Health Professions Education is a journal that aims to be an open forum for sharing new empirical findings and new ideas in the emerging field of health professions education. In addition, it focuses on three areas that are underdeveloped in this field.

First, existing journals offer little opportunity for young researchers to master the craft of scientific publishing in close interaction with experienced reviewers. Health Professions Education will therefore offer more extended editorial support to young researchers than is possible for existing journals. We encourage beginning authors to submit their work to our journal.

Second, the field focuses more and more on the science of health professions education and this seems to be happening at the expense of interest in the practice of health professions education. We will offer space in our columns for those who have interesting new practices to share with their colleagues elsewhere.

Third, the scientific publishing endeavor itself needs a fresh approach. In recent years, scientists have been caught meddling with their data, making up findings, or selecting their subjects such that statistically significant effects are produced. Famous experiments turn out to be nonreplicable by other researchers. To contribute to the solution of these ailments we invite researchers to submit papers that contain (a) replications of landmark studies in the field, (b) non-significant findings of interesting hypotheses, or (c) papers reporting the development and evaluation of new measuring instruments for use in health professions education. In addition, we will encourage further discussion of a particular paper by publishing reviewers’ reports in conjunction with the paper itself and by inviting readers to join the discussion. Finally, we will invite authors to make their full data available.