Asthma : improved understanding and insights into the challenges of achieving asthma control

based at the BTS, before moving to BMA House, and we are grateful to our first Editorial Assistant Ed Howard who guided us so well in changing to a new on line submission system for Thorax and who managed the journal so efficiently for us until 2006. Ed was also very talented in enabling some of the more ‘social’ aspects of the journal, and we recall some very pleasant dinners both at the annual Thorax editors meetings and during the ATS meeting. We would like to thank Julia Dimitriou who took over from Ed and has so very conscientiously managed the journal for us, providing constant support to the whole editorial team, and we are delighted that she has been recently promoted to the post of Thorax Production Editor. In 2008, David Mitchell announced his resignation from the Thorax editorship after 5 years of very dedicated contribution to the journal. We are grateful to all the technical editors who have contributed to making the journal look so professional each month and especially to Liz Stockman who had been the Thorax technical editor for many years, pre-dating our editorship, till 2007. We would like to thank our Thorax managers, initially Andrea Horgan who provided us with many ideas to enhance the journal and also taught us a great deal about publishing, and lately Claire Folkes who has so expertly managed Thorax for us. We would like to thank Alex Williamson Publishing Manager of BMJ Journals who retired at the end of 2007. A number of Thorax editors have had the immense privilege to work with Alex over the years; she was very fond of the journal and gave us all much valued wise counsel. She was instrumental in developing Thorax into the high quality international journal it is today. We are also grateful to Peter Ashman who is the current Publishing Manager. The peer reviewers are especially important to a journal, and constructive criticism of a paper greatly improves the final published version. Each year we have published the name of the reviewers who helped us over the preceding year and we would like to express our gratitude to all the peer reviewers for helping us to select the very best papers for publication. Unfortunately over the years around one-third of the commissioned peer reviewers have declined to review papers mainly due to increasing professional commitments. We are grateful to the whole international respiratory community for sending us their high quality papers that contributed to the journal’s success and please keep sending them! We are leaving a very strong journal in very capable hands with the new Thorax editors Andy Bush and Ian Pavord, to whom we warmly wish every success. Our objective has been to publish the very best and original respiratory research papers, but we have also strived to provide in Thorax each month something of interest to all those involved with the care of respiratory patients. Back in January 2003, we wrote in our inaugural Thorax Editorial that ‘the success of Thorax will ultimately depend on the influence that the journal has on the readership’ and we hope we have achieved the goals and had a positive influence on our readership. We are also privileged that, through the editorship, we have been able to serve our respiratory community both in the UK and abroad. We hope that you agree with us that in September 2010 Thorax can celebrate its position as an important international respiratory journal and that our mission as Thorax Editors has been accomplished.