We are delighted to announce that the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has accepted Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism for indexing in MEDLINE. The indexing will be retrospective, and will include content published since the journal's launch. MEDLINE joins an extensive list of databases that already index the journal, namely EMBASE, ISI Web of Knowledge, Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, CINAHL, and CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service). The NLM uses the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee—composed of selected experts in the field of biomedicine—to review and recommend the journals that NLM should index. This imprimatur is a most welcome sign that the editorial community believes we are making a worthwhile contribution to the literature.

Now that we have heard from the NLM, it seems an appropriate time to hear from you—the journal's readers—about whether you feel that we are meeting the goals set out at the beginning of this enterprise: “to identify, summarize and place into clinical perspective the most important, clinically relevant and recent publications in the field of endocrinology and metabolism” (Larsen PR [2005] Nat Clin Pract Endocrinol Metab 1: 1). Please send any specific comments about the journal by email to ncpeditorial@nature.com; there is also a detailed questionnaire that we can send you for more-detailed feedback.

Please let us know of any important, clinically relevant research papers that have been accepted for publication but that we might not yet be aware of

We would also like to encourage you to let the journal staff know if you are aware of any papers—either your own or those of colleagues—that have been accepted in another journal and that we might feature as a Research Highlight or Practice Point. This will help us to minimize the delay between the original paper becoming available and us publishing the related article in this journal, and will ensure that we do not miss important papers. The sheer volume of endocrine-related papers published each month only confirms what we knew at the outset; namely, that the sense of being in a persistent state of 'catch-up' in keeping up-to-date with the current endocrinology literature is an accurate perception. For our Research Highlights and Practice Points, we routinely scan the 10–15 most widely read weekly and monthly clinical and scientific journals, as well as approximately 40 journals that focus on endocrinology and metabolism. In the first eight issues of our journal, we featured articles from 35 different journals in our Research Highlights, and articles from 20 different journals in the Practice Points.

We cannot cover every journal in our scanning, however, and, generally, we have to wait for each journal to publish its table of contents online before we become aware of forthcoming articles. So, please let us know (email: ncpendmet@nature.com) of any important, clinically relevant research papers in the field of endocrinology that have been accepted for publication but that we might not yet be aware of—perhaps they are not yet posted online, or they are in a journal that does not regularly feature endocrinology. Of course, all content will be subject to the usual peer and editorial review to ensure quality control.

It has been a very stimulating and rewarding year for us, as we have gained a deeper appreciation for the enormous breadth of our specialty, as well as the speed with which endocrinologic knowledge continues to accumulate. Now we invite you to become involved in helping our journal develop even further, so that busy physicians can continue to keep up to date with advances that will benefit patients everywhere.