From the desk of the Editor-in-Chief

Gynecological Surgery is doing well. In 2008, all issues were published on time. The Journal now publishes manuscripts on original research, reviews, clinical practice, training and instrumentation, communications, and case reports. All articles, except editorials and the sections on eponyms and surgical shortcuts with commentary, are subjected to peer review. In addition, submissions of images and video clips as supplementary files are highly recommended.

As a premier peer-reviewed scientific journal, Gynecological Surgery is dedicated to all aspects of research, development, and training in gynecological surgery. This field is rapidly changing in response to new technology in endoscopic surgery, imaging, and other interventional procedures. Gynecological Surgery now encompasses all surgical interventions pertaining to women’s health, including oncology, reproductive medicine, urogynecology, and fetal surgery.

The Journal further provides a forum for education and discussions on broader issues, such as training in minimally invasive surgical technologies and instrumentation. We therefore consider reports and comments on teaching and training programs in surgery with relevance to women’s health.

Gynecological Surgery publishes only those articles that meet our quality-control criteria, particularly in terms of originality, validity of research, methodology and conclusions, and adequacy of referencing. The acceptance rate is today 66% of the submitted manuscripts.

Manuscripts are subjected to a rigorous but speedy peer-review process, designed to improve submissions by providing authors with constructive comments and feedback. We have listed in this issue the names of our reviewers in 2008 and wish to thank them for their support and most valuable work. We have created a reviewers’ profile data bank for achieving a speedy expert review of all manuscripts. The mean time interval between submission and decision has now decreased to less than 6 weeks and will decrease further in the near future. Moreover, Gynecological Surgery publishes articles “instantaneously”, i.e., the articles are available online as soon as they are peer-reviewed and copy-edited.

Gynecological Surgery is now included in Embase, Excerpta Medica, Abstract Journal, Metapress, Scopus, Springer Link, Swets Information Service and Thomson Gale. Applications for indexing in Thomson Scientific/ISI and NLM PubMed/Medline have now been submitted.

Our publisher, Springer, is providing us with all modern facilities for an updated international journal that is much needed in our professional work. From our side, we have to continue to stimulate the collaboration between authors, reviewers, and editors to achieve the highest standard of research, teaching, and clinical practice.