Three years after its launch, Clinical and Translational Imaging (CTI) has become an established source of review articles in molecular imaging and its content is increasingly being cited. I would therefore like to begin by taking this opportunity to thank all the authors and reviewers who, over the past 3 years, have contributed to the birth and growth of the journal with their commitment and outstanding scientific competence.

The time is now ripe for an evolution of the editorial strategy adopted so far [1–3] and for a major leap forward. CTI has hitherto dedicated each issue to a single topic. However, this has meant that many suggestions of topics to be reviewed in a small series of articles or in a single paper have had to be rejected due to the inflexibility of the policy of publishing at least eight review articles per issue on each specific topic.

To overcome this limitation, from now on each issue of CTI will contain papers on various topics. Furthermore, each individual article published from the first issue of 2016 onward will be assigned to one of a number of defined topical collections. Thus the issues will contain a blend of articles on different subjects, but it will be possible to assemble all the articles on a given scientific or clinical topics across issues and volumes. The titles of the available article collections will be displayed on SpringerLink (http://link.springer.com) in order to facilitate the search.

In other words, whereas in the past we have published six issues per year each devoted to one specific topic, in the future we will publish thematic series of papers, but the publication of articles will be serial and spread over several issues. As time goes by, review papers will progressively populate the collections. The new classification system will allow continuous updating of the reviews on the various topics and keep the journal content comprehensive and up-to-date.

The collections that will be started this year include the following: Radiation biology and dosimetry, Oncology, Pediatric, Radioguided surgery and Radionuclide therapy. Other sections may be added during 2016, and the future will certainly see further expansion.

Miniseries of articles on different topics can now be published by virtue of the flexibility permitted by this approach. Whereas in the past it was never possible to devote an entire issue of CTI to a niche area, starting in 2016 we’ll be able to embrace topics that require only a few articles. Furthermore, certain aspects may require reappraisal with the passage of time, and with the new publishing strategy articles containing new scientific and clinical data will form a continuum with previous articles in the series.

Moreover, unsolicited review articles can now also be considered, offering our readership the opportunity to become more actively involved in determining the personality and content of the journal. These papers should be submitted to CTI’s Editorial Manager website and will be fast-tracked for review by expert referees and, if accepted, rapid online publication within 3 months of initial submission.

One by-product of this policy will be the timely publication of accepted papers. So far the rate-limiting step for the publication of each issue has been the delivery of the last paper on the chosen topic, with authors who have complied with the deadlines being forced to wait. With the new publishing strategy this limitation will be overcome and the multi-thematic issues will appear regularly every 2 months.

On this occasion I would also like to renew the invitation to our readership to propose topics for either series or single review papers. I would also like to emphasize that CTI publishes papers in four categories: Review Article (preferably based on a meta-analysis) Letter, Editorial and Spotlight. Both editorials and Spotlight contributions are short texts of approximately two printed pages, with neither abstract nor keywords and a number of words limited to 1000–1400 including a maximum of three references. Whereas the editorial in relation to a thematic series forms part of the series, a Spotlight article is a commentary that is expected to be quite provocative, and generate debates on little-discussed matters or emerging issues in the field of molecular imaging. Spotlight contributions are generally invited, but can also be freely submitted.

We hope that our readers will appreciate this evolution and maintain the curiosity about the content of CTI they have consistently displayed to date, and also that more authors will contribute to the life of the journal.

G. Lucignani

Editor-in-Chief