Dear My Collogues,

For the last seven years, I was honored to serve as publishing manager, associate editor and finally editor of the İstanbul Medical Journal, and I am completing my mission with this last issue of 2019. I am handing editorial duty to Dr. Feray AKBAŞ.

In these seven years, we have carried out several essential duties as the editorial board for the development of the necessary infrastructure for academic publishing. Some critical work was done, such as making a website, obtaining an electronic ISSN number, making electronic copies of all old printed archives, and making all past issues accessible on the website. In addition to these, long waiting times due to the printing of 8-10 articles in an issue was overcome by increasing the annually published issues from 4 to 6, and by increasing the number of articles per issue regularly over the years. Additionally, the number and type of reviewers in our reviewer pool was increased dramatically during this period, and the number of reviewers was increased by five times compared to 7 years ago. We managed to enter a large number of international indexes, and by making our journal fully published in English, we made essential progress in international recognition and accessibility. Also, it was possible to receive and publish some articles from vast geographic area such as far Asia or North America. I am grateful to “Aves” and “Galenos” for their contributions and efforts in composing and publishing at international standards while the attempt to enter the global indexes.

I had the opportunity to work together with Dr. Cüneyt MÜDERRİSOĞLU in the previous editorial board, and I would like to commemorate him respectfully once again. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Hayri POLAT, Dr. Gürhan ÇELİK, Dr. Mehmet Salih GÜREL, Dr. Behiye Pınar GÖKSEDEF, Dr. Serkan SARI, Dr. Turgut KARABAĞ, Dr. Nevra DURSUN and new editor Dr. Feray AKBAŞ, for their efforts, understanding and support during this long period.

I would like to thank Özgür YİĞİT, the owner of the journal and the head of the Istanbul Training and Research Hospital, for the opportunity to take part in the editorial board of the Istanbul Medical Journal.

I wish happy New Year all of you.

My best regards,

MD, Tevfik Fikret ÇERMİK