New year's greetings.

Abstract

I sincerely appreciate the strong support from all the members of the Japanese Urological Association (JUA) and Urological Association of Asia (UAA), and the many readers of International Journal of Urology (IJU). From this year, the JUA mailing list has provided a summary of the latest valuable articles every month in Japanese. Furthermore, we plan to publish the English summary of the JUA’s clinical practice guidelines whenever they are newly edited. We hope that you will make full use of them in the international papers. The latest impact factor of IJU (2018) is 2.107. In the Urology and Nephrology field, it is ranked 39th out of 80 journals, and the ranking rose from last year (44th out of 76). I would like to express my sincere appreciation for these contributions, peer reviews, and citations from the JUA and UAA members. The IJU Case Reports, which was launched as a peer-reviewed open access sister journal in May 2018, has posted more case reports in 2019 than in 2018 (55 to 89). We sincerely look forward to your submission on your unique and valuable patient case in urology. There are substantial numbers of case report journals published, but we strongly believe that IJU Case Reports will be one of the best for you. Finally, we would like to express our deep appreciation to all members who undertook IJU peer review. In honor of this year as well, 10 highly reviewed JUA members will be honored as the “Reviewer of the Year”. In addition, IJU Seminar will be held at the 2020 JUA annual meeting in Kobe to promote IJU and IJU Case Reports to the JUA members. In this seminar, the JUA members who serve as deputy editor will explain the actual peer review process based on the actual submitted papers. Again, we look forward to your continuous co-operation and support from all of the JUA and UAA members. None declared.