the CNS1 October 2014 - Volume 592 - Number 19Reviews from a symposium Synaptic properties and functional consequences of cholinergic transmission in the CNS, which took place at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA, USA on 10 November 2013.

CrossTalk

Launched in 2011, the CrossTalk debate series continues to grow from strength to strength. We have appointed two of our Reviewing Editors, Derek Bowie and Peying Fong, to drive the awareness of these debates and solicit new debates in their field of research. This will help broaden the scope of the debates and engage more of the community. Derek and Peying will be supported by Jerry Dempsey, who has moved into the role of Senior CrossTalk Editor.

The debates continue to provide readers with explicit account of both sides of a current controversy in physiology, allowing them to understand the arguments and arrive at an informed conclusion on the topic.

In December 2014 we published our 20th debate:

• CrossTalk proposal: The dominant mechanism causing disuse muscle atrophy is decreased protein synthesis. Stuart M. Phillips and Chris McGlory.

• CrossTalk opposing view: The dominant mechanism causing disuse muscle atrophy is proteolysis. Michael B. Reid, Andrew R. Judge, and Sue C. Bodine

We already have more exciting debates lined up for publication in 2015 so please look out for our ‘Call for Comments’ which will allow you to add your opinion on the current controversy.

All CrossTalk articles can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291469-7793/homepage/cross_talk_debates.htm

We are always looking for new topics to cover, so if you have any suggestions, please contact Managing Editor Sally Howells on showells@physoc.org.

Submissions, acceptance policy, review and publication times

The number of submissions we have received and the type of decisions made in 2014 have remained comparable to 2013, with approximately one-quarter of research submissions being accepted.

We have now been referring papers that don't fit The Journal’s scope or are below the threshold of acceptance to The Physiological Society's new journal, Physiological Reports, which is co-owned with the American Physiological Society. By referring papers with their peer review comments we hope to be able to reduce the burden on an already stretched reviewing community, and offer authors a swift decision on their referred paper (Fig. 3).

Figure 3.

Final decisions on research papers submitted to The Journal in 2014

The average time from submission to first decision for all research papers is currently 24.8 days – a great service to our authors – and well below our target of 4 weeks from submission. Papers that have been allocated to expert referees for review can expect a full evaluation of their submission within 33.4 days. With our new submission system we hope that our streamlined review process will ensure that these timelines are reduced in 2015.

As The Journal is now published solely on Wiley Online Library, we no longer need to publish accepted papers on a weekly basis, and can publish them as soon as they are ready, irrespective of the day of the week, which further reduces the delay from acceptance to online publication. This is replaced with a fully copy-edited, formatted and corrected version of the paper within 10 working days of receipt of author proof corrections.

The Journal of Physiology continues to have a focus on publishing top-quality original research papers, with just under two-thirds of papers published in 2014 being a Research Paper, a Rapid Report, a Techniques For Physiology Paper, or a Symposium-Related Paper (Fig. 4). Rapid Reports were discontinued in August 2014.

Figure 4.

Article types published in The Journal in 2014

As a follow-up to the Statistical Perspectives series that we've published over the past few years, we have now tightened up our policy regarding best practice in statistical testing and data presentation. Our new instructions for authors offer clear, non-technical assistance to authors who wish to publish in The Journal. The hope is that by better educating our authors, we will see an improvement in statistical reporting within the physiology community. To help us meet this target, we are pleased to welcome Alan Batterham to the The Journal as a Statistical Consultant.

Reaching a wider audience

In addition to The Journal being of great importance to the research community, we are also pleased to be able to reach a broader audience by writing Press Releases on relevant, translational articles. In 2014 The Physiological Society issued the following press releases:

• Vitamin C and E supplements hamper endurance training

  Vitamin C and E supplementation hampers cellular adaptation to endurance training in humans: a double-blind randomized controlled trial. Paulsen G, Cumming KT, Holden G, Hallén J, Rønnestad BR, Sveen O, Skaug A, Paur I, Bastani NE, Østgaard HN, Buer C, Midttun M, Freuchen F, Wiig H, Ulseth ET, Garthe I, Blomhoff R, Benestad HB & Raastad T. J Physiol 592, 1887–1901.

• Are you programmed to enjoy exercise?

  Nucleus accumbens neuronal maturation differences in young rats bred for low versus high voluntary running behavior. Roberts MD, Toedebusch RG, Wells KD, Company JM, Brown JD, Cruthirds CL, Heese AJ, Zhu C, Rottinghaus GE, Childs TE & Booth FW. J Physiol 592, 2119–2135.

• Unveiling brain circuits involved in fear response gives hope for panic disorders and phobias

  Neural substrates underlying fear-evoked freezing: the periaqueductal grey–cerebellar link. Koutsikou S, Crook JJ, Earl EV, Leith JL, Watson TC, Lumb BM & Apps R. J Physiol 592, 2197–2213.

• Interrupted breathing during sleep affects brain neurons necessary to regulate heart rate

  Chronic intermittent hypoxia–hypercapnia blunts heart rate responses and alters neurotransmission to cardiac vagal neurons. Dyavanapalli J, Jameson H, Dergacheva O, Jain V, Alhusayyen M & Mendelowitz D. J Physiol 592, 2799–2811.

We have a growing presence via social media channels, and are now pleased to report over 6900 followers on Twitter (well over 2000 more than at the same point last year) and well over 1200 ‘likes’ on Facebook. On these sites we promote recent content, forthcoming events and journal news that we feel is relevant to our many supporters.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/journalofphysiology

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jphysiol

Early Investigator Prize

This prize continues to attract a great number of applications which shows the growing interest and relevance of The Journal for early career investigators. At The Physiological Society's annual meeting in London in 2014 we were pleased to present the 2013 prize to Lasse Gliemann for his paper ‘Resveratrol blunts the positive effects of exercise training on cardiovascular health in aged men’ which was highly downloaded, gained some great media attention, had one Perspectives article, two Letters to the Editor and two Journal Club articles written about it.

We are looking forward to reviewing the nominations for the 2014 Prize.

More information on inclusion criteria can be found here: http://www.physoc.org/journal-physiology-editor-interviews

Filming

As mentioned in last year's Annual Report, we wanted to concentrate on more author- and content-focused films in 2014.

We have now produced a ‘Techniques Masterclass’ film that shows how nanoparticle tracking analysis has potential as a tool for the rapid characterization and quantification of exosomes in human urine, which could be used as a non-invasive tool for investigating human renal physiology. This will be available from early 2015, and we are hoping that it will lead to the submission of author-generated methods/techniques films throughout the year.

We have also filmed one of our Reviewing Editors, Kim Dora, talking about her research into vascular endothelial cell function. We are hoping to film more or our Editorial Board members in 2015.

We encourage you to watch and use these films for outreach and education in schools, university physiology departments and careers advice centres.

The Journal of Physiology's media gallery can be found here: http://www.physoc.org/journal-physiology-editor-interviews

New editors and Board achievements

During 2014 appointments to the Editorial Board were made to signal our interest in specific areas:

• Bruno Allard – skeletal muscle cell physiology and pathophysiology

• Andrew Allen – neuronal pathways that regulate autonomic activity – principally autonomic activity to the cardiovascular system

• Keith Buckler – peripheral chemoreception and the effects of hypoxia, acidosis and ischaemia on neuronal function

• Diego Contreras – Electrophysiology of thalamo-cortical and cortico-thalamic systems with emphasis on thalamus both in vitro and in vivo in animal models

• Kim Dora – vascular endothelial cell function and communication

• Mike Frenneaux – integrated physiology with a focus on clinical cardiology and cardiomyopathies

• Dino Giussani – the contribution of prenatal hypoxia, oxidative stress and nitric oxide bio-availability to the developmental programming of cardiovascular disease

• Ann Goodchild – how the brain and spinal cord controls cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic function and how stressors, both acute and chronic, impact these circuits and functions

• Kathy Griendling – NADPH oxidases, vascular biology and disease

• Bjorn Knollmann – biology of cardiac arrhythmias

• Walter Marcotti – auditory physiology and mechano-electrical transduction

• Matthew Nolan – mechanisms used within the brain to mediate cognitive processes and guide learned behaviours

• Jochen Roeper – recombinant and native ion channels with a focus on potassium channels, including molecular-biophysical analysis as well as their role in neurons and brain function

• Harold Schultz – chemoreflex and baroreflex regulation of cardio-respiratory function in health, exercise and disease

• Steve Segal – muscle blood flow, microcirculation and oxygen delivery

• Mike Shattock – application of fundamental physiological and molecular techniques to investigate the response of the myocardium to the stresses of ischaemia, reperfusion and hypertrophy

• Jesper Sjöström – mechanisms, phenomenology, and functional consequences of spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) in neocortical circuits

• Katalin Toth – cellular mechanisms of synaptic transmission and plasticity in the hippocampus

• Richard Wise – aims to develop ways of non-invasively imaging human brain function using magnetic resonance imaging and electrophysiological techniques

We are pleased to welcome the following new Reviewing Editors who started their tenure on the Board in January 2015.

• David Adams – neuroscience and membrane physiology using electrophysiological, molecular biological and fluorescence imaging techniques to study membrane receptors and ionic channels and calcium signalling

• Gregory D. Funk – basic mechanisms of neuronal information processing within respiratory networks

• Troy Hornberger – skeletal muscles sensing and how mechanical information is converted into the molecular events that regulate changes in mass (mechanotransduction)

• Tadashi Isa – neural mechanism of saccadic eye movements and dexterous hand movements, mainly by using the non-human primate model

• Anne McCardle – mechanisms of cell damage particularly related to skeletal muscle disorders with a focus on the role of oxidants as mediators of cell damage and as regulators of adaptive changes in gene expression

• Bettina Mittendorfer – metabolic research with focus on sexual dimorphism, nutrition and ageing; expert in the use of tracer and non-tracer methods for the evaluation of substrate kinetics in vivo in human subjects

• Frank Powell – respiratory neurobiology and the mechanisms of neural plasticity, tolerance and susceptibility to chronic hypoxia

Three new Senior Editors joined The Journal of Physiology team in July 2014:

• Don Bers, UC Davis, USA, whose research focuses on the cellular and molecular factors involved in the control of cardiac muscle contraction.

• Mike Hogan, UCSD, USA, who researches muscle respiration, metabolism, performance and fatigue.

• Scott Powers, University of Florida, USA, who investigates the effects of muscular exercise and inactivity on both cardiac skeletal muscle.

We are also pleased to announce that Jaideep Bains and Peying Fong will both be moving to the role of Senior Editor from July 2015.

We would like to thank Glenn Toney and Håkan Westerblad, who retired from their positions on The Board in 2014, for all their hard work and commitment to The Journal over the years.

The current Editorial Board of The Journal of Physiology can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291469-7793/homepage/EditorialBoard.html

Conferences

We have once again been targeting some major international events by having a stand in the exhibition halls which enables us to talk to new and existing authors, referees and editors.

To build on our activities aimed at attracting top cardiovascular content, we attended the European Society of Cardiology's Congress in Barcelona, Spain. As we hadn't been to this event before, and hadn't had a presence at a major European conference in recent memory, we weren't surprised to find that many of the delegates had not considered publishing in The Journal before. We hope that we managed to convince many of the people we spoke to not only to read our leading cardiovascular physiology content, but to consider submitting to The Journal in the future.

In addition, we attended the Biophysical Society's annual meeting, Experimental Biology, Physiology 2015 and the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting. The Journal also had a presence at other meetings attended or organised by our Board members.

Wherever possible we also showcase information and articles that represent our interesting and varied history, including the Nobel Prize winning papers that we have published over the years.

To coincide with each of these events we compiled virtual issues to highlight our best papers to the conferences delegates. All of these Virtual Issues are available online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291469-7793/homepage/virtual_issues.htm

Future plans

In 2015 we are going to continue to our efforts to promote The Journal to the cardiovascular community by attending the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting in Boston, MA, USA.

We will continue to offer sponsorship to key symposia throughout the year, with Symposium Review articles being submitted to The Journal as a result. We aim to sponsor a wide variety of symposia that indicate our commitment to covering all areas of physiology.

In 2015 we will be publishing two special issues on the topic of ageing and degeneration, to tie in with The Physiological Society's ‘Understanding Ageing’ year in 2015. One issue will be focused on neuroscience (classic neurodegenerative diseases), and the other issue will cover all other areas of physiology, with an emphasis on the effects of age on exercise and cardiac performance, muscle degeneration and vascular change.

We will also be publishing an issue celebrating 25 years since the first cloning of the CLC chloride-transporting proteins, and one focused on hypoxia, celebrating the work of Sir Joseph Bancroft.

We look forward to another busy and fruitful year in which we continue to develop an awareness of The Journal and continue to evolve and keep up-to-date with the most recent trends in scholarly publishing.

As always, we acknowledge the invaluable role of the many expert referees who provide us with constructive reports within our deadlines. We could not be successful journal we are today without the dedication and commitment of our extended editorial team. We invite you to provide feedback about The Journal and our plans to Managing Editor, Sally Howells showells@physoc.org.

Additional information

Competing interests

None.