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It has been one year since the present team of associate editors, Drs. Sharon Anderson, Pam Carmines, Douglas Eaton, Tom Kleyman, and Susan Wall, and I took the helm of the American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology. Our goal was to make the best even better. With your help, we believe that AJP-Renal is doing better than ever. We are very pleased that the number of original manuscript submissions to AJP-Renal is up 20% during the first half of 2002. The mean time from manuscript submission to initial decision is down to 28 days, thanks to the hard work and effort of our reviewers, and we suspect that the median time is even shorter than 28 days. We are happy to report that the 2001 ISI Impact Factor of AJP-Renal is up to 4.523. This ranks third among all renal journals and is only slightly below the impact factor of the second-place journal. While the true scientific value of the ISI Impact Factor is dubious, we recognize the importance of this Impact Factor to many APS members in Europe and Asia, and even to some in the US.

Given this success, how can we improve AJP-Renal? The Associate Editors and I love hard work, and we would be delighted to see the number of submissions to AJP-Renal increase even more. One area where we have seen relatively few submissions is in translational research, despite the ongoing call for papers in this area. Some excellent reviews on translational research topics have appeared in AJP-Renal recently, and others will appear in the near future. We encourage you and your colleagues to submit your best translational research work to AJP-Renal. We will strive to provide a timely and rigorous, but fair and collegial, review process for these (and other) papers.

We would like to shorten the time from submission to initial decision even more. APS Central permits us to solicit reviewers and give them access to papers with virtually no down-time. However, APS Central cannot alter the time it takes for a reviewer to render a thoughtful review of a manuscript. We can only shorten the review time by asking that potential reviewers respond promptly to requests to review papers and by asking that reviewers do their best to review manuscripts promptly.

We believe that the Impact Factor for AJP-Renal can increase even further. We have seen its steady increase by publishing the best original papers and reviews. We will continue to do so, as long as you continue to submit your best work to AJP-Renal and continue to contribute well-written, state-of-the-art reviews. We have always encouraged authors to cite all appropriate literature. The advent of AJP Articles in Press allows authors access to the newest findings in Renal Physiology, and we encourage authors to cite these papers, thereby ensuring that their manuscript includes the most current findings.

The Associate Editors and I are extremely pleased with the success that AJP-Renal has enjoyed during the past year. Our goal remains making AJP-Renal THE home for the best papers in Renal Physiology, defined in its broadest sense. We encourage you and your colleagues to always submit your best work to AJP-Renal. We look forward to working with each of you during the coming years to continue making the best renal physiology journal even better.