A New Kid on the Block: The European Thyroid Journal

Abstract

The European Thyroid Journal (ETJ), the official journal of the European Thyroid Association (ETA) published by S. Karger AG in Basel, was launched in 2011 with the publication of the abstracts of the highly successful 35th Annual Meeting of the ETA held from 10 to 14 September, 2011, in Cracow, Poland. Now, we are proud to present the true inaugural, volume one, issue one of our Journal. Considering the increasing number of new journals being published in the endocrinology field and in particular in the thyroid field, one may ask the question if there is enough room for the publication of yet another thyroid journal? We are convinced that this is the case. A large number of high-quality studies are presented every year at our annual ETA meetings as well as at other thyroid and endocrinology meetings. With the ETJ, we provide an excellent forum to publish these studies with immediate access to the members of the ETA and to the scientific community at large. In some respects, the ETJ may be regarded as the house journal of the ETA. It will be the home for the publication of ETA guidelines dealing with the care of patients with various thyroid disorders. For the near future, the ETJ will be a quarterly journal, with four issues published each year. Each quarterly issue will publish ETA guidelines, and in this issue you will be able to consult the ETA guidelines on ‘Treatment of Metastatic Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma’, drafted by a taskforce installed by the ETA and chaired by Dr. Martin Schlumberger, with a commentary on these guidelines by Dr. Richard Kloos. Another way by which our Association impacts on the content of the Journal is the publication of reviews written by thyroidologists who have received awards at the annual ETA meetings. A fine example of this is provided by the article ‘Thyroid cancer: role of RET and beyond’, by Dr. Francesca Carlomagno, who received the Haring-ton-de Visscher Prize at the recent ETA meeting in Cracow. With the inauguration of the Journal, the ETA has also introduced the European Thyroid Journal Award to be bestowed on international scientists who have made major contributions to the thyroid field over an extended period of time. The ETJ awardee will submit a review based on his/her award lecture which will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal. We are happy to announce that Dr. P. Reed Larsen will be the first recipient of the ETJ Award at the 36th Annual Meeting of the ETA which will be held from 8 to 12 September, 2012, in Pisa, Italy. Above all, the ETJ will primarily publish original studies not only from ETA members but from all international thyroid investigators with quality as the prime criterion. This inaugural issue contains five such papers which incidentally are predominantly clinical and deal largely with thyroid and pregnancy, a topic of intense current interest. However, as the ETA is very much the home for clinical and basic thyroidologists, the ETJ welcomes all reviews, original manuscripts and letters to the editor which are clinical, translational or basic in nature. The multidisciplinary background of our associate editors and the international composition of our editorial board will guarantee a wide variety of thoroughly peer-reviewed thyroid papers. The online version of the ETJ is freely available to members of the ETA, and the printed version is available at a strongly reduced price. We count on our fellow ETA members to make the ETJ an extremely successful thyroid journal, and invite our colleagues and friends from all over the world to submit their best work to our Journal. Lastly, we would like to pay tribute to Dr. Peter Laur-berg, who during his ETA presidency was instrumental in creating and realizing plans that the ETA should have its own journal and own guidelines. We also thank the staff at Karger who guided us professionally in the development and promotion of the Journal.