Our infancy period.

On June 1st Global Health Action passed the landmark of its first year of publishing and we would like to mark this occasion not only by looking back upon the achievements so far but also to share with you our plans for the future.

When we launched the journal with the aim of publishing high-quality research on global health issues with special emphasis on action, only a few open access journals existed in the field despite the fact that the digital divide in health information is as serious as any other inequity in health. To make all content freely available online was therefore an easy choice and the number of visits to the website (www.globalhealthaction.net) as well as full-text article downloads bears witness to the interest worldwide in global health issues. Since the launch a year ago the website has been accessed by more than 10,000 visitors from 155 countries in every continent, many of them returning to the site. The number of full-text downloads has been picking up as more and more articles have been published and is now almost 3,000 per month. With no restrictions on copying or printing content for educational purposes, many more may in fact have read the articles published so far in the journal.

In our inaugural editorial (1) we called for papers addressing the foundations of health research (health information), the underlying epidemiological causes (health determinants), actions for health and their effects (health interventions), the impact of the global physical and biological changes (environmental change and health), and gender perspectives in health care (health systems and gender). Our aim was then, and continues to be, to

contribute to bridging the health information gap;

foster cross-cultural comparative studies to better understand health transitions;

document best practices from local action-oriented work;

publish good predictive evidence linking climate change to health outcomes; and

undertake empirical assessments of how health systems perform in different countries.

During our first year we published four editorials, two reviews, 12 original articles, one short communication, and one supplement. Editorials have addressed the global agenda on aging, the potentials of the epi-demographic network INDEPTH at its 10th anniversary (www.indepth-network.org), and the impact of climate change in low and middle-income countries. The 12 original articles published in Global Health Action were on maternal health care planning and local intervention strategies and their policy implications, documented surveys on health services availability and community awareness, and trend analyses on maternal, prenatal and child mortality. Studies originated from a variety of countries, e.g. Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Thailand. A review article on HIV control in low-income countries asking whether the right things are being done in sub-Saharan Africa ranks highest with regard to number of full-text downloads.

Amongst our Editorial Board we discussed how best to support the dissemination of the summary of high-quality PhD theses in our field. As is now often the case, executive summaries of such theses are available only on institutional websites – at least in Scandinavian research departments – and many good pieces of work therefore go rather unnoticed, which is a disservice to the research community. Many post-doc researchers often engage in new projects after their defense and may experience long latency periods for their first post-doc paper. We have therefore invited recently graduated PhD students to turn the summary of their thesis into a review article and publish it together with invited comments from the academic examiner. The first example of an article representing this new series has recently been published.

A special challenge for us is to build research capacity globally by offering mentorship to young researchers from low and middle-income countries by a group of senior researchers who altruistically have committed themselves to help out. The first example is a set of papers on risk factors for non-communicable diseases from eight INDEPTH sites in Asia that has been carefully reviewed and edited by Professor emeritus Ruth Bonita before being submitted to us for external peer review.

The first Supplement was published only a few months after the journal was launched. The organizers of the 2nd International Conference on Global Public Health chose Global Health Action as a forum for disseminating the abstracts from the meeting, realizing that they would reach a much bigger audience than just those participating in the conference. Though the abstract book was also printed for distribution to the delegates, the online version has received a large volume of traffic and in this way reached beyond the comparatively limited number of delegates. Needless to say this was a bonus to the individual authors as well, and we therefore think that organizers of future conferences may want to publish abstracts or proceedings in a Global Health Action supplement, to attract delegate authors.

In due time for the COP15 conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December, Global Health Action will publish two interrelated thematic clusters of papers on the multi-faceted issues of climate change as they impact on global health. Professors Tord Kjellström and Rainer Sauerborn serve as guest editors for these clusters which will also be printed and bound in a single volume, to be offered free of charge to interested libraries, NGOs, institutions with no IT infrastructure, and others.

Due to the high quality of the published articles, Global Health Action has already been indexed by or included in Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ), EMCare, CINAHL, Google Scholar, J-gate, and Ulrich's Periodical Directory. Inclusion in PubMed Central – and thereby indexing in PubMed – is pending.

Cooperation between the Centre for Global Health Research and Co-Action Publishing has been excellent since the start. We are in continuous dialogue so as to develop the journal, polishing the website, and enhancing the online facilities for all user groups – authors, reviewers, and readers.

For the scientific solidity of Global Health Action, we extend our warmest gratitude to all the reviewers who have willingly contributed with their deep knowledge and commitment, and to the International Advisory Board for their invaluable help and guidance. We look forward to continue working with them in the years to come.

Stig Wall, Chief Editor for the Editorial Board

Anne Bindslev, Senior Publisher for Co-Action Publishing