A new cover – reflecting a move forward for our Journal

Welcome to the JEADV in a new cover version!

During the 32 years of the JEADV's existence, it has gone through a variety of cover designs (Fig. 1). It started with a cover in white and green, and then, it became silver. Since 2002, the cover has been hallmarked by its characteristic red, with slight modifications of the design over the years. Hence, the journal got the nickname ‘the Red Journal’, as the counterpart to the ‘Blue Journal’ of our American friends. The new cover features a contemporary design with bold red lines contrasting on a white background – the main picture is now presented with much more prominence.

Some journals print only the table of content on the cover page, which is practical but not so attractive. Dermatologists are visual people who like to analyse structures in pictures. In the past, we combined the cover image together with ‘bullet points’, pointing to the most important articles in the issue. The pictures, however, were rather small. Therefore, in a strategic planning meeting with EADV leaders and among the Editors and the editorial team, several key decisions for developing new structures of the journal were made, one of them being the launch of a new cover that would increase the visibility and appeal of the Journal. The editorial team is now officially the Editorial Department in the structure of EADV office, and with the new addition of a Scientific Medical Writer in the Lugano office, we are ready to tackle the challenges of the future and continue to progress. I am looking forward to starting my second term as the JEADV Editor-in-Chief.

Another good news for the Journal: the new 2017 Impact Factors have been released. We are proud to announce that the JEADV's Impact Factor jumped to 4.287 (compared to 2.8 three years ago) and is now ranked number 7 among 62 peer-reviewed international Dermatology journals.

The top 20 articles contributing to these citations were European Guidelines (e.g. ‘Hidradenitis suppurativa’ by Zouboulis et al.1 and ‘Psoriasis’ by Nast et al.2) and position statements (e.g. ‘Atopic dermatitis’ by Wollenberg et al.3), as well as good clinical trials, reviews and also excellent clinical observations.

JEADV is a clinical journal, and therefore, our readers are primarily dermatologists in the office, in a hospital or in research institutions and industry. We are seeking to feature new and cutting-edge developments in the field at the highest level of scientific quality, while offering an attractive journal that can be informative and pleasurable for our readers to leaf through its pages.

Recently we started the new series ‘Historical Perspectives’ featuring interviews with ‘Pioneers in Dermatology and Venereology’, i.e. key opinion leaders of our discipline who recount us in a very personal manner the triumphs and defeats in their professional life and their ideas about the future of our discipline.

As of July 2018, we received over 1700 new manuscript submissions, most of them of good quality. This means, regrettably, that we must reject many and many good manuscripts, even the very good ones. But this is the only way to constantly improve the quality of the Journal.

This success is the result of the excellent work of many people involved – the editorial team, the publisher, the Associate Editors, the many excellent reviewers, the Editorial Board and all the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of EADV. Thank you, the Journal would not have gotten where it is today without your support.