After many years of enthusiastically working for our journal, Professor Earl Carstens has recently stepped down as Section Editor for the Itch section, as he has been appointed associate editor of a new journal, ITCH. Professor Carstens will remain associated with Acta Dermato-Venereologica (ActaDV) as a member of our Advisory Board. We offer him our sincere thanks for his continued interest in ActaDV. Incidentally, our journal will remain affiliated with the International Forum for the Study of Itch (IFSI), despite no longer being its official journal.

I am happy to announce that Assistant Professor Tasuku Akiyama, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, will be our new Section Editor for Neurodermatology and Experimental Itch research, working in parallel with Professor Elke Weisshaar of Heidelberg, who continues as Section Editor, mainly for clinical itch research. Dr Akiyama gained a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Toyama, Japan, in 2008, after which he worked in Professor Carstens’ research group at the University of California, Davis, until moving to Temple University in 2014. Dr Akiyama has published numerous papers on itch and pain, and has written several book chapters on this theme. We warmly welcome him to the Editorial Board.

Another new Section Editor has been appointed recently; Associate Professor Josip Car, a family physician, brings expertise in population health, health services research, systematic reviews and eHealth. These are critical areas for dermatology, as we seek to achieve the best possible diagnostics, treatments and outcomes, and to scale their impact beyond our dermatology clinics to populations and health systems. Dr Car is based at Imperial College, London and at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Singapore, a collaboration between Imperial and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), thus also bringing an invaluable international perspective to the Editorial Board.

This issue of ActaDV is the last to appear as both a printed and online version after being launched as an open access journal 5 years ago. Thus, from January 2017, at the proud age of 97 years, our journal will become an exclusively digital publication. Our rigorous peer review process will, however, remain the same. Accepted papers will be collected in monthly issues, although now appearing much faster online than during the previous era of print. This news will be elaborated on in January 2017 in the ”new ActaDV” At the same time, ActaDV will be given a new layout and cover design. In the near future a more dynamic website will also be launched with opportunities for discussion and debate.

Uppsala and Lund, Sweden in September, 2016

Anders Vahlquist   Artur Schmidtchen

Editor-in-Chief     Co-Editor