Since the last Editorial published in January 2007, much water has flowed under the bridge at European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (EJCN). We have had an interesting period alongside some difficult and exciting changes.

As Editor-in-Chief, I learned early on that as EJCN's manuscript submission rates continue to rise, our pagination cannot increase accordingly. This, in addition to the fact that the journal had a huge backlog of accepted papers waiting to print in an issue presented the editorial team with a difficult problem. At the time that I started with EJCN, the wait for papers to print in an issue was approximately 1 year (the ideal time frame is less than 3 months). We had to adapt and act rapidly and at times disappoint our authors, many of whom accepted our decisions with much tolerance and fortitude. Consequent to the decisions we made over this period, our acceptance rate for manuscripts decreased from about 40% (in 2004) to 10% (in 2008) and we moved from sending 98% of all submitted manuscripts (in 2004) for review to up to now only sending about 30% of submissions for outside review. This obviously meant that we had to institute a two-stage peer review process and decide on a large proportion of manuscripts in the first stage with the help of the Section Editors. This new process was also necessitated by the fact that procuring reviewers and then timely reports were becoming more demanding. This first-stage decision step meant that our time to first decision decreased significantly. We are, like all peer-reviewed journals, dependent on the unstinted and unrewarded support of those who want to further the field of nutrition. We are grateful to all of our reviewers and Section Editors for their advice. Your journal is moving in the right direction.

Our readers may have noticed that the Editorial Board also changed. The new board reflects the subject categories and the geographical representation of our authors and readers. We also intend to ensure that the board is active and supports the journal, and it is our intention to constantly review its constitution and the functions. To this end, we now have an Editorial Advisor (Professor Hautvast) to provide advice on top-level editorial matters. We also have five new Section Editors who actively manage the journal's editorial decisions.

Your journal has seen a small but significant increase in its most recent impact factor. Although we are still lagging behind the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (the leader among nutrition journals), we are happy to see an improvement in our impact factor at a time when others have decreased. This impact factor reflects the significance and timeliness of EJCN's research. In the same vein, we hope to publish at least two relevant supplements annually in an effort to provide our readers with more than just original research. We also hope to present readers with specially commissioned reviews that reflect the state of the art and describe the most important recent developments.

As a sign of the times, EJCN now strictly adheres to word, figure and table counts. We also discourage reports of repetitive studies of known observations in different populations and would encourage such reports, if at all, only as short communications.

We believe the editorial process changes will contribute to and reflect a qualitative improvement of our content. This we are sure will ensure a higher standard and greater impact in the field. And we trust EJCN will thus move on and instill some pride in association in whatever manner—author, reviewer, reader or whoever.