It is a year today that BMJ Open published its first papers: prompting donuts all round!

We have now published over 230 open access research articles, covering niche topics and major public health issues alike.

Several articles have received plenty of press coverage. Some have prompted considerable national debate, such as this paper suggesting that there would be major benefits to the rest of the UK if their diets improved to the level of England’s. Others, such as this paper on locked-in syndrome, have received widespread international coverage. Many articles now have thousands of downloads.

Wider exposure can bring closer scrutiny and some articles have received plenty of robust critique after publication. Everything we publish has received peer review, quite often including statistical review. We publish reviews of accepted articles so the justification for acceptance is clear. But research thrives on debate and we would be delighted to receive more comments – positive or (constructively) critical.

After just a year of publication we feel the journal is already making its mark. We have published papers from first-time authors and experienced researchers, offering a straightforward route to publication via fair, transparent peer review.

Many authors have also benefited from our willingness to waive article payment charges for those without the means to pay.

In our next year we look forward to publishing an even wider range of papers, hopefully with more authors taking advantage of our partnership with the Dryad repository to share their research data.

Here’s to the next 12 months …