Today, we celebrate a landmark event in our history with the launch of Intensive Care Medicine – Paediatric and Neonatal (ICM-PN), the official journal of the European Society for Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC). This fills a dual gap.

First, in Europe, paediatric and neonatal intensive care did not have a dedicated journal so far. Certainly, we represent a relatively small specialty but we treat and care special patients: neonates, infants, toddlers and children suffering from a life-threatening condition admitted to specialised intensive care units. Saving them is what drives us and we desperately need high-quality academic research to improve our results both from a medical and a nursing perspective. So far, publications of our research have been divided between adult critical care medicine journals and those dedicated to neonatology but not specifically to neonatal and paediatric intensive care. None of these solutions was ideal to foster research and development in our field, although we share some aspects with adult intensive care and neonatology. In fact, we also have many relevant differences related to changes in organ development and maturation, disease patterns and pathophysiology. Ours is a cross-disciplinary specialty that can only develop by learning from adult experience and from other paediatric areas. Moreover, our domain is becoming more and more multi-professional, as in neonatal (NICU) and paediatric intensive care units (PICU), physicians, nurses and allied healthcare professionals closely work together. Our work is highly technology-based, as medical devices are needed to monitor patients’ vital parameters, understand the changing pathophysiology over time and sustain organ functions in the most efficacious and personalised way. Both doctors and nurses aim to maintain and enhance the quality of life in the long run even into adulthood. ICM-PN is the place where any advancement, produced by any NICU/PICU professional and obtained in a methodologically sound way, can be published with the right priority that cannot be given by adult intensive care or general neonatal journals. From the bench to bedside, from animal and translational to clinical research, high-quality data are welcome, as well as systematic reviews and position papers having the potential to improve NICU/PICU care. Special attention is also paid to mutual education and gain of knowledge represented by papers written by paediatric and adult specialists together under the heading: Crossing Borders.

Second, ESPNIC is one of the oldest European scientific societies, the largest paediatric one and the only uniquely focused on intensive care, but it did not have its entirely own journal. This was identified as a major shortcoming hampering the spread of academic research and advancement in our field. Research is the base of every specialty in medicine, as it enables to be a “real” contributor to science and evidence-based care. Creating a journal is not an easy task but we were able to do so thanks to the collaboration with the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) and the Intensive Care Medicine (ICM) team. ICM-PN represents the ESPNIC official journal with a clear multi-professional background. With its launch, the “ICM family” welcomes a new member: in fact, the ICM family is now a group of high-quality academic journals that covers the whole spectrum of research in the field of intensive care medicine. ICM represents the “mother journal”, dedicated to ground-breaking clinical research of extremely high importance (including paediatric and neonatal ones [1]); ICM-experimental (ICM-X) is dedicated to translational and animal research, while ICM-PN specifically covers all paediatric and neonatal research. The three journals are interconnected and editors work closely together. They have the same editorial style and can transfer articles between the three. There is no similar example of a whole journal family dedicated to those taking care of the most critically ill patients. They are, in a broader sense, our journals and we are happy for this and grateful to ESICM for the strong support and collaboration.

A new era just started, and we are sure that European paediatric and neonatal intensive care will take giant steps. Although our research is of high quality, often, NICU/PICU-based articles are unfunded or only partially funded especially at a European level [2]. ESPNIC is highly committed to support members and this translates in covering article processing charges as much as possible for the first years of ICM-PN life. Together with ESICM colleagues, we foresee a very good impact factor in 4 years, but to achieve this, we must all commit in publishing our manuscripts in ICM-PN, as well as to cite articles published in the ICM family journals as much as possible. We all have the same goal: together, we are intensive care and we are so for neonates and children.