This will be the last Editorial I shall write as Editor, having completed my 7 year term at the end of this year, so it is perhaps appropriate to look back at what has been achieved and also to look forward. It gives me great pleasure to thank my many Associate Editors from all over the world who have contributed to Gut’s success. I am particularly grateful to the early members of my team including my deputy John Atherton (Nottingham, UK), Alistair Watson (Liverpool, UK), Juergen Schölmerich (Regensburg, Germany), Ray Playford (London, UK), David Adams (Birmingham, UK), Jan Tack (Leuven, Belgium) and Anna Mae Diehl (Baltimore, USA) who encouraged me to raise the standards by which we judged papers. This led to the rise in impact factor (figure) which has in turn attracted the many excellent manuscripts we are now receiving.

The Associate Editors have had a big impact on the journal, attracting papers from new areas and new authors, and have also expanded our pool of international reviewers, something which is vital for the journal's efficient working. We were soon joined by Markus Lerch (Greifswald, Germany) and Jean-Frederic Colombel (Lille, France), attracting more papers from the pancreatic and inflammatory bowel disease community, respectively. Their successors have been an outstandingly talented group with whom it has been a privilege to work. Kevin Moore (London, UK), Geoff Dusheiko (London, UK), Emad El-Omar (Aberdeen, UK), Subrata Ghosh (London, UK), Massimo Pinzani (Florence, Italy), Magnus Simren (Gothenberg, Sweden), Bill Grady (Seattle, USA), Alexander Gerbes (Munich, Germany), David Mutimer (Birmingham, UK), …