On behalf of our outstanding team of associate editors, I am honored and privileged to report to you the current state of Diabetes Care at the end of the third year of our tenure. The journal continues to enjoy a wide international readership and a high impact factor that allows us to be ranked fourth out of 92 journals in diabetes and endocrinology and tenth out of 100 general medicine journals. Though we are clearly making progress in clinical science, I want to highlight our challenges, particularly in the humanistic aspects of diabetes, as we contribute to the mission of not only finding a cure for the disease but also improving the lives of people with diabetes.

The explosion of interest in the field of diabetes and its comorbidities, along with increased research, has enabled maintenance of the record submission rate established about 2 years ago. This rate seems to have plateaued a bit, perhaps because of frustration with our high rejection rate, which is currently 75%. Regrettably, space constraints often dictate the rejection of many well-done studies, a portion of which the editorial committee is forced to return without external review, thus presenting the difficult task of disappointing authors. I would like to emphasize that this does not mean that the study has not been read internally by our associate editors. The advantage to authors is that they will at least get the “bad news” quickly rather than waiting for several weeks. Having said that, our overall time to initial decision continues to fall and is currently at a median of 13 days, thanks to our excellent and continually improving online submission system. Again, I would like to remind readers and authors of their responsibility to review papers—without which the peer review system would fail.

The plateauing of the submission rate may have a disturbing implication: the amount of diabetes research is not increasing in line with the increase in the prevalence and importance of the disease. It is vital that we continue to pressure grant-giving bodies to fund research in diabetes and encourage young investigators to continue in an academic career and build the next generation of leaders in the field. I am delighted with the recent changes in the research policies of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), which will encourage and enhance clinical and translational research. In this issue of Diabetes Care, we publish an editorial on this important topic by Dr. Paul Robertson, ADA President, Science and Medicine. Given the importance of research funding, we plan to acknowledge the support of research grantors appropriately and would particularly like to highlight research that is funded by the ADA, although such papers in no way receive any preference or priority in the review process.

The last year has seen the publication and presentation of several landmark clinical trials reporting on goals for metabolic control and how these goals should be achieved, which has stirred up much controversy. We are pleased to publish the ADA's response to these controversies, which has been developed jointly with organizations such as the American Heart Association and others. We welcome the collaboration across specialty lines that is important in overcoming the complex multisystem complications of diabetes.

Much progress continues to be made in new developments in the pharmaceutical industry in therapy for diabetes. We encourage such research but point out that Diabetes Care can only publish studies that address novel concepts rather than repetitive “me too” clinical trials—even if they are well done and up to the standards of the Food and Drug Administration. We would rather publish clinical trials that are likely to change clinical practice in a broader sense. Thus, many otherwise well-conducted trials will not be published in our journal. I would also like to take the opportunity to remind sponsors of clinical trials of the obligations of authorship, which are well known and were published and highlighted in my editorial last year. We hope that guidelines from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors will continue to be refined and fully implemented. We also continue to implement the requirement that all clinical trials be registered, including nonpharmacological interventions. We encourage complete transparency of the data from clinical trials, particularly adverse events and patient dropout. This may be achieved by including details such as a Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement, which we encourage but do not mandate. To save space in the print edition, such information can now be included for online publication only and referred to in the text of the main paper. Shortly, the ADA will partner with other international organizations to develop guidelines on the type of research that we feel is needed to achieve our mission. We hope that we can reach consensus on the most clinically useful and ethical approach to research.

We continue to have important debates on health care policies and changes that we hope will improve the care of people with chronic disease, such as those with diabetes. Again, the ADA is taking major initiatives in advocacy for improvements in health care policy, which we plan to publish shortly as a commentary. We look forward to continuing debate and suggestions as we attempt to improve the lives of people with diabetes and as we move along toward finding a cure.

While we attempt to find a cure for diabetes, I would like to highlight the human side of living with the disease, and I chose to put on the cover of this month's issue a letter to the Insulin Discovery Team and Dr. Banting from the grandmother of one of our own associate editors, Lois Jovanovic. It illustrates the gratitude and emotion that she must have felt when a “cure” was found for what was then a life-threatening disease. We welcome letters and anecdotes that highlight success in dealing with diabetes. We hope the day is not too distant when we can offer similar hope to all of the millions of people who suffer with diabetes on a chronic basis.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our outstanding team of associate editors and to bid farewell to Lois Jovanovic after her many years of outstanding service to the journal in general and to the cause of women with diabetes in particular. (See the online letter available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc08-1746.) Lois has decided to step down and make way for Dr. Robert Moses from Australia, who brings another dimension to our expansion and recognition as a truly international journal. We also welcome the new members of the editorial board and thank our outgoing members (Jonathan Shaw, Richard Pratley, David Leslie, Joshua Barzilay, Bruce Duncan, David Ludwig, Martha Price, and Carolyn Blue) for their expert service.

Finally, nothing would be accomplished without the hard work and dedication of our office staff, Lyn, Shannon, and Jane, who put in long hours assisting authors and reviewers alike and have been able to successfully incorporate the added responsibilities that electronic submission and quality publication incur. All this leads to continued recognition of Diabetes Care as the leading journal in diabetes, publishing papers of clinical, public health, and humanistic importance.

No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

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