Introducing “Renal Replacement Therapy”: a new global perspective

I am very honored to write this editorial for the launch of Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT) and sincerely welcome you to this new journal published by the Japanese Society for Dialysis Therapy (JSDT) in collaboration with BioMed Central. The JSDT aims to promote advances in technology and research and the dissemination of knowledge related to renal replacement medicine [1]. The main incentive to launch this new international journal is the sense of crisis acknowledged by the Society regarding the current status of renal replacement therapy research.

Chronic renal replacement therapy mainly consists of hemodialysis (HD) in Japan, which has been the preferred option for national medical insurance since 1972. This provides us with a rich history for near half a century. The number of patients undergoing chronic renal replacement therapy continually increases throughout Japan, which includes almost 310,000 patients at the end of 2012 [2]. This number becomes a significant problem within the national health management and medical economy. Therefore, we should aim to focus on the management of patients undergoing renal replacement therapy to contribute to their long life while also ensuring good quality of life. These efforts could provide a huge impact on national and world healthcare and medical economy fields. We must also consider research into the most effective medical interventions before renal replacement therapy initiation becomes necessary. When it comes to practicing renal replacement therapy, Japan is an extremely experienced country, and the treatment result outcomes are among the most effective in the world [3].

We strongly consider that Japan’s wealth of valuable experiences and strong research contributions should be shared and should stimulate discussion all over the world. This is the main reason to launch the new journal widely surrounding the knowledge and skills of renal replacement therapy. The journal title “Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT)” is a simple and beautiful name including all knowledge and skills of HD, peritoneal dialysis (PD), blood purification technology, and many complications seen at end-stage renal disease. Both kidney transplantation and regenerative medicine are within the remit of Renal Replacement Therapy. In addition, both chronic kidney disease (CKD) and acute kidney injury (AKI) are very important issues within the journal scope. We welcome submissions from all scientific fields related to renal replacement therapies and from all countries and areas all over the world.

We also recognize the importance of providing a quick peer-review process for our authors. The journal operates a traditional closed peer-review system, and two or more reviewers are consulted for each submission that proceeds to peer review. Peer review is conducted by our experienced Editorial Board members with the Renal Replacement Therapy policy of offering a rapid, high-quality peer-review system. We shall pursue to improve the journal standing in the field by both publishing high-quality articles and providing constructive peer-review processes.

To realize the idealistic purpose of the new journal, we decided to initiate this journal publication in collaboration with BioMed Central [4]. We believe that open-access, online journals have the most potential to approach a larger set of active readers than traditional paper-based journals [5]. We hope that our decision could lead to increased discussions, browsing, reading, and citations. This advantage may allow our journal to be indexed in PubMed Central and PubMed in no time at all. We are aiming to receive a high-impact factor in order to place RRT as one of the top journals in nephrology, renal replacement therapy, and blood purification fields, as soon as we are eligible for evaluation. The Society has also taken the decision to cover the publication costs for all authors, who still retain copyright. This means that all publication costs for articles published in Renal Replacement Therapy are currently covered by JSDT, and you will therefore not have to pay an article-processing charge for this manuscript.

Aging increases the population in not only our country but also all developed countries and increases the incidences for aging-induced kidney disease and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) [6]. The amount of ESRD patients requiring renal replacement therapy is also increasing, and we see this trend within populations within developing countries as well [7]. Based on the current situation, we are expecting a lot of new submissions to our journal from all over the world, especially developing countries, and the free publication fee aims to place RRT as a platform for this research.

We wish to contribute a worldwide open discussion and progression around renal replacement therapy areas. You can hold copyright and grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate your article in CC (Creative Commons)-BY licenses under the most free of conditions [8]. Finally, we also will submit several Society statement position papers as the Japanese Guidelines and Japanese Best Practice documents around renal replacement therapy fields in RRT in the near future.

We have been assessing and reviewing several manuscripts since accepting submissions to the journal a few months ago. We have made a lot of effort to attract topical research and informative review articles, which will soon be published on the journal in the months following the launch of the journal.

We hope you will consider contributing to our new journal Renal Replacement Therapy.