This has been a very successful year for Thorax. The number of submissions to the journal has risen again, particularly for original research papers which have increased by 25% over the last two years (table 1). Thorax continues to attract original contributions from all over the world (table 2) and, from the Editors' perspective, it is clear that not only the quantity but also the quality of material now being submitted to the journal is substantially higher than when we took over the editorship five years ago. The impact factor for the journal has also risen substantially over the last two years,¹ and whether this measure drives or reflects the quality and number of our submissions is hard to tell. However, table 1 shows that, allowing a two year lag for impact factor figures to influence research submissions (for example, the 1996 impact factor is released in summer . . . [Full text of this article]