Originally founded in 1967 under the name Calcified Tissue Research, Calcified Tissue International was the first specialist journal in the field of bone disease. The journal was renamed Calcified Tissue International in 1979 and was edited for 20 years by the late Professor Louis Avioli until his death in 1999. The millennium saw the appointment of a new editorial team; Drs. Roberto Civitelli and Keith Hruska took over as editors based in the St. Louis office, and Professor Stuart Ralston was appointed editor of the European office in Edinburgh. At the same time, Calcified Tissue International was adopted as the official journal of the European Calcified Tissues Society. In 2010, affiliations with the European Calcified Tissue Society were broken, and Calcified Tissue International was adopted as an official journal of the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), standing alongside Osteoporosis International, Archives in Osteoporosis, and Progress in Osteoporosis.

With this volume, we wish to inform readers of further changes at Calcified Tissue International. We bid a warm farewell to Dr. Roberto Civitelli, joint editor in chief for the past 13 years, who has stepped down as the result of being elected president of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research. As a result of this, the St. Louis office will close at the end of 2013, and the journal will have a single editorial office based in Edinburgh, managed by Belinda Stephen, whom many readers and contributors will already know. Dr. Rene Rizzoli from the University of Geneva will take over from Dr. Civitelli to join Professor Stuart Ralston as joint editor in chief of the renamed Calcified Tissue International and Musculoskeletal Research.

This change in name heralds a widening of scope for the journal. We will continue to publish high-quality basic, translational, and clinical research in the field of bone disease. However, we wish also to attract papers that deal with other components of the musculoskeletal system, recognizing the importance of interactions that take place between bone, tendon, and muscle in shaping the skeleton and in predisposing to bone diseases. To assist with this aim, we welcome Dr. Roger Fielding from Tuft’s University Boston as associate editor of the journal. Dr. Fielding’s remit will be to deal specifically with contributions in the areas of muscle metabolism and sarcopenia.

In closing, we hope and trust that readers and contributors will endorse the new direction that we have taken and ensure that Calcified Tissue International and Musculoskeletal Research remains at the forefront of research in bone and musculoskeletal disease in future decades as it has over the past 45 years.