A welcome from the Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

I am pleased to welcome readers to the first issue of 2012, as I start my second year as the Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Journal of Urology. I would like to offer my thanks and appreciation to the team of the editorial board, as well as the hard-working reviewers, our Technical Editor, Robert Grange, and to the team at Elsevier (particularly Anne-Marie Pordon) for their efforts during the past year. We successfully published a full four-issue volume of the AJU during 2011. This is a fantastic achievement, as we only started working with Elsevier during the second third of 2011 and went through the required start-up procedures. The journal is produced, hosted, printed and distributed by Elsevier. All issues are freely available, open-access, at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/2090598X and http://www.ajuweb.com/ together with the distribution of the printed issues throughout the entire Middle East, and limited distribution in the USA, Europe, Asia and Africa. The journal is currently indexed in Embase and Scopus. We hope to have a Medline review at the end of 2012. If approved, all articles published in that year (volume) and onward will appear on PubMed. This is a special, themed issue on ‘Laparoscopy/Robotics’ with the guest editor Prof. Jihad Kaouk (Cleveland Clinic, OH, USA), one of the most esteemed experts in this field. This issue covers some of the urological procedures to which robotic surgery has been applied in Arab countries. We are planning to present at least one more special issue during 2012 on ‘Stones/Endourology’ with Prof. Demetrius Bagley (Philadelphia, PA, USA) and Noor Buchholz (London, UK) as guest editors. The journal has a new look this year and we have expanded the pool of reviewers. The submission rate is gradually increasing, a clear indication of a good reputation. Moreover, the rejection rate is also increasing, and this will further improve the scientific quality of the published articles.