2009 in a nutshell

Wi th the end of the year approaching , we at EMBO Molecular Medicine decided to make a balance of the journal's first year of existence. 2009 finally saw the journal's first issue and all others that followed, although preparations for launch started already early in 2008. Clinicians and molecular biologists have trusted us with their submissions covering an incredible range of fields and interests in the area of Molecular Medicine. The papers we have published have drawn the attention of many to our website and to the pages of the journal. The impact of the findings we report is being appreciated worldwide and every month the research we publish is broadly covered by a variety of news services. Adding all the ups and some little downs of the year, we come to the conclusion that a great year has passed for the journal! A thank you is in order and it goes not only to our authors, reviewers, editorial board members and senior editors but also to our many readers for the success of our first year! » A thank you is in order.. . « Figure 1 illustrates well the focus of our journal as well as the exciting diversity of our content within this focus. Along with our monthly issues we have also decided to create three Virtual issues on the topics we covered the most this year (these are again patent in Fig 1). The idea started with the 'Celebrating Stem Cells' issue and has now expanded to a 'Cancer' and a 'Neurode-generation' issues. Do consult these online on our webpage. They are definitely worth it! We will continue to update the Virtual issues as new papers on the topic appear and this way, readers can easily access and appreciate the Reviews and Primary research articles we publish on their fields. While our 2009 issues covered many fields, there are areas that remain to be explored in the pages of our journal and that we are eager to cover. If you feel that the subjects close to your heart are not yet properly represented in EMBO Molecular Medicine, then please go ahead and do submit your next paper to our journal. We look forward to reading and hopefully publishing it! It is our ambition to promote the journal as a forum for authors and readers to divulge and learn about stimulating advances in the broad Molecular …