EDITORIAL

      Reproductive Biology has been regularly edited since July 2001 when the first issue of volume 1 was published. Over the past four years, several important events have happened in the history of the journal. Firstly, the journal was included in Index Copernicus edited by the Medical Commission of the State Committee for Scientific Research. Secondly, Reproductive Biology became accessible on its own website: www.repbiol.pan.olsztyn.pl; now free full texts are available on-line under the above address. Thirdly, in July 2003, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, USA reviewed Reproductive Biology and graded it between 3.5 and 3.9, the equivalent of "very good", with a recommendation for indexing in Index Medicus/MEDLINE. Reproductive Biology has been indexed from December 2003 starting with the first issue of 2001.
      The present editorial board of the journal comprises of 29 well known specialists from USA (9), Finland, France, Great Britain, Israel, Portugal (5) and Poland (15). During the past four years of the journal's "life" 59 papers have been published and one third of them (18) were papers submitted by authors from abroad. To ensure high standards, submitted papers are peer reviewed by two experts from Poland and abroad. In the near future, editors plan to prepare for indexing Reproductive Biology in "Current Contents".
      In connection with all this, we would like to ask all members of both Advisory and Editorial Boards for cooperation in reviewing papers and convincing co-workers and research colleagues to submit papers to our journal for publication. We also appeal to former and potential authors publishing their papers in our or other journals to cite papers published in Reproductive Biology, so that it could receive its impact factor as soon as possible.
      Unfortunately, in August 2004 Reproductive Biology was bereaved by the sudden death of Professor Halina Krzanowska, the geneticist from Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the member of the journal's advisory board. We lost an exceptionally cooperative and competent advisor and expert reviewer. It will be difficult to recover from this loss.

Editors