The Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine is committed to publishing manuscripts of the highest possible standard in the field of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM) research, guaranteeing open access publication after only 6 months for a limited cost compared with regular open access journals. This is no doubt due in part to the non-profit nature of the journal, all costs being limited to those of actual production. We thus encourage the publication of well-designed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in our field, with adequate power and with independent, blinded observers.

To emphasize this priority, we have decided to waiver the page charge completely, i.e. set it to zero, for RCTs with manuscripts received during 2015. Furthermore, we have also changed our previous policy about design manuscripts; we will now publish these, provided that the results manuscripts are subsequently submitted to our journal. With these policy changes, we hope to attract even more interesting studies for our readership and to further strengthen the evidence base of modern rehabilitation.

We also encourage the submission of systematic reviews of therapeutic interventions in areas where a reasonable number of controlled studies has been performed, so that a conclusion can be formed. Furthermore, educational reviews of specific topics are welcomed, preferably as a result of consensus panels or meetings between experts, although the Editor-in-Chief should be contacted beforehand for a discussion. A specific topic may also form the core of a special issue of the journal, where the proposing scientists act as guest editors and we jointly invite a number of authors to write about the topic from different perspectives, such as was recently done for “The complexity of traumatic brain injury”.

I welcome suggestions from readers and authors to further improve the content of our journal, the best outcome, no doubt, being the submission of a manuscript describing a really exciting study. I also hope that you will take part in the scientific discussions by using the “Letter to the Editor” format to further elaborate or criticise the interpretation of published material.

Finally, I would like to thank all our referees, especially those within the Editorial Board who, through their voluntary work and their expertise, continuously contribute to maintaining the high quality of our journal. My thanks also go to my colleagues, the Associate Editors and the Advisory Co-Editor Henk J. Stam, for our discussions and for using their expertise to improve the submitted manuscripts prior to acceptance.