The Journal of Biomechanical Engineering (JBME) continues to thrive, and our impact factor held strong at 1.916 in 2018. Over 550 manuscripts were received in 2018, and our acceptance rate projects to be about 28%, though the final number will depend on the outcome of manuscripts currently under review. We continue to streamline all stages of the review and publication process, with time to first decision now averaging 1.7 months and immediate on-line availability of accepted manuscripts. The tremendous effort of the Associate Editors (AEs) on this front, and on all aspects of the journal operation, is acknowledged here with our profound thanks—JBME would not succeed without them! We especially thank retiring AEs Carlijn Bouten, Tammy Haut Donahue, James Iatridis, Ram Devireddy, Barclay Morrison, Jeff Ruberti, and Brian Stemper, and we welcome new AEs Kyle Allen, Anton Bowden, Tamara Bush, Brittany Coats, Eric Kennedy, Spencer Lake, Christian Puttlitz, Sara Wilson, and Katherine Zhang.
This year marks the seventh publication of the Annual Special Issue of the JBME. This Annual Special Issue highlights reviews by leaders of the field and also papers from the winners of the Fung Medal, the Mow Medal, the Woo Medal, and the Lissner Medal from 2018. We thank all of the authors for contributing. For the second year, the student award papers from the SB3C meeting (held at the World Congress of Biomechanics this past year) will appear in the forthcoming Annual Education Issue (AEI), along with an invited paper by the inaugural Nerem Medal winner Roger Kamm. Thanks to Rouzbeh Amini and Spencer Lake for serving as the Guest Editors for the prior 2018 AEI.
The third “Spotlight on the Future” issue, containing a set of invited papers by early career researchers in an important subfield within biomechanical engineering, was reduced to a special section within the larger June issue and was just published. We thank Guest Editors Corey Neu and Paul Barbone, as well as the contributing authors, for helping to make that initiative a success. The Spotlight issue for 2019 will focus on cell biomechanical engineering; we encourage anyone who knows an outstanding young investigator, or is one, in the area to contact us to nominate others or themselves for the issue.
The ASME staff, especially Philip DiVietro, Colin McAteer, Beth Darchi, Tamiko Fung, and Jennifer Smith, continued to provide us with outstanding support year-round and particularly in handling the unique challenges around publishing our various Special Issues. Our editorial assistant, Yolanda Washington, deserves special mention for her work on day-to-day operations.
Finally, we thank everyone involved in JBME for their tremendous efforts and look forward to next year's continued success.
