Looking back, we are proud of the number of conferences, but we are all the more proud to celebrate the 10th Birthday of EURAPA. EURAPA was launched as the official journal of the “European Group for Research into Elderly and Physical Activity” in 2004. Since 2006, it has been published by Springer Publishers. When compared to human life, the journal is young with its 10 years—just “growing out of its children’s shoes.” It has survived, is in good shape, and is fit for future growth. We have a continuously growing submission rate on a broad international basis; our impact factor has reached 0.947 covered by 16 Abstracting and Indexing services. The number of full text downloads is growing as do the subscribers to table of contents alerts. EURAPA has reached a quality and visibility that we did not expect 10 years ago. This makes us proud and optimistic for our future development. We share satisfaction and gratitude with the members of EGREPA, our authors, and subscribers supporting the journal. Special credit goes to our reviewers and our editorial board. Their service to EURAPA is entirely voluntary and mostly without substantial recognition.
As usual, in the first issue of the year, I would like to acknowledge particularly the reviewers of the last year:
Jens Bucksch, Germany
Robert Van Deursen, UK
Ruth Dickstein, Israel
K. Anders Ericsson, USA
Lilian T B Gobbi, Brazil
Karol Gorner, Slovakia
Leigh Hale, New Zealand
Jorunn Helbostad, Norway
Tibor Hortobagyi, The Netherlands
Yvo Kamsma, The Netherlands
Veni Kong, Singapore
Maria Machado, Portugal
Tobias Morat, Germany
Ruben Regterschot, Netherlands
Marcos Rossi-Izquierdo, Spain
Patrick Smith, USA
Martin Stevens, The Netherlands
Robert Szeklicki, Poland
Ulrike S. Trampisch, Germany
Tracey Tsang, Australia
Arianne Verhagen, The Netherlands
Green T Waggener, USA
Bettina Wollesen, Germany
Let me take this opportunity to thank those who helped at different stages: First of all, I thank my co-founding editor and first Editor in Chief (Biomedical Sciences) Michael Sagiv and to the editorial board members for supporting us from the early beginning in launching this journal. Thanks go to the members of the EGREPA board, Yael Netz and Rolf Ehrsam, for accompanying and supporting the progress of EURAPA. Even two editors in chief would not be able to run a journal alone. We have been helped by several others. From my side, I would like to accent, and I am sure that Michael Sagiv will approve it, my former co-worker and our later Associate Editor of EURAPA PD Dr. Michael Brach. My particular thanks go also to my acting co-editor Wiebren Zijlstra for the smooth transition following Michael Sagiv in the position of Editor in Chief (Biomedical Sciences) in 2012.
Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the staff members of Springer Publishers who have been working with the Editors in Chief and the Associate Editor, namely William F. Curtis (Executive Vice President—Medicine, Biomedicine, Life Sciences) for bringing EURAPA to Springer Publishers and Gabriele Schroeder, Fiona Shipperlee, Ross Hildrew, and Ben Bishop as Associate Editors.