While we write these lines we have just been aware of the first official impact factor of the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology by Thomson Reuters ISI! Between the 46 journals of the respiratory system, we have been ranked 43rd, with 0.355. I think that all Editorial Board, our authors, reviewers and all Portuguese Pulmonology should be proud of this historical moment! This is just like entering the “hall” of fame of the journals of the respiratory category… However I would like to remind that this giant qualitative and quantitative leap that may let us stay optimistic, should compel us to make it even better in the future!

During the first 6 months of 2011, out of the 63 articles sent to the PJP, 35 came from Portugal, 6 from Brazil, 3 from Spain, 3 from Italy, 2 from Taiwan, 2 from Iran, 1 from China, 1 from the USA, 1 from Morocco and 1 from Switzerland. As to the articles sent from Portugal, 22 came from the North, 5 from the Centre and 8 from the South.

Compared with 2010,1 the numbers of foreign authors are increasing, supporting the international recognition of the journal that we proposed when we started as Editors last year.2

As expected we started with the publications ahead of print; from the 12th of April, authors could download their articles in advance of paper publication and 48h later could see their articles indexed in PubMed as “Epub”. If your article is accepted after one month, expect to have it online and in Pubmed after 2 months (that is 3 months from submission). For a journal that sometimes in the past took more than a year to publish an article, we can now offer a fast publication, which certainly will please our readers and authors.

As you probably may have noticed, our website at www.revportpneumol.org has been undergoing some improvements and we expect to have new contents soon. Moreover, it is now possible to access the journal through Science Direct.

This issue testifies the internationalization of PJP with 5 articles from foreign authors!3–7 Due to this, naturally you will see only English versions from the papers coming from Spain, Egypt and Iran...

We finished the Thematic Review series entitled “To Publish or Perish” with our statistical and methodological advisor, Luis Azevedo,8 writing a useful review about “How to write a scientific Paper – study design and methods”. Closing this number we include an appealing photo by Miguel Gonçalves, one of our thematic editors.9

We now feel that the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology is running smoothly and like the Bob Dylan song we think that we are “watching the river flow…”.