Welcome to the first issue of Clinical Autonomic Research for 2024. It is with great pleasure that I take over from Guillaume Lamotte, who has been serving as the Managing Editor for the last two years. Building on the excellent work of Alberto Palma, Guillaume has helped propel the status of CAR to new heights: for the first time it is now in the first quartile (Q1) of all journals publishing in the category of Clinical Neurology (rank 33/212; 15.6%) and in the category of Neurosciences (rank 47/272; 17.3%). Moreover, our Impact Factor is the highest it has ever been—5.80. And while the Impact Factor is a flawed instrument, if you have a good one then we are surely going to flaunt it, right? Did I tell you that our impact factor is now 5.80? When one recalls that some 20 years ago it was only 0.83, we certainly have come a long way! We are seeing more submissions than ever but we also reject about two-thirds of all manuscripts to ensure that only the highest quality papers are published in CAR. Moreover, readers have been accessing full-text articles over 300,000 times in 2023, double that seen in 2020.

How do we maintain our high quality? Quite simply through the dedication of our team of Associate Editors, the Editorial Board and all of the external reviewers who spend considerable personal time providing rigorous, balanced and constructive feedback to our authors. Following the departure of Gregor Wenning—for whose service we are very grateful—we have decided to expand the team of Associate Editors to 10. We are delighted that Debra Weese-Mayer, Alessandra Fanciulli, and Victoria Claydon have accepted our invitations and warmly welcome them as Associate Editors; they each bring a wealth of expertise to the team and each has been working tirelessly in support of CAR for many years. For the first time, we have also reached gender parity amongst the Associate Editors, which we are also proud of.

This issue includes a list of reviewers—all 163 of them—who have helped us throughout 2023 to achieve our goals of publishing only the best work. We are also indebted to all of our authors who have submitted to CAR. We want you to see us as the go-to journal for all research dealing with the autonomic nervous system—not just the clinical work that was the reason for establishing the journal in the first place, but also the fundamental research conducted in humans and other animals that informs our understanding of diseases that feature disturbances in autonomic control. CAR is also expanding its reach: in addition to being the official journal of The American Autonomic Society (AAS) and the European Federation of Autonomic Societies (EFAS), it is now the official journal of The Australasian Society for Autonomic Neuroscience (ASAN).

Finally, it is with sadness that we mourn the loss of two friends and colleagues: Prof Carl-Albrecht Haensch and David Robertson. Obituaries to these landmark figures in the field are published in this issue and we honor their legacies.

On behalf of the entire Editorial Board, we wish you all the very best that 2024 will offer!

Vaughan Macefield PhD DSc

Managing Editor.

Horacio Kaufmann MD

Jens Jordan MD PhD

Editors-in-Chief.