The policies of the Editorial Board of Hypertension Research (HR) provide a regular plan for the rotation of Board members; in November last year, I retired from the Board. Over the past four years as Editor-in-Chief of HR, I have devoted my best efforts—with great help from my colleague Prof Kario as Executive Editor—to ensure that the scientific standards of the journal remained as high as possible. One of our missions was to raise the impact factor of HR, which is now around 3. The task has been successfully accomplished. I am very grateful to all the Editorial Board members, domestic and abroad, for all their advice and assistance.

An exciting development commencing with this issue is that the journal has joined Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Henceforth, HR will become one of only three specialist hypertension journals published by NPG, the others being the Journal of Human Hypertension and the American Journal of Hypertension. HR has a long and illustrious history dating back to 1992, when it began as Hypertension Research—Clinical and Experimental. I believe the association with NPG will greatly enhance the continued development, and also the visibility and impact of HR. We aim to further establish the journal as one of the leading outlets for the communication of hypertension research.

Readers should be aware of a number of important changes to HR that will be introduced in 2009 with the transfer to NPG:

  • The journal will have a fresh, new look: a totally new cover design and manuscripts formatted in the NPG style.

  • A revamped and more diverse, international Editorial Board.

  • On acceptance, manuscripts will be available much more rapidly via Advance Online Publication (AOP).

  • The journal will have a dramatically increased visibility and presence as it will be hosted on nature.com.

Overall, the move to NPG promises to be an important development for HR that will increase the international standing of the journal and will, I believe, yield a new, high-impact journal that publishes the highest quality hypertension research.

K Shimada Editor-in-Chief Hypertension Research