I once again find myself writing the editorial for the first issue of the new year and the opportunity to provide you with a brief account of how the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (EJCN) is faring.

The 2009 impact factors were released in June and EJCN saw a further increase, taking its current impact factor up to 3.072. This increase has improved EJCN's ranking in the subject category of ‘Nutrition and Dietetics’, despite several new journals being added, to number 17 out of 66 titles. Going forward, we will continue to work towards and will hopefully achieve the steady year-on-year increase we have seen in the impact factor of our journal over recent years.

The average time from submission to first decision decreased to just over five weeks during 2010 and the majority of manuscripts accepted are now published online within 25 days, which indicates a significant improvement in the processing of manuscripts. We will continue to strive to improve these times further this year.

We moved some years ago from accepting unsolicited reviews to accepting only those solicited by the editorial team. We currently have many such reviews in the pipeline, a number of which will be published this year.

In addition to the several supplements that EJCN produces every year, we have now introduced ‘special issues’, which are commissioned by the members of the Editorial Board. We published two special issues last year—one in January consisting of background papers from the WHO Expert Consultation on Waist Circumference and Waist-Hip Ratio, 2008, and one in July on functional foods—and we have two more confirmed for this year.. Readers who have a series of 5 to 6 papers on a topic of interest or based on a recent conference symposium are encouraged to approach the Editor or any member of the Editorial Board with a request for a special issue of the journal.

EJCN, unlike many other nutritional journals, is not affiliated to any nutrition society. While this may be a disadvantage, it also endows other advantages. Our Publishers wish to promote EJCN both in Europe and internationally, and have offered to make EJCN available at a subsidised rate to members of the various nutrition societies in the European region. Officers of interested societies are requested to contact the journal Publishing Manager, Lucinda Haines (L.Haines@nature.com), to take advantage of this offer for their membership.

John Waterlow and the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition

We are saddened to announce the death of John Conrad Waterlow (born 13 June 1916–died 19 October 2010), who was the founding editor of EJCN. Many tributes have hitherto been paid, but I would be failing in my duty if I did not write a few words on behalf of our journal.

While attempting to write a tribute to John Waterlow, founding editor of this journal, for this editorial, I was intrigued to discover that many of the people, editors and publishers, involved in the birth and subsequent growth and success of EJCN had incomplete memories of that period. I hence assumed that this would be as good an occasion as any to place on record the history of this journal, which is closely interwoven with Waterlow, while paying a tribute to the role that he so crucially played during the journal's early formative years.

Many of you who read this editorial in this, the first issue, of volume 65 of EJCN may be apt to believe that the journal is now in its 65th year. EJCN however, in its present incarnation, is just over two decades old. It started out as the Journal of Human Nutrition, with the intention ‘to provide a forum for all those concerned with the science of human nutrition and with the application of that science to the feeding of people in health and disease.’ Its aim was to ‘bring together in one place, papers from many relevant disciplines’.

In 1982 (that is, volume 36), the Journal of Human Nutrition, published then by John Libbey, became the journal Human Nutrition. The acquisition of a new name was accompanied by separation of the journal into two distinct annual volumes: Human Nutrition: Applied Nutrition and Human Nutrition: Clinical Nutrition. The apparent objective of the split was ‘to cover the whole of human nutrition in a way which assists the unity of the subject’ while addressing the new challenges in the emerging field of clinical nutrition. Human Nutrition: Applied Nutrition retained its principal interests in measurement of dietary intake, food composition, nutrition education, dietetics and social nutrition, while the aim of Human Nutrition: Clinical Nutrition was to cover the fields of clinical and epidemiological research in nutrition and metabolism in man. Due to John Waterlow's scientific interest, recognition of the importance of the discipline worldwide and his foresight, it was open to contributions from all countries, dealing with nutritional problems of both affluence and poverty. Human Nutrition: Clinical Nutrition was edited with its inception in 1982 by a team of three editors (Waterlow, James and Munro) with John Waterlow in the lead. He was ably assisted by Joan Stephen as Managing Editor, who was subsequently designated as Executive Editor from 1984 until she relinquished this important role in 1989. Eldred Smith-Gordon was the Managing Publisher throughout this period.

In 1988, the twin journals of Human Nutrition—Applied and Clinical—were combined into the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, with the first volume being 42. With numerous publications from many European countries (Denmark, Finland, France, East and West Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Yugoslavia), as well as publications from several third world countries in the intervening six years (1982–1987) of the remarkable growth of the journal under Waterlow's able leadership, it was believed that there was a place for a Europe-wide journal. John Waterlow was thus the founding editor of this new European enterprise, the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Jo Hautvast of the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands, then Secretary-General of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) and also President of the Federation of European Nutrition Societies (FENS), was appointed Chairman of the Editorial Board endorsing ‘the common aim to promote nutritional research and its application in Europe’ and for an important role for EJCN in this crucial venture. We are fortunate that Jo Hautvast remains with us in this role today.

By July 1988, the new European Journal of Clinical Nutrition was acquired by our current publishers, Macmillan Press Ltd. John Garrow (United Kingdom), who had been assisting Waterlow since the birth of EJCN in 1988, then took over as the Editor-in-Chief in 1990. In 1996 Jaap Seidell (The Netherlands) joined Garrow, and subsequently in 2000 (volume 54) took over as Editor-in-Chief. I joined Jaap in 2006 and took over his reign in January 2007 (volume 61). We continue this tradition of a smooth transfer of editorship for the journal set by John Waterlow, our founding Editor, with the appointment of Manfred Muller of Kiel University (Germany) joining me as Deputy Editor as of this issue and who will step up to the position of Editor-in-Chief in January 2013 when I retire.

John Waterlow's contribution to this journal in its early years were crucial to its growth, popularity and success. That it was widely read and respected and could call on the services of a distinguished body of editors and reviewers is a tribute to the respect he commanded in the profession and a recognition of his contribution to nutritional science and his rare ability as an effective Editor of a new journal. The Editors who followed Waterlow have tried to maintain the high standards he set and have continued to promote the growth of the journal. To quote from John Garrow's editorial appreciation of JC Waterlow at the time he stepped down as Editor (EJCN volume 44, January 1990)—‘The continued growth in stature of this Journal would be the best possible tribute to its Founding Editor’. And so it is and so it should be.