Effective with this issue of March 1, 2002, the Journal of Clinical Investigation editorial board has moved to Columbia University. The purpose of this inaugural editorial is to outline the policies and goals of the new editors. First, a brief assessment of where the JCI stands in relationship to the biomedical research community is in order. The need for a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal that reports advances in biomedical research has never been greater. Biomedical research funding continues to increase; important discoveries are coming at faster rates. The impact of biomedical research on the clinical practice of medicine is more immediate than ever. These are exciting times. Over the course of its 78-year history, the JCI has been the journal of choice for reporting the most important advances in biomedical research. Landmark papers published in the JCI have presented elucidation of the pathophysiology of human diseases such as diabetic ketoacidosis (1) and Addison disease (2), development of radioimmunoassays for medically important peptides including ACTH and somatomedin B (3, 4), fundamental advances in understanding steroid metabolism and its role in prostatic hypertrophy and human sexuality (5–7), seminal findings linking cholesterol to heart disease (8–10), and key advances in organ transplant biology (11, 12), to mention but a small sampling (Figure 1). In this context, the overriding mission of the new JCI editors is to continue publishing important and timely biomedical research of broad interest and relevance to normal biology and diseases. Ideally, these papers will impact current understanding and move fields forward. This will not change.

The mechanism by which the JCI editors (16 active investigators with expertise in a wide range of biomedical research areas) operate to achieve the above-stated mission is a weekly editorial board meeting, during which all submitted articles are discussed and editorial decisions are made. This process represents a substantial strength of the JCI, in that contributors are assured that their work will receive careful, fair, and consistent review from their peers. Given that the JCI receives in excess of 3,500 submissions per year (roughly 300 per month), the task of the editors is considerable.