As we begin our fourth year as editors-in-chief of JTH, we are delighted to welcome these accomplished investigators as associate editors, adding important strengths to our editorial team: Sigrid Brækkan, Jennifer Curnow, Riitta Lassila, Keith Neeves, Karen Vanhoorelbeke, and Jeffrey Zwicker. Collectively, these new associate editors will bring expertise to the journal in the areas of epidemiology, bleeding and thrombosis in women, inherited and acquired bleeding disorders, biorheology and bioengineering, thrombotic microangiopathies, and cancer-associated thrombosis.

In another change for our journal, we now require all authors to include their ORCID identification when submitting a paper to us. We debated this decision for some time, because it adds to the work of submitting papers and we have been trying to streamline the submission process. However, ORCIDs are increasingly required by granting agencies and journals to provide unique identifiers for investigators. ORCID IDs are free, unique, and persistent identifiers that each investigator has control over, and are especially helpful for distinguishing among investigators with the same name. Because investigators control their own ORCID identifier, this does mean that each author must log into our submission system and grant permission to link their ORCID information. However, this only needs to be done once, after which this information will remain linked for all future submissions. As the use of ORCID identifiers becomes more common, it should ultimately save investigators time and reduce the risk of errors, as well as ensure correct attribution of each author’s scholarly contributions.

In 2021, we introduced a new feature in our journal—JTH in Clinic—which focuses on clinical scenarios that lack strong evidence for management choices, or emerging therapies that show strong promise. Ably overseen by Dr. Jean Connors, articles in this series are published every other month and have already proven to be highly popular and useful. This series of articles presents case-based discussions of situations that affect the clinical management of patients with a range of bleeding and thrombotic disorders. In none of these scenarios is there sufficient evidence to generate clinical guidelines, and thus the authors of these articles are invited to generate what amount to expert opinions of optimal clinical management. If readers of the journal have suggestions for future JTH in Clinic topics, which can range from diagnostic approaches, clinical laboratory utility, and treatment strategies, they should contact us through the JTH web site.

Of course, one cannot look forward to 2022 without thinking of the COVID-19 pandemic, now entering its third year. Severe SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with increased incidence of venous and arterial thrombosis that can damage not only the lungs but also the central nervous system and many organs. Our field has risen to the challenge of investigating possible new treatments for this scourge as well as researching the underlying mechanisms that cause these thrombotic problems. JTH continues to have greatly increased numbers of article submissions relative to 2019, driven by the centrality of the clotting system to severe COVID-19. In fact, according to Scopus, 19 of the top 20 most-cited articles published in JTH in 2020 and 2021 are on COVID-19, and many of these papers have already been cited many hundreds or even thousands of times. Doubtless, the coming year will continue to see explosive growth in scientific papers focusing on COVID-19, and we anticipate publishing many insights into COVID-19 that come from this research.

We look forward with cautious optimism to what 2022 will bring to our personal and professional lives. While the COVID pandemic has already persisted longer than most of us might have anticipated, it’s clear that even when we return to our normal lives, this normal will be different than the one we were living in 2019. We hope, at the very least, to be able to look forward to some in-person presence at the London 2022 Congress in July, and in the meantime, we wish all of our readers a fulfilling and safe new year.