This issue completes one year of the English edition of the Annals , which strengthens its position among rehabilitation journals. The English edition aims to spread the scientific information and access to knowledge about physical medicine and rehabilitation and more generally rehabilitation through a transversal approach. This English edition should also facilitate collaborations and partnerships with other rehabilitation journals supporting networks of international societies and offers support to papers presented at international rehabilitation congresses.

A few papers are still written in French and then translated, but manuscripts must now be submitted in English for an editorial process integrally carried out in that language, with final copyediting. With this new working language, we were prepared for a shaky transition period. In line with the forecasts, the number of manuscripts submitted declined but fortunately rose sharply again in the second half of the year, and from all continents. Finally, beyond our expectations, 2015 should be one of the best years for the journal in this respect. We thank all authors, reviewers, and editors for their help in taking up this challenge.

Enhancing the quality of the Annals is a major goal for the editors , and we have been gratified to find that many papers published in 2015 followed international guidelines: CONSORT and non-pharmacological CONSORT statements for randomized controlled trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, STARD for studies of diagnostic accuracy, and CARE for case reports. We also strongly invite authors to register their study in international databases.

The primary short-term objective of the board of directors, editorial committee, and editors of Annals is to improve our bibliometric ranking, which required several other decisions. The profile of papers published in the Annals had to be redrawn according to a novel editorial policy. We no longer consider papers promoting professional views without scientific analysis and suppressed papers with the rubric “clinical cases” because they were insufficiently cited. Meanwhile, we increased the number of solicited reviews or update papers, which ensured the publication of two thematic issues per year. Those in 2015 were dedicated to Brain Computer Interface (February) and Neuromodulation (September). Good preliminary studies are now published as letters to the editor, together with clinical cases and notes of scientific interest. These changes resulted in a different typology of papers published in 2015: 41% original articles, 29% review papers, 21% letters to the editor, and 9% editorials.

This evolution has followed the arrival of many prestigious colleagues on the editorial board, all well recognized in their respective fields and keen to help authors improve the quality of their papers. A particular effort has been made to shorten the editorial process to make the journal even more attractive: since 2014, a first decision is reached within 30 days, on average, for submitted manuscripts.

We hope the readers and authors have appreciated this evolution accompanied by a new format and a new cover page illustrating each issue. This ongoing movement has made publication in the Annals increasingly popular, as attested by an increase by two-fold in the number of downloads from 2014 to 2015, from all over the world: North America 29%, Western Europe 28%, Asia 21%, South America 7%, Middle East 5%, Eastern Europe 5%, Australasia 3%, Africa 2%. The number of downloads now reaches 36,000 every month, which is incredible for a journal that published only about 50 full papers a year for 7 years. Could this progression result in a huge increase in citations?