After the Battle of El Alamein Winston Churchill said “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”. This is perhaps an apt quotation to use about the state of knowledge of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Never before has there been so much focus on this common, chronic, and terrible disease, which fills clinics and hospital beds every winter and causes enormous morbidity and increasing mortality. At every level in the healthcare community around the world there is interest in this problem leading to increased research funding and output as well as increasing pressure on governments to legislate against smoking. Global pharmaceutical companies are now investing heavily in target and drug discovery for COPD, and an increasing number of candidate compounds are being tested.
It is in this environment that we are delighted to be launching the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (IJCOPD). We have put together a core editorial team that combines youth and experience. The editorial board is truly global, and we hope to attract and publish research papers from all around the world.
You may ask: is there the need for another respiratory journal? We think that there is. In comparison to many of the more “general” respiratory journals, IJCOPD will be focussed on COPD. The aim of this journal is to provide an open forum for scientists, clinical researchers, physicians, and policy makers to review, discuss, and develop treatments and therapeutic approaches. A series of commissioned reviews and original research will be published that encompass the multiple facets of COPD, such as basic science, drug discovery, clinical trials, translational research, clinical studies, and health economics and risk management. In covering these subject areas, we hope that the journal will appeal to all those in the COPD healthcare community and help to maintain and increase the profile of COPD, which for so many years was a Cinderella subject.
The journal’s approach will be distinct from its rivals. As much as possible we will attempt a “bench-to-bedside” approach, bringing together the threads from all areas of COPD study. Thus, through a deeper understanding of the basic science of COPD and its impact on individual patients we can slow down this epidemic.
Welcome to this endeavor. We hope you enjoy reading this inaugural issue as much as we have enjoyed getting it off the ground. Moreover, we hope you will be stimulated and encouraged to keep up the fight against COPD. Thank you to our authors, reviewers, editorial members, and Dove Medical Press for their tremendous help in preparing this journal.