Stepping back from the guidelines: Where do we stand?

The third edition of the autophagy guidelines is now published. This turned out to be a major undertaking in part because of the tremendous increase in the number of researchers participating in autophagy studies, and hence in revising the guidelines. First, I cannot emphasize enough that this paper represents a true community effort-it would simply not be possible for one person to generate such an in-depth and up-to-date manuscript covering this diverse range of topics in the autophagy field. Second, it is of critical importance that this paper indeed does not represent the opinions of a single individual, but rather seeks to obtain a consensus opinion regarding the best methods to monitor autophagy and interpret the results of the corresponding experiments. So, thank you to all who have contributed to the latest version.