Today is the fourth anniversary of BMJ Open publishing its first papers.

Since 23 February 2011 we have published over 3000 open access papers with our open peer review process.

One hundred of these papers have accompanying datasets in the Dryad data repository. We are still one of very few medical journals integrated with Dryad to make linking data to articles as simple as possible.

As well as open review and open data, we try to contribute to open science by publishing research protocols. These are detailed research study plans published in advance of the research being undertaken, keeping the community informed and aiding accountability. Twenty-three percent of the papers we published in 2014 were protocols.

BMJ Open papers are increasingly influential. Ninety-one percent of the papers we published in 2011 have citations recorded in the Web of Science; 76% of 2012’s papers and 60% of 2013’s papers are also already cited there.

Four papers are now classed as ‘Highly cited’ by the Web of Science:

• Hypnotics’ association with mortality or cancer: a matched cohort study (Kripke et al.),
•  A pilot study of rapid benchtop sequencing of Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile for outbreak detection and surveillance (Eyre et al.)
• What proportion of patients report long-term pain after total hip or knee replacement for osteoarthritis? A systematic review of prospective studies in unselected patients (Beswick et al.)
• Salt reduction in England from 2003 to 2011: its relationship to blood pressure, stroke and ischaemic heart disease mortality (He et al.)

As well as being cited by other researchers, papers from BMJ Open regularly make the news. Click on the ‘In the news’ tag on the right hand side to see some of the papers that have hit the headlines in recent months. Many papers also boast impressive altmetric scores (you can see these by scrolling down below the abstract or article) showing how often they get disseminated through social media or by reference management programs. Most importantly, people read the articles (they are open access, after all). Our website received over 2.7 million page views in 2014.

BMJ Open doesn’t discriminate editorially on grounds of perceived impact but still publishes papers that attract attention, get cited and reach a wide audience.

Thank you to all the reviewers who have helped make BMJ Open the journal it is and to all the authors who have trusted us with their research. We are excited to see what the next 12 months hold.