Editorial

This issue brings Volume 141 of Brain to a close. During 2018, Brain featured 12 Editorials, 12 Reviews, three Updates, 46 Scientific Commentaries, one Clinical Trial, 11 Reports, 203 Articles, four Book Reviews, seven 'Grey Matters', one 'From the Archives', two 'Evoked Responses', 67 Letters to the Editor, 15 Corrigenda and one Erratum. The Editorial office processed over 2300 submissions, with an acceptance rate for unsolicited material around 12%. That 88% of original papers submitted were rejected gives some cause for concern. Despite the efforts of the Editorial team to provide a fair evaluation of all manuscripts, some authors are justifiably unhappy that their papers could not be accommodated. Some submissions will inevitably fall just the wrong side of the cut-off with respect to perceived potential impact for the field. Raising the acceptance rate without increasing the total number of pages printed would necessitate cutting down on the length of accepted articles. Although authors are encouraged to make use of online Supplementary material, the format of articles in Brain is intended to allow authors to provide a sufficient account of their discoveries that they can be appreciated in the journal without having to refer to the website. The publishing contract, which limits the total size of the journal, reflects Brain's evolution since 1878, when three issues were published, and four the following year. Individual issues gradually increased in length until 1986 when six issues appeared, and a further fission event occurred in 1997, when the current format of 12 issues per volume took hold. Since then Brain has only developed a mild embonpoint, and it is still possible to read a paper copy without risk of injury. More relevant to the majority of readers who access the journal electronically, it is possible to appreciate a selection of important advances across the breadth of translational neuroscience without two novel variants of anxiety disorder, Information Overload (IO) and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). The business model that has sustained Brain for the first 141 years of its existence provides a natural incentive to keep the journal at a manageable size, in contrast to the Open Access online-only format, which favours high-volume publication and consequent risks of IO and FOMO.

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