At the start of this year, the International Endodontic Journal (IEJ) will enter a new era, with the retirement of Professor Paul Dummer from the role of Editor-in-Chief. Paul has offered outstanding leadership to the journal since 1999 and has led the IEJ through many key phases, including the shift from paper submissions to an online platform, the introduction of Associate Editor/expanded Editorial Board structure and the transition into the age of impact metrics; this has been done whilst maintaining scientific quality and increasing the impact factor to the current 5.264. The IEJ has benefitted from stability since its inception as the successor of the ‘Journal of the British Endodontic Society’ in 1980, having only three editors-in-chief prior to Paul Dummer (Dummer et al., 2017). Along the way, many colleagues have supported Paul, no more so than his wife and Editorial Assistant Sue Bryant, who has developed and maintained a level of organization, professionalism and personal touch not experienced with other journals. It is important as we move into a new phase to acknowledge and thank Paul and Sue for their dedication and the enormous contribution they have made to the journal and the subject of Endodontology in general.

The show must go on; however, and looking to the future, the IEJ must continue to evolve and build on the foundations of the last 20 years. In the IEJ we cannot be complacent and must acknowledge and respond to the challenge of open access platforms, format-free submission and changing landscape of the profession. As the leading primary research journal covering the field of Endodontology, the IEJ remains committed to publishing cutting-edge primary and secondary research across the spectrum of clinical and related basic sciences. Over recent years, the IEJ has shown considerable initiative in expanding its focus to incorporate the developments in the regenerative endodontic fields (Kim et al., 2018), the preferred reporting items project (Nagendrababu et al., 2020), S3-level guideline development (Duncan et al., 2021) and establishing mutually beneficial links with the European Society of Endodontology (ESE, 2021) with the aim of accentuating the close links between these new areas and more traditional type of Endodontic publication. Critically, in my view, the promotion and publication of ‘traditional’ hypothesis-driven primary research must remain the central purpose of the IEJ. Notably, within my 13 years of involvement first as a reviewer in 2008, a member of Editorial Board since 2011 and Associate Editor since October 2014 several changes have occurred. There has been an increase in the paperwork required to publish in the journal with ethical approvals, clinical trial registrations and guidelines required for nearly every manuscript, which although essential for quality control, also increases the workload of submitting authors and the editorial team. After considering author feedback, the coming years will see the IEJ move towards a more format-free submission, which although retaining the necessity for approvals and guidelines will pay less attention to other formatting requirements at the time of the first submission. Another observation, common to all clinical journals, is the rapid expansion in the volume of systematic review manuscript submissions. The IEJ welcomes an increase in the submission of the highest quality secondary research but is also cognizant that it should not detract from the need to publish properly planned, high-quality primary research addressing the questions most relevant to our profession.

In order to embrace the expansion of Open Access, the IEJ encourage authors to publish Open Access in the IEJ through individual payment or by utilizing the countrywide institutional arrangements negotiated by Wiley available in several European and worldwide countries. Many authors remain unaware of both the benefit and availability of Open Access options and this is an issue that will need to be communicated better with potential authors in future. January 2022 will see changes to the editorial office with Wiley moving the IEJ editorial office and assistant to India. This is ‘new ground’ for the IEJ which has until now always relied upon excellent local administration support, led by Sue Bryant and others. It is an immediate challenge for those involved in leading the journal that we manage to maintain the administrative standards that authors submitting to the journal have become accustomed to.

In summary, the IEJ is an excellent scientific product and a leader in the field of Endodontology. The goal now is to maintain and develop the journal quality, whilst listening to authors and further addressing issues such as representation, geographical spread and diversity of the board. I welcome the opportunity to take a lead in developing these ideas for the IEJ in liaison with the principal stakeholders Wiley, British Endodontic Society, ESE, Associate Editors, Editorial Board, the reviewers and most importantly the authors.

The author has no conflict of interest to report.