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.