Special feature on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of NDT

The first issue of NDT was published in 1986, so we are very pleased to present you this anniversary issue celebrating the 25th anniversary of our journal. Nephrology, Dialysis, Transplantation, as the journalwas called in those days, now abbreviated to NDT, is the official journal of the European Renal Association/European Dialysis Transplant Association (ERA/EDTA). Spanning these 25 years, four Editors-in-Chief have served the journal. Instead of writing a rather ‘traditional’ historical overview of the journal, we asked our publisher, Oxford University Press, to provide us with the five most cited NDT papers in each editorial period. Each editor then summarized these papers and put them in the context of later developments in the relevant areas. We also tried to explain why these papers received such a high citation number and how they may have contributed to improving the care of our patients suffering from kidney diseases. We believe that these four contributions reflect the importance of NDT not only as a leading European but also as a truly major international journal in nephrology. We hope that our readers will enjoy reading these short papers as much as we all enjoyed writing them. At this occasion, the editors also want to express their sincere thanks to all the authors, reviewers, editors and readers of NDT for their interest in the journal. We also wish to acknowledge the continuous support over all these years of the ERA/EDTA council, the collaborators in the respective editorial offices and our publisher, OUP.