The journal Amyloid, starting with Alan S. Cohen as Editor-in-Chief, has now published papers for 30 years and earned its status as the official journal of the International Society of Amyloidosis (ISA) when the society was founded in 2002. Like most small journals its operations heavily rely on the voluntary contributions of editors and editorial board members, not to forget the authors. When Amyloid started, all aspects of amyloid and amyloidosis were included. Since then, our knowledge on amyloid and associated diseases has increased immensely. The landscape of amyloid research has evolved markedly since Amyloid’s inception with numerous specialised journals addressing specific aspects of amyloidosis, including those focused on Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. Therefore, we usually do not publish papers in these fields unless there are more general aspects included. However, we are eager to publish papers concerning basic amyloid research. The field of amyloid and amyloidosis has changed considerably also in many other aspects. Most systemic amyloidoses were hardly treatable at the time when Amyloid published its first issue but there are now effective treatments and many clinical trials. Accordingly, the developments in the amyloidosis field has induced a change in the contents of our journal.
During the time of the journal’s existence there has been a limited turnover of the Editorial Board members, and we felt that it was high time to refresh the Editorial Board of Amyloid and therefore we invited last year a large number of researchers from different amyloid-associated fields, both basic and clinically-oriented with the direct goal to identify experienced reviewers. The invitation was also meant to be a sign of recognition in the amyloid field but with an expectation to act as an active reviewer. We were very happy to experience a very positive response from the great majority of those invited. All editors were involved in this work but we had great help by Mona Johnson from the Rees Group and executive director of ISA and Ross Laman, portfolio manager from T&F.
When the first Editor-in-Chief Alan S. Cohen formed his leading team, he had three Associate Editors to help, Carmela R. Abraham, Jean D. Sipe and Martha Skinner. Drs. Sipe and Skinner kindly went on as Associate Editors for several years after the change in position as Editor-in-Chief and were of great help at the start of Dr. Westermark’s tenure at Editor in Chief. Dr. Sipe was on the Editorial Board until 2016 while David Seldin took over after that Martha Skinner left in 2014. Dr. Seldin sadly passed away 2016 and was replaced by Vaishali Sanchorawala. During the years 2014–2016 Drs. Yukio Ando, Barbara Kluve-Beckerman, Giampaolo Merlini, Vaishali Sanchorawala and Ole Suhr commenced as Associate Editors, later followed by Drs. Angela Dispenzieri, Mathew Maurer, Stefan Schönland and Yoshiki Sekijima. Amyloid and ISA are very grateful for the important and necessary but sometimes thankless work with the Journal by all Associate Editors. We take this opportunity to thank Drs. Barbara Kluve-Beckerman and Ole D. Suhr when they now finish their work as Associate Editors.
The journal has managed to become an important scientific periodical in the amyloidosis field which is evident by its present journal impact factor of 5.5. Our goal is to continue to attract original research articles with novelties in the amyloid field but also to remain a source of solid basic and clinical knowledge in the form of state of the art review articles from experienced scientists.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.