• journalology
• exit editorial

With this issue the curtain falls for the last time and as the lights go out I feel that constriction at the back of the throat. The outgoing team that managed STI can take some credit—not least because it operated as a team. Or, more accurately, teams: there were those who accepted the onerous role of associate editors in the first years and thought through the fundamental changes needed to prepare STI for the new age. This included a name change that made sense to the non-British and a less bilious cover. Then came the hanging committee whose members, spread over three countries, did much more than meet (or email) every 2 weeks.

We started on the strategic road from a “journal of fact” to a “journal of [expert] opinion”. For this we shamelessly pressured friends, acquaintances, and even total strangers to commission (gratis) review articles of various hues that we disguised under a range of titles: tropical medicine, research methodology, continuing medical education, public health, from bench to bedside, clinical knots, in practice, and …