Laser therapy two decades on: the phoenix flourishes.

Abstract

As we approach the end of the third quarter of 2014, I look back over the last 2 decades and I am amazed, but proud and highly and gratified, at what Laser Therapy has accomplished in these 20 years. Of course, up till the first couple of years of the New Millennium we had a tremendous record, first under the steady hand of John Wiley and Sons of Chichester, UK, and then from Volume 6 with LT Publishers of Rishworth, Yorkshire as the publishing company and The University of Hokkaido Press as the printers. Then we had a small hiatus when the journal appeared to have disappeared, as it were. However, in 2004 I decided that it was time for the journal to ride again under its original masthead, and we put together the Laser Therapy Pilot Issue 2 which was sent out in 2004 as a sign that life was returning, and the Phoenix arose from its own ashes. During this past decade we have seen prompt and on-time quarterly publication of the journal from 14:1 in March 2005 all the way through till this issue. We have gone from a page count of 48 to 76 and occasionally 80 pages per issue. We became associated with the Japan Scientific and Technology Information Enumerator-Electronic (J-STAGE), and now every single issue of the journal from the first Pilot Issue in 1988 has been stored by J-STAGE in a digital format, and on-line searching is possible by author name or by keyword with free full-text PDF results available for every article older than 6 months under the free access credo (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/islsm). The journal contents have achieved scientific recognition and are now indexed by both EmBase in Europe and PubMed Central in the USA. We are in communication with the Thomson-Reuter Web of Science, which will be the final step in the long task of getting an impact factor established for Laser Therapy. In these 20 years, we have never missed our deadline for a single issue, so I'd like sincerely and humbly to thank you, our dear and faithful readers, contributors and subscribers, because without your papers to publish the journal, and subscriptions to the journal to provide the income to keep Laser Therapy going, we would not have been able to accomplish what we have. I'd also like to thank the hard-working Editorial Team here at JMLL, whose hard work and dedication have helped keep the journal to its deadlines.