As I have aged and matured—so has the journal! When I started in 1995 as Deputy Editor and Junior Co-Editor (young age of 39), we were receiving less than 40 papers submitted per year with 4 issues publishing between 16 and 18 papers annually. In the past 2 years, we received over 1000 submissions/year (expecting about 1150 this year). Our rejection rate is now at about 85%, so we are accepting around 150 to 175 papers annually. We are now at 12 issues/year and could handle moving to 18 issues (given the volume of submissions). In 1995, we were indexed in CINAHL but were not indexed in Pub-Med. It was not until 2006 that we were accepted to be indexed in MEDLINE. Also, it was not until 2016 that we were accepted to be indexed in Citation Index and gain an Impact Factor (debuted at 0.684). Our impact factor is now at 2.279 and improving robustly each year as we are discovered by more and more researchers.
I have had great support over the years from my Editorial Team that included Maureen Simmonds, Larry Cahalin, Darlene Sekerak (has been Associate Editor since 2003—focus on Case Reports), Morey Kolber (has been Associate Editor since 2016—focus on Research and Descriptive Reports), Jenny Wickford, Karen Synne Groven (has been Associate Editor since 2018—focus on Qualitative Research Reports), and Sarah Barradell (has been Associate Editor since 2019—focus on Qualitative Research Reports). Our newest Associate Editor appointed by our new Editor—Morey Kolber is Paul Salamh (focus on Research and Descriptive Reports)! In addition, our Editorial Board has been extremely helpful over the years, with special appreciation to Elizabeth Dean, Gail Jensen, and David Nicholls. I would be remised not to thank the thousands of Referees who have assisted us over the many years with special appreciation to Noureddin Ansari, Craig Denegar, Hossein Negahban, Alice Jones, Roberta Shepherd, Hans-Rudolf Weiss, and Kory Zimney.
I have set many goals over the years for the journal, and these have been achieved. We are now getting submissions from every continent and the growth in physical therapy research has been tremendous. I hope the journal and I have been an instrument in this growth and I sincerely thank every author and referee over these four decades for all your support! I wish good luck to Morey Kolber as he transitions to the Editor position—please support him as you have all supported me.
My wife (Ellen) and I have been blessed with a granddaughter this past year (Elika) and plan to continue spending as much time as possible with her and her mom (Karen our eldest daughter) and her dad (Giff) in California. We also plan on spending time with our youngest daughter (Katie) and her husband (Tim) as they develop their farm in New Mexico. Ellen, Annie (our stay-at-home daughter), and I also plan to do as much travel as possible and hope to see many of you on our adventures across the globe! However, when at home (either at Murrells Inlet, SC or Roatan Honduras) I offer an invitation to any and all to come and visit!! Please send me an e-mail!!
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.