Through these few lines, I would like to share with the readers my thoughts focusing on the highlights of 2008, without dwelling once again on established facts, such as the outcome obtained in the indexing field, the increase of submitted papers, the achievement of a huge electronic readership and the still insufficient presence of innovative originals [1].

The Journal of Headache and Pain (JHP) keeps spreading and turning its attention towards different specialist areas, which are familiar in a daily context with aspects of headache that pass completely unnoticed by experts. An example is represented by emergency headache. In the course of a common project between the European Headache Federation (EHF) and the European Federation of Internal Medicine (EHF), we brought to discussion the reasons why emergency headache is not fully considered by those who handle such pathology every day, namely physicians in the emergency room (ER) [2]. Once a life-threatening form of headache is excluded, ER physicians lose interest in improving the management of acute headaches. The comparison and sharing of protocols among societies concerned with the many sides of the same problem represents one of the educational aims to be pursued. On the other hand, only by expanding the experts on the ground will there be a growth in terms of numbers, which are indeed quite modest—this is attested by the small memberships of international scientific associations, despite the pathology’s clinical extent—and there will be the chance to export a management and organizational model for headache which is still partly unknown to many of the healthcare professionals involved [3, 4]. Education and co-optation of other specialists as experts in headache medicine is one of our missions.

The political strategy of JHP demands another year of consolidation and increment of scientific diffusion. Our attractiveness has increased regularly and naturally. A clear claim for renewal is developed, with the purpose of strengthening ourselves and being able to offer scientific contents which are more interesting and mould-breaking. In 10 months, the count of JHP’s articles cited in other journals will start, in order to shape the crucial impact factor. The quality and citability of papers published in 2008 and 2009 constitute our testing ground.

The natural evolution of the Editorial and Advisory Boards facilitates this renewal phase. I wish to thank from the depths of my soul all the members of both boards, those who have contributed to JHP’s success to date and those who will combine to take it forward.

In particular I wish to thank Prof. Michael Moskowitz, to whom I recently expressed my appreciation and my gratitude personally. Prof. Moskowitz has been, with his constant presence in our Editorial Board since JHP’s foundation, the guarantor of intellectual honesty of our project. Thank you Michael.

A warm welcome goes to the JHP’s new editorial “dream team”: Vincenzo Guidetti, Rigmor Jensen, Zaza Katsarava, Miguel Lainez, Michael Lanteri-Minet, Arne May, Koen Paemeleire, Julio Pascual, Innocenzo Rainero, Michael Russell and Lars Stovner. They are a group of talented and still young scientists in the area of headache science, the upcoming future in the top management of the field. They will have independent decision-making powers in the peer reviewing process, in order to be able to express entirely their personal scientific excellence as well as their attested clinical experience. I will have the honour to be primus inter pares in this team and run JHP together with them. I am confident this will represent an important experience for our professional and scientific lives. A sincere thank you goes to all of them for having accepted to share this new 5-year period with JHP.

It is with great pleasure that I would like to underline once again the total synergy with the European Headache Federation. The new agreement between EHF and Springer is being promoted by Fabio Antonaci, as one of his first acts in his capacity of EHF pesident. The agreement will provide online access to JHP for members of all societies federated to EHF. A genuinely wide target audience.

In conclusion, a restyling of JHP’s paper cover has been performed, as well as the relocation to a new web site for online submissions in order to make JHP’s use more easy. Migrating to Editorial Manager™ (http://www.editorialmanager.com/tjhp) has proved necessary for new online submissions, in order to gain higher flexibility in the system as well as greater reliability.