Dear Reader,

My Editorial in the January Issue of The Journal of Biomolecular NMR made reference to the 20th Anniversary of our Journal and used a brief historical account as a basis for an optimistic outlook to the upcoming decades of the Twenty-first Century (Wüthrich 2011). Today I am extremely pleased to announce that this optimism was well-founded, since our impact factor has further recovered, with the 2010 value of 3.047 being more than twice the value for 2008. So far, estimates for the impact factor 2011 indicate a further increase, so that we continue to look forward to the future with great expectations. I would like to thank the Editors, the members of the Editorial Board and our Authors for their invaluable contributions, which provide the substance for continued progress.

A recent analysis of individual contributors revealed that our Editorial Board Member Dr. Lewis E. Kay has so far been an author of more than 50 publications in J. Biomol. NMR. We therefore welcomed an initiative by Drs. Kevin Gardner, Tony Mittermaier and Frans Mulder to organize a ‘Special Issue’ on the occasion of the 50th birthday of Lewis Kay. Today, in this double-issue J. Biomol. NMR 51 (1,2), I can present to you a collection of 18 articles contributed by friends, former students and former research associates of Lewis Kay. The Editors join the initiators of this venture by extending their best wishes to Lewis Kay, and by expressing the hope that his contributions as a prolific author to our Journal will continue for at least another 50 years. Last but not least, I extend my thanks to Prof. Martin Billeter, who handled all the submissions for this special issue and ensured that they were subjected to the same peer review process as all other submissions to J. Biomol. NMR.

September 2011