Observant readers will note some changes to the journal this month.

Firstly, we have expanded the editorial team. Ian Maconochie has joined us as a Deputy Editor for Paediatrics. Malcolm Woollard and Simon Carley have joined us as Associate Editors for Prehospital Care and EBM, respectively. They are all most welcome.

Secondly, we have changed some of the sections within the journal. ‘Emergency Casebook’ is different. It contains one case report of the month in full. All the other case reports we usually publish in full are now available in summary in hard copy and in full electronically. This is known as ELPS, or Electronic Long Paper Short. This will allow us to publish case reports more efficiently as well as to offer more case reports each month.

Thirdly, we are starting a new section named Sophia, after a Greek priestess of wisdom. All the classicists amongst you will no doubt think of other names we could have chosen instead. Believe me our shortlist of potential names was considerable (and worldwide in cultural content and context) but Sophia won the vote. We hope that the section will become popular with all our readers, just as the Minerva section is in our sister (or should I say mother) publication, the BMJ. It will evolve and develop further over the next few months.

Fourthly, we have started putting a quote from a published paper on the front cover of the edition, in which the paper is published, akin to a headline. We first did this last month, using Benger’s paper on recreational drug usage, as the source of the headline. The aim is not to be sensationalist but to draw the reader’s attention to something which is interesting, challenging, or stimulating.

Fifthly, we are including an editorial each month. The editorials may be overtly provocative or just gently questioning about some aspect of the contemporary field of emergency medicine. If we stimulate a stream of correspondence (either to the website or as hard copy) in response to an editorial then we will be delighted to receive it.

Finally, we are updating the membership and role of the journal’s Editorial Board. The revised list of members will be published soon. We have also started a list-server to allow Board members to communicate with each other (and us) more easily.

This months journal has an excellent mix of papers, which we trust will be interesting to all readers. In the correspondence page Chris Luke questions the dogma of ATLS. We welcome further contributions to this topic.

Happy new year to everyone.