At the annual ACC meeting in March in Atlanta, I had the opportunity to present my final report as Editor-in-Chief of JACC after a tenure of 10 years. I want to share that report for the year 2001 with you, the readers, to give you a sense of where the Journal is at the present time. In the year 2001, the editorial office in San Francisco received a total of 2,515 new manuscripts or an average of 210 per month. This represents a 3% increase over the submission rate for 2000. Over the past 10 years, the Journal has maintained a steady increase of 2% to 3% per year with the exception of significant increases in 1995 (10%), 1998 (16%) and 1999 (12%). We published 4,100 pages in 2001. Our acceptance rate has remained relatively stable at about 20%. The lag time from acceptance to publication averages 11–12 weeks, a decrease of 4 weeks from 2000.

In the year 2001, 64% of submissions originated from outside the U.S., a 2% increase over the foreign submission rate of 2000. Japan leads the foreign submissions, followed by Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and France. The impact factor has risen to 7.082. We maintained the strong clinical content of the Journal with 87% clinical articles and 13% experimental studies. Subscriptions for December 2001 totaled 32,833. Since January 1, 2002, all new manuscripts have been directed to the new Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Anthony DeMaria in San Diego, and the official changeover date is July 1, 2002.

During 2001, six translation editions of JACC continued their publication: three in Spanish, one in Portuguese (Brazil), one in Polish and one in Czech. In addition, a new translation of JACC is debuting in Hungary. Since January 2002, JACC has been published twice a month, and all new submissions are being handled electronically at the San Diego office.

However, more important than the above numbers is my profound gratitude and thanks for all those who contributed so much to the continued growth of JACC over the past decade. Kevin Brennan followed by Christine Arturo served as Managing Editors during this time, and each did a magnificent job. I also express thanks to the dedicated staff at our San Francisco office. The Associate Editors were unflagging in devoting their energies to the Journal. These included Melvin D. Cheitlin, Stanton A. Glantz, Joel S. Karliner, Melvin M. Scheinman, Nelson B. Schiller and David D. Waters. We all learned much cardiology together and became a “Band of Brothers” through our shared experiences. The staff at Elsevier, especially Paula Gantz, Paul Weislogel and their staff, were incredibly supportive and helpful, as was the staff at the ACC who looked after the Journal. The Publications Committee, currently chaired by Fran Klocke, was very supportive in helping us to fulfill our responsibilities.

We owe a special debt of gratitude to the many reviewers who unselfishly gave of their time and talents to review manuscripts for JACC. With rare exceptions, these were done extremely well and contributed greatly to the selection process. I appreciate all those authors who submitted manuscripts to us over the past 10 years. Because of the acceptance rate of only 20%, I know that many of you were disappointed by our decisions, especially since we were forced by a fixed number of pages to reject some very good manuscripts. I am also grateful to all the readers who took the time to write and comment on articles, my Editor’s Pages or other aspects of the Journal. Your thoughtful comments and suggestions were most helpful and appreciated.

In summary “Thanks for the Memories” of a wonderful decade in my professional life. I will never forget it.