This issue of GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology marks the beginning of a new era in the journal’s life, with a new editorial team in place. The former editorial team, who took over in 2014, lists a number of significant number of achievements during their mandate - English was adopted as the journal’s language, PubMed indexation was achieved in 2017, and in 2020 the journal was included for the first time in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) (¹) We also witnessed a consistent growth in the number of submissions (along with the inevitable increase in the rejection rate of submitted manuscripts (63%), despite the increase in the number of pages per issue), an increased quality of, as well as an increased number of citations per published paper (²),³ ). The new editors pay tribute to the effort and achievements of the former editorial team and thank Prof. Pedro Pimentel-Nunes, Prof. Mariana Machado, Dr. Miguel Bispo, and Prof. Nuno Almeida for their superlative work on behalf of GE! We also acknowledge the excellent work of GE reviewers who provide a vital contribution to the peer review process, increasing the quality of the papers that are ultimately published, and being majorly responsible for the short review cycles we strive to achieve.

In short, the legacy built by our predecessors is both impressive and a tough act to follow! Today, GE is not only the Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology but a journal with international visibility - GE receives submissions from all continents (43 countries) and the Editorial Board includes a group of recognized experts in their fields. However, ambition is inherent to humans, gastroenterologists included, driving change and the search for improvements. With a larger and more successful journal come greater responsibilities, and the new editorial team composed by Diogo Libânio (Editor-in-Chief), Carolina Palmela, Luís Maia, and Miguel Areia (co-editors) is highly motivated to carry on along the growth path set by our predecessors.

The mandate of this editorial team (2021-2024) includes two major goals: (1) indexation in MEDLINE; (2) obtaining an Impact Factor. These two major aims can only be achieved if the quality of our published articles continues to grow, if GE publishes novel and relevant original research, and if the number of citations per paper published maintains its upwards trend. The major factors that drive citations are the clinical impact of published papers and their visibility. With this in mind, the proportion of clinically useful review articles and original papers must increase and should be the core of our journal, although case reports and endoscopic snapshots/images will keep its presence on our journal sections.

GE will also increase its presence in social media (namely Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) to spread the word about the high-quality papers published in our journal. Visual abstracts including the key messages of original papers are also very useful to readers in these frenzied times when time is ever scarcer, and this will be implemented soon.

GE and our publisher (Karger) are also committed to complying with the highest ethical standards in publication, and we will continue to remind our authors to always include patient consent forms, ethical approval, and data availability declarations with every submitted paper. The editorial team is also committed to ensure a timely, fair, ethical, transparent, and high-quality peer review process. Every paper submitted that is accepted for review is evaluated by at least two peer reviewers, and the implementation of a double-blind peer review process will also be considered in the near future. With this in mind, a revision of authors’ guidelines and creation of peer review guidelines is also under consideration and will be published soon.

Evidently, these ambitious goals can only be achieved with the continued contribution of the Portuguese and worldwide gastroenterological community (providing high-quality original articles, contributing to the peer re-view process, and spreading the word about our journal). We count on all of you (readers, authors, and reviewers) to help us keep GE on its current and impressive growth track.