And then, as suddenly as predictably, there was the January 2017 issue of European Journal of Human Genetics (EJHG), numbered 25-1. This means that EJHG has existed for 25 years, a truly memorable event!

The EJHG was started by my predecessor, Giovanni Romeo, in 1992. In the early days it was published by Karger and later it was taken over by Nature Publishing Group, which last year merged with Springer into Springer Nature. In the first years we rapidly went from four, to six, to eight issues and then ultimately to twelve issues a year.

As the official journal of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG), but with a worldwide scope, we have seen the field of Human Genetics coming of age. Our philosophy has always been to publish ‘all the news that fits’. This initially implied an emphasis on Mendelian diseases and syndromes, covering Clinical, Molecular and Cytogenetics and reporting on the rapidly advancing methodologies and fascinating findings. In addition, we have always had ample space for commentaries, viewpoints and policies relevant to all fields, as well as publishing EJHG Supplements with guidelines and background documents generated by the ESHG’s Public and Professional Policy Committee. We have witnessed the emergence of Genomics, the initiation and completion of the Human Genome Project, one genome becoming many genomes, the surge of SNP markers resulting in high-impact GWAS studies, and the breakthrough of multifactorial genetics. This progress has not only made the study of common disease more tractable but also profoundly changed the study of rare disease, heralding the entry of mechanistic therapies. With it came a tremendous increase in the societal impact of our field, and today genetics plays a recognized major role in health policy-making around the world.

The EJHG itself is in motion too. Owing to increasing submissions we have had to increase our rejection rate from around 60% to over 70%. This has already become visible in our impact factor, which has long stood at around 4 and is now going up: our 2015 IF is 4.58. In the same period we have reduced the delay between advanced online publication (AOP) and appearance in print from 9 to 3 months! Furthermore, as of this year we offer authors the opportunity to place a short (~6 min) video presentation of their paper on the ‘EJHG-tube’ (http://www.nature.com/ejhg/videos/index.html; see author instructions), allowing them to enliven their findings and perspectives.

To commemorate our 25-year anniversary, we will publish a ‘Best of EJHG’ Supplement issue this year—and perhaps we may even start a tradition.

Finally, this is not the only milestone this year, the ESHG itself celebrates its 50th anniversary!

For this occasion, the European Human Genetics Conference will return during 27–30 May 2017 to Copenhagen (https://2017.eshg.org), where the first ESHG meeting was held in 1967 (https://www.eshg.org/95.0.html). Several other memorial and historic activities are in the works, so keep a close watch over ESHG and EJHG this year. And do not forget to send in your abstracts to the conference and your manuscripts and videos to us!