New year, new ambitions!

Welcome to volume 8 of the Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (JIEPH). It is a delight to pen this editorial in the sixth year of JIEPH´s uninterrupted publication and as the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) —our publisher — celebrates 20 years. In 2024, we published our seventh volume with a total of 76 articles spread across the regular issue (56 articles) and two special supplements: Advancing Public Health through the Rwanda Field Epidemiology Training Program (R-FETP) Supplement with 10 articles and the 8thAFENET Conference Supplement with 10 articles. Rwanda, Uganda, and Ghana were the top three countries that published with us (Figure 1). We are grateful to the authors, reviewers, guest editors and editorial board for their valuable support that made this possible. True to our mission and journal scope, most of the published articles were outbreak investigations and surveillance system evaluations (Figure 2). We also published eighteen articles in our regular issue on the COVID-19 preparedness and response efforts in Africa. JIEPH hosted four quarterly webinars aimed at improving the quality of submissions that we receive from authors and reviewers. The topics were: How to write the methods section of your manuscript; study designs and sampling strategies, sample size determination for common epidemiological studies; how to write the discussion section of a manuscript; and how to write the introduction section of a scientific manuscript. Speakers were drawn from each of AFENET´s four regions to ensure regional balance and —for the first time— we had a French speaker. An average of 90 participants attended each webinar. You can access recordings and presentations on the website under the JIEPH resources tab [1]. We invite you to propose topics and or speakers that you would want us to host this year. Please send an email to editor@afenet-journal.net. In commemoration of the 2024 World Field Epidemiology Day, we hosted a podcast series titled “Footprints of Field Epidemiology”. A wealth of experiences was shared by the different speakers who included FETP alumni and AFENET founder members. I encourage field epidemiologists and the public health fraternity to watch these episodes and share feedback on our various social media platforms and write a commentary [2]. Since inception, we have experienced challenges with our journal management system (JMS) which resulted in long turnaround times. Towards the end of last year, we made a bold decision to switch to Editorial Manager — one of the best JMS in the publishing industry. We intend to complete the transition during the first quarter of this year. Once fully integrated, we hope that authors, reviewers, and editors will have a better experience interacting with the new JMS culminating in shorter turnaround times and more articles published by the end of 2025. We have an ambitious target of publishing at least 100 articles and three special supplements by December 2025. Help us achieve this target by making JIEPH your preferred journal and publishing with us. One of the hallmarks of a good journal is its editorial board. This year we are desirous to expand our editorial advisory board and peer reviewer pool in both numbers and diversity (geographical, technical and gender). To express interest, please send an email to editor@afenet-journal.net. I invite you to share your suggestions on how we can improve our operations under the campaign “the JIEPH I want to see in 2025” using the hashtag #JIEPH2025. Looking forward to another exciting year of publishing as we celebrate AFENET´s 20th anniversary.