It was in December 1990, shortly after the birth of my first son, when my former boss, Prof. Max Aebi, asked me if I would help him set up a new spine journal. Actually, after 7 very intensive years as his personal assistant at the Orthopaedic Clinic of Inselspital, Bern University Hospital in Switzerland, I wanted to enjoy my little family and take a break from my job. But the prospect to a home office was then too tempting, so I accepted the offer and shortly afterwards I introduced myself at Springer Publisher in Heidelberg. After a brief preparatory phase in which I set up a home office, I officially started in April 1991 as a freelancer of Springer Publisher as Editorial Office Manager of the European Spine Journal in Thörishaus/Switzerland. The announcement of the new journal started already a few weeks before in mid-February 1991. In addition to the two Coordinating Editors, Prof. M. Aebi and Prof. S. Nazarian, 8 Advisory Board and 20 Editorial Board Members could be won at the beginning. Hundreds of letters to potential authors were sent out until we finally were able to publish the first issue of the European Spine Journal in June 1992 with a volume of 60 pages. In the Editorial of this first issue, Prof. Aebi explored the question of why another spine journal was needed [1]. Although he provided sufficient arguments, it took a relatively long time for the spinal community to make friends with the new journal. Mighty efforts were needed to get high-quality papers submitted. But it has paid off. In May 1992, even prior to publication of the first issue, the European Spine Journal had already 70 subscribers. Gradually, the journal took worldwide attention and the quality of the submitted manuscripts improved increasingly. However, at this point in time we could hardly afford to reject one single manuscript in order not to jeopardize the publication of the next issue.
In 2004, Springer Publisher entered the electronic age with the European Spine Journal. As one of the first Springer journals, the European Spine Journal was transferred to the online submission process of Manuscript Central. A soft cry went through the ranks of the authors and the reviewers! Was that really necessary? Yes, it was! At that time, already 275 new submissions were registered for the current year, whose handling was hardly possible in paper format any longer. Thanks to the European Spine Journal, the existence of the post office in Thörishaus was secured for many years due to a massive increase in sales. Shortly after we switched to the online submission process, the post office unfortunately had to close due to unprofitability! Already in 2007, the European Spine Journal moved then from Manuscript Central away to the much more user-friendly Editorial Manager System, which was equally well received by authors, reviewers and editors. Meanwhile, around 2000+ papers are submitted to the European Spine Journal per year. I think this number sufficiently answers Prof. Aebi’s question of 1992 about the necessity of a new spine journal. Thanks to the tireless work of our Editors, Editorial Board, Advisory Board and Assistant Editorial Board Members, the European Spine Journal has become so successful and a world-leading journal for spine specialists. On behalf of the European Spine Journal, I would like to thank all our Board Members who, with their timely evaluation of manuscripts, enable a speedy decision-making by the Editors. And not to forget at this point are the numerous reviewers, who work tirelessly for us without being even mentioned in the journal. These were for 2018 (in alphabetical order):
Kuniyoshi Abumi
Michael A. Adams
Janardhana Parampalli Aithala
Ali Al Mashani
Nanny Allington
Garry T. Allison
Gabriel Oswaldo Alonso Cuéllar
Christopher Ames
Gunnar Andersson
William Anderst
Geoffrey Appelboom
Markus Arand
Mark Arts
Robert Ashford
Ramsey Ashour
Josef Assheuer
Carl-Eric Aubin
Martin Avellanal
Ray Baker
Xavier Banse
Hongda Bao
Mohamed Ibrahim Barakat
Giuseppe M.V. Barbagallo
Helena Barreto Henriksson
Michèle Battié
Michael Baumberger
Nigel Beasley
Rachid Bech-Azeddine
Kevin Michael Bell
Zoe Bell
Klaus Bengler
Lorin Michael Benneker
Karin Benz
J.P. Bernasconi
Rudolf Bertagnoli
Marie Besson
Michael Bezouska
Amit W. Bhandarkar
Archan Bhattacharya
Qin Bian
Michael Bierschneider
Arno Bisschop
Thomas R. Blattert
Wolfgang Böcker
Lawrence J. Bonassar
Anouar Bourghli
Richard Branson
Philip Breedon
Alan Breen
Rolf Brenner
Christoph Brochhausen
Neil D. Broom
Kim Burton
Karin Büttner-Janz
Gaston Camino Willhuber
Marco Campello
Lu Cao
Eugene J. Carragee
John Carrino
Andres Castro
Uphar Chamoli
Danny Chan
Christopher D. Chaput
Anthony Minh Tien Chau
Yongchang Chen
Kazuhiro Chiba
David Choi
Sean Chrstie
Pavlos Christodoulou
Lechoslaw Ciupik
Simone Colangeli
Ashley Antony Cole
Lucia Conti
G. Bryan Cornwall
John Costi
Rebecca J. Crawford
Laura B. Creemers
Peter A. Cripton
Peter John Cundy
Bryan W. Cunningham
John Edward Cunningham
Armin Curt
Dorothea Daentzer
Filippo Del Grande
Antonella del Vecchio
Eugenio Dema
Constantine Kyriakos Demetropoulos
Chris Derham
Denis J. Di Angelo
Jörg Drumm
Claudia Druschel
Gilles Dubois
Stefan Dudli
John Duff
Claudia Eder
Hossein Ehsani
Daniel Espino
Laurent Fabeck
Deborah Falla
Silvano Ferrari
Aaron J. Fields
Natale Francaviglia
Robert D. Fraser
Simon French
Patrick Freund
Maxim Freydin
Susanne Frohriep
Kai-Ming Fu
Yuki Fujioka
Mauro Gallazzi
Ana Garcia de Frutos
Ralph E. Gay
Florian Gebhard
Ioannis D. Gelalis
Stéphane Genevay
Tim Germon
Mariusz Glowacki
Raquel M. Gonçalves
Oliver Gonschorek
Sibylle Grad
Melvin Grainger
Caroline Grant
Jonathan N. Grauer
Ryan Gray
Andreas Grillhoesl
Theodoros B. Grivas
Douglas P. Gross
Thomas M. Grupp
Jerome Guicheux
Jeff Gum
Munish C. Gupta
Lisbet Haglund
Rami Haj-Ali
Matthew Hall
Ingela Hammar
Charles Handley
Nogah Haramati
Hirotaka Haro
Deed Eric Harrison
Erich Hartwig
Robert M. Havey
Hanna Hebelka
Matthew Bartett Hedrick
Aldemar Andres Hegewald
Marco Helder
Stefan Hellinger
Jill Higginson
Chris Hoffman
Sheilah Hogg-Johnson
Jasper Homminga
Judith A. Hoyland
Adam H. Hsieh
Brian Hsu
Serena Hu
Yi Hu
Yong Hu
William C. Hutton
Domenico G. Iacopino
Ross Iles
Svenja Illien-Jünger
Paul C. Ivancic
Wilco Jacobs
H.D. Jho
Christoph Josten
Sibylle Juergens
Abhijeet B. Kadam
James Kang
Amar Karalija
Charmaine Karporaal
Mayank Kaushal
Ahidjo Abdulkadiri Kawu
Safdar Khan
Hak-Sun Kim
Hyeun Sung Kim
Joo Han Kim
Idsart Kingma
Andrea Klauser
Nachshon Knoller
Marta Kollataj
Matthias Alexander König
M. Krokidis
Antonio Krueger
Roland Krug
Luigi La Barbera
Jesus Lafuente
Tania Lam
Andrea Landi
Alexander Langheinrich
C.L. Le Maitre
Robert Lenthall
G. Lewis
Zhen Li
Michael Liebschner
Chung-Jung Lin
J. Paige Little
Mark Lorenz
Jeffrey C. Lotz
Sheng Lu
Alphonse Lubansu
Andrea Luca
Catherine Ludwig
Darren F. Lui
Katariina Luoma
Masafumi Machida
Shane Macsweeney
Gianluca Maestretti
Chris Main
Masoud Malakoutian
Andrea Malandrino
Frédéric Marin
Rosario Maugeri
Christian Mazel
Graciela L. Mazzone
Stuart McGill
Julian McGlashan
Emma McIntosh
Judith Meakin
Björn Meij
Tong Meng
Peter Millner
Shingo Miyazaki
Sean Molloy
Chang Hong Moon
Osmar J.S. Moraes
Catherine Moran
Sue Morris
Abdul Karim Msaddi
Debraj Mukherjee
Florence Mulpas
J. Naresh-Babu
Raghu Natarajan
Gunnar Németh
David R. Nerenz
Nicolas Newell
Jérôme Noailly
Grace O’Connell
Markus Florian Oertel
Ender Ali Ofluoglu
Leonardo Oggiano
Ryan O’Hare Doig
Seiji Ohtori
Ignazio Olivieri
Georg Walter Omlor
Patrick Omoumi
Raymond Ostelo
Claudia Ottardi
Jean A. Ouellet
Maarit Pakarinen
Tejbir Singh Pannu
Avinash G. Patwardhan
Yun Peng
Monica Perez
Marianna Peroglio
Kedar Phadke
Carlos Pigrau
François Porchet
Grazia Pozzi
Patricia Purcell
Christian M. Puttlitz
Ulrich Quint
Charles Rainey
Arjun Raj
Manuel Ramirez
Michael Andre Rauschmann
Andrea Redaelli
Daniel Reinhardt
Makarand V. Risbud
Charles H. Rivard
Lisa Roberts
Sally Roberts
Sara Roccabianca
Daniel Rosenthal
Carlos Eduardo Ruiz Wills
Björn L. Rydevik
Taryn Saggese
Comron Saifi
Koichi Sairyo
Takeshi Saito
Dai Sakai
Toshinori Sakai
Francesco Sala
Khalid M.I. Salem
Rachid Salmi
Charles A. Sansur
Laura Scaramuzzo
Anne Schafer
Klaus-Dieter Schaser
Christoph Schilling
Kirsten Schmieder
Meredith L. Schollum
Martin Schubert
Markus Schultheiss
Frank Schwab
Giuseppe Scotti
Matthew Scott-Young
Andreas Seitz
Christopher Shaffrey
Mirit Sharabi
Adam L. Shimer
K.M. Shine
Kosmas Sidiropoulos
Gunter P. Siegmund
Andrew Simpson
Vladimir Sinkov
Ingrid Sitte
T.H. Smit
Lachlan J. Smith
William D. Smith
Jeff Snodgrass
Svetlana Solovieva
Dianwen Song
Julian Sosner
Gwendolyn Sowa
Kevin F. Spratt
Victor E. Staartjes
Lukas Philipp Staub
Stavros I. Stavridis
Thomas Steffen
Ivana Stetkarova
Veerle Stevens
Ian A. Stokes
Matthias Sturzenegger
Chuiguo Sun
Yu-Long Sun
Martin Sutter
Caroline Szpalski
S. Tassani
Wafa Tawackoli
Erin Teeple
Graciosa Q. Teixeira
Claudius Thomé
Thorsten Tjardes
Nima Toosizadeh
Themis Toumanidou
Caroline Anne Treanor
Serge Troussel
Marianna A. Tryfonidou
Stewart Tucker
Russell T. Turner
Simone Ulivieri
Jill P.G. Urban
Julio Urrutia
Gianluca Vadalà
Payman Vahedi
Rahul Vaidya
Désirée van der Heijde
Jaap H. van Dieen
Anita Van Domselaar
Miranda L. Van Hooff
Johan Frederik Van Lerbeirghe
M.M. Van Rijsbergen
Carolyn Van Toen
Gérard M. Vanacker
Samuel P. Veres
Arianne P. Verhagen
Christophe Vidal
Cécile Vienney
Arun-Kumar Viswanadha
Adriaan Johannes Vlok
Nam V. Vo
David Volkheimer
Gerassimos Voutsinas
Edward Vresilovic
Kelly Wade
Ahmad Mounir Wafai
William Robert Walsh
Yan Wang
Yixiang Wang
Yue Wang
Albrecht Waschke
Jonathan Wasserberg
Kota Watanabe
Bradley Weiner
Sherri Weiser
Bastian Welke
John White
John M. Wiemann
Vithanage Nagitha Wijayathunga
Martin Wilby
Joan M. Wilson
B.A. Winkelstein
Peter Winlove
Frank Witte
Ralf H. Wittenberg
Savio L.-Y. Woo
Cheng-Yi Wu
Karin Wuertz
Hong-Ming Xu
Mitsuru Yagi
Shu-Hua Yang
Huabin Yin
Elisabeth Yu
Zhaohui Yu
Jiabin Yuan
Y. Yukawa
Nikita Zaborovskii
Dick Zeilstra
Yuanqiang Zhang
Guoyan Zheng
Mario Zotti
J.F. Zucherman
Thomas Zweig
Many thanks to all of you! Hopefully, we can count on you also in the future.
Last but not least, I thank the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Robert Gunzburg, who gave me after 28 years as Editorial Office Manager the opportunity to represent the journal at a booth during EUROSPINE in Barcelona, which was a great experience for me. It was really a pleasure to meet some of our reviewers, authors, readers, our award winners as well as people from Springer Publisher, several affiliated societies and industry partners in person. Who knows, maybe we will see us again on the occasion of an upcoming meeting.
With this Editorial, I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone who continuously contributes to the success of the European Spine Journal.
I wish you all a peaceful holiday season, Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.
Reference
Aebi M, Nazarian S (1992) Editorial: another new journal? Eur Spine J 1(1):1
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Zintel, I. Memories. Eur Spine J 27, 2985–2989 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-018-5827-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-018-5827-2