Welcome to the first issue for 2007. We offer you a special, extended issue to mark the ICN conference to be held in Yokohama, Japan in May. We welcome a Guest Editorial by ICN President Dr Hiroko Minami on the theme ‘Nurses at the Forefront: Dealing with Unexpected’. The first two articles in this issue also are on the conference theme. One analyses Iranian nurses’ responses to the Bam earthquake in 2003, and the second explores nurses’ role in the psychosocial responses needed in emergency situations. The remainder of the articles cover a diversity of nursing issues and represent submissions from 10 countries, some covering cross border themes. The international scope and variety of content are indicators of the journal’s success since the International Nursing Review (INR) became peer-reviewed in 2000. More articles will be published in 2007 as the number of pages has been increased yet again. Many nursing authors will also welcome the news that INR has been included in the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Journal Citation Report (JCR). INR will receive its first impact factor in 2007, which will be released in mid 2008 by ISI. So every article published in INR from 2005 onwards will contribute to the JCR annual impact factor. The details of this process can be found in Professor Megan-Jane Johnstone’s article (written before the news of INR’s inclusion) on ‘Journal impact factors: implications for the nursing profession’ (page 35). Professor Johnstone sounds a welcome note of caution when she points out that the impact factor was originally developed for very different purposes than it is used for today. She also argues that its use as a quality indicator for nursing scholarship has threatened to place ‘in jeopardy the sustainability and hence viability of many nursing journals and academic texts’ by encouraging nurses to publish only in ‘elite’ journals. Elitism is the polar opposite of INR’s philosophy. To reiterate once again extracts from the journal’s Aims and Scope: ‘INR focuses on original articles that help to forward the International Council of Nurses’ mission world-wide by representing nursing, advancing the profession and shaping health policy. INR encourages nurses to describe their work and to document their experience and research, and to submit articles that reflect the ICN values of flexibility, inclusiveness, partnership, achievement and visionary leadership.’ INR authors are also encouraged to ‘explore beyond local or national interests to the more general, global application of the principles underlying their work’. As Editor I am grateful to those authors who previously have considered INR as a publishing venue for their work and who have submitted so many lively and informative articles. I also deeply appreciate the support and advice given by our many excellent reviewers. I have no doubt that INR is widely read. In 2005 (the last year that information was available) INR online scored 80,500 ‘hits’; up four fold from 2002. I trust that INR’s future inclusion in the annual impact factor list is an indicator of the value placed internationally on the types of articles published in the past, and which we intend to publish more of in the future.