The biggest change, which has already been implemented, is retirement of the Clinical Quizzes and Brief Reports. While popular among some readers, feedback on these from the Editorial Board at our last full meeting during the IPNA Congress in Calgary was less supportive, and we have decided that these have run their course. We feel that the educational mission of the journal is better served by the Reviews and Educational Reviews than by the Clinical Quizzes and will redouble our efforts to publish a greater number of useful reviews going forward. We are also planning to focus on broader topics for some of these reviews, including topics that have been covered in past years but not recently updated, in order to provide the journal’s readership with contemporary summaries of cutting-edge science and advancements in clinical care. We welcome suggestions for review topics from our readers and are open to submissions from a broad range of contributors. If you have an idea for a review, please reach out to one of the managing editors or Editors-in-Chief so that we can ensure that duplication is avoided.

We acknowledge that the Clinical Quizzes and Brief Reports often served as a venue for young nephrologists to publish case reports and have therefore created a new article type called Clinical Insights. These are intended to be short articles, two journal pages in length, that highlight novel presentations of known diseases affecting the kidneys and urinary tract or that report diagnoses previously unknown in the literature. After assessment by the Editors-in-Chief for novelty, these will undergo peer review by experts in the field to ensure scientific accuracy. We hope that this new article format will prove to be a valuable resource for the pediatric nephrology community.

Our specifications for Letters to the Editor have also been changed. On occasion, these had been getting quite long, with a greater number of authors and more content than we felt were appropriate for a letter. Standard letters to the editor will now be limited to 250 words, may have no more than 3 authors, and must be written in response to a paper published in Pediatric Nephrology. They may have no more than three references (one of which must be the paper that the letter is written in response to) and may not contain a table or figure. If accepted, these regular letters will be sent to the authors of the paper in question for a response.

Finally, we have also instituted a new Research Letter article type, which should present new data in a novel or expanding research field and do not have to be written in response to a published paper (although that is allowable). These can be up to 500 words in length, may have up to 3 authors and 5 references, and can contain a table or figure, but no online supplemental material. We think this will give emerging investigators a platform for presenting new data or the results of pilot studies that may stimulate further investigation in that particular area.