This summer brings a mostly new editorial team to the JRCPE (Andrew Medford continues to manage the Education section), and, with a significant changing of the guard, now is perhaps a good time to stop and reflect on what the JRCPE is for. Who is our readership? What is the JRCPE's mission? What niche should the JRCPE occupy in the publishing landscape? How should the JRCPE evolve in the future? The first question is perhaps the easiest to answer. The main readership of the JRCPE is of course the membership of the RCPE. Traditionally we have published articles broadly of UK interest. However, with an expanding international membership, we hope to capture the interest of this segment of our readership too. The JRCPE also encompasses a readership beyond the College, across the UK and internationally, with free online article access and PubMed listing bringing the JRCPE to a global audience. It is important that the content reflects the interests of this global audience as well as that of practitioners in the UK. To this end, we have recruited an associate editor (international), Yeong Yeh Lee, who will assist the editorial team in soliciting and editing international clinical papers. Reassuringly, the last membership survey suggested that the JRCPE's content was popular with Members, although we must be wary of assuming that those responding are representative of all potential readers. The mission of the JRCPE then needs to align with the mission of the College – namely to raise standards of physicianly practice, to improve the quality of patient care, to educate and to influence healthcare policy. What sort of content would best deliver this aim? Research reports are one part of this, particularly research with a direct impact on patient care. The JRCPE also has an important role in supporting quality improvement; audit alone is insufficient to drive improvement and we welcome papers describing innovative methods to improve services, with robust evaluation, informed by the rapidly growing field of improvement science. We are also keen to expand the number of systematic reviews that are published in the JRCPE.