Full Circle

Five years. Ten issues. Now, we have come full circle. The commitment of the Philippine Society of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism to take the lead in nurturing JAFES in 2010 has become a regional reality with the continued support of the societies of member nations. "Were we successful in this endeavor?" is the question. For the moment, we may use such tentative metrics as manuscript acceptance and rejection rates, number of pages, article downloads, and website views, among others. But such figures feel so objective, so bound in numbers, that they cannot sufficiently describe the editorial team's journey.

We feel nostalgic looking back at the work accomplished and the work at hand. With unwavering passion, we reared the journal like our child, full of ambition and hope, celebrating small victories, committing some mistakes in the process, but learning, continually learning, as we go. Each issue, a genuine product of sleepless editorial nights, was like a milestone, from learning to sit to learning to crawl, from crawling to pulling to stand, from standing to finally taking one step, two steps then three.

We watched the JAFES progress from humble beginnings to international aspirations. In five years, we learned to appreciate the importance of publication ethical standards, authentic open access and a stable online platform to grow. For half a decade, we were learning to follow international guidelines; we were actively networking with editors, editor societies, and journals from other countries; we were emulating journal standards and best practices in journal management and editorial operations. We, too, have matured with the publication.

Have we transformed the JAFES into a self-sustaining, peer-reviewed, English language journal? Have we promoted the exchange of knowledge? Have we encouraged research initiatives to facilitate collaborative research? Have we published high quality research work in a timely and focused manner? Have we advanced endocrine research in the ASEAN region? What seemed too ambitious then, now appears within reach.

And now, as we began with diabetes clinical practice guidelines in 2010, we cap our five-year country commitment by featuring national diabetes clinical care models. It was at the IDF-WPR meeting at Singapore in November 2014, when various Asian countries came together at a plenary meeting to describe each country's diabetes care models. These models are featured in this issue. Asian neighbors can take the opportunity to learn from each other and set up collaborative efforts to effectively control diabetes and its complications.

The AFES meeting in December 2015 will dedicate time to discussions on the status and future of JAFES. It will give the editorial team great pleasure and honor to present the progress that the journal has made to the societies of member nations who have acted as its parents.

It has indeed been a full circle, after 5 years and ten issues. On behalf of the Editorial Team, I express our heartfelt thanks to the international Peer Reviewers and many others who support JAFES. It has been a great growing process and we all are blessed to have been part of it.