It is with great pleasure that we announce a new, beneficial agreement between the IEA-EEF and Springer, the leading, international publisher in the scientific, technical and medical fields and publisher of the European Journal of Epidemiology (EJE). This agreement has its roots in a meeting held in 2011 at which Peter Butler, Albert Hofman and the chair of the EEF at that time, Robert West, discussed the possible endorsement of the EJE by the IEA-EEF and drafted a memorandum of understanding. Springer will recognise the IEA-EEF as an affiliated federation of the journal. This statement will be posted on the homepage of the EJE’s website and on the front cover of the journal.

The agreement brings several mutual benefits. For many years the EJE has supported the EEF by publishing the abstracts of the EEF’s European conferences at no cost to the EEF. From now on, where the national organizing society journals declines to publish the abstracts, the EEF will offer the EJE the right to publish them. The European conferences will be advertised on both a special page of the journal and online. The EEF President’s messages and newsletters will be announced in the journal. The EJE will have the option to make an announcement in the EEF’s newsletter (twice per year) regarding, for example, a new series of articles, the impact factor, and signing up to ToC Alerts/RSS Feeds. The EEF will allow the EJE the option of distributing a copy of the journal at the EEF’s meetings. Springer shall offer all EEF members a year-round 25 % discount on all purchases from Springer’s book catalogue.

Springer lets us know to be interested in developing an EEF/Springer book series in epidemiology to serve the EEF members and as broad an ‘epidemiological’ community as possible. The EEF is willing to pursue such a project which could contribute to filling a gap in those European countries where epidemiology is less developed.