Abstract
As many of you may know, my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flood & Metabolism (JCBFM) ends on 31 December 2009. Until that time, I will be handling all manuscripts that are presently under review, whereas the new Editors-in-Chief (Ulrich Dirnagl and Martin Lauritzen) will handle all new manuscripts submitted to JCBFM. It has been a pleasure and an honor to serve the society and JCBFM as Editor-in-Chief. I assure you that it has been a wonderful intellectual and educational experience handling more than 3,000 submitted manuscripts during my tenure as Editor-in-Chief. I can only hope that I used appropriate judgment in accepting and rejecting manuscripts for the journal. I am pleased that I leave the journal in excellent shape! The impact factor is up (5.741); we are still receiving around 550 to 600 manuscript submissions per year; the journal's financial status is excellent and JCBFM generates excellent income for the society; and I believe that the quality of the manuscripts we receive and those that we publish are outstanding. I would like to take a moment to express my thanks to the members of the Editorial Board whom I have called on often to review manuscripts. I appreciate very much your efforts and hard work in refereeing the manuscripts. Your reviews, comments, and questions have taught me much about science and I know that they have helped the authors of these manuscripts. I also express my thanks to the hundreds, no, thousands of other reviewers I have called on to review the manuscripts. Reviewing manuscripts is not easy work and takes much time from everyone's already crowded schedules. The quality of our journal is much determined by the quality of our referees and so I thank you for helping me to make our journal outstanding. We have two new Editors-in-Chief, Ulrich Dirnagl and Martin Lauritzen, and I ask that you help them as much as you did me. It is critical to thank Candace Berryman, the journal's Editorial Manager during my tenure. She has dealt with all authors, referees, and me throughout these years in a most professional and efficient manner, with humor, despite some irate authors and referees. Finally, thanks to the folks at the Nature Publishing Group, especially Tony Dunlap who was responsible for the lineup of manuscripts each month as well as the cover figure. He was a pleasure to work with. So, I bid you farewell as Editor-in-Chief, knowing that I leave the journal in good hands and that I am a better scientist, writer, and Biostatistician because of my work with JCBFM.