New Year, New Opportunities, New Initiatives

This year marks the 50th anniversary of our Academy of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Physical Therapy. The Academy is planning a big celebration at the Combined Sections Meeting (CSM) in Houston, Texas and at the Academy's Fall Conference in Salt Lake, Utah. In addition, the Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal (CPTJ) is celebrating its 36th consecutive year of publication. To continue our pursuit of excellence in cardiopulmonary physical therapy research, we have developed several new initiatives that, we hope, will create many new opportunities. First, we are opening this new volume with a special issue in Long-COVID that was guest edited by Dr. Todd Davenport. Thank you very much Dr. Davenport for your expert knowledge and your help reviewing and editing many submissions, where 11 of them are included in this issue. Second, I am happy to announce our next special issue in Respiratory Muscle Performance, which will be guest edited by Dr. Rich Severin and planned for January 2026. Please see the CPTJ website for more information. Third, CPTJ has started a webinar series to help authors with their submissions. The idea is to (1) encourage junior faculty and clinicians to submit their work to CPTJ in areas that are less known such as Case Reports, Research Design, Protocols, and Implementation Trials and (2) to make these potential submissions more successful. The first webinar on how to write a Case Report was delivered by Dr. Suh-Jen Lin and Dr. Michael Shoemaker in late November, and it is available in the CPTJ YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/mxCpgDoa8P8?si=OwYtMdpFQm3oMKps). The next webinar will cover important details about Research Design and will be presented by Dr. Darlene Reid and Dr. Rich Severin early this year. Finally, and after the Journal's strategic initiative of expanding its visibility, CPTJ has applied for indexation in Scopus, Elsevier's comprehensive, multidisciplinary, trusted abstract, and citation database. Having CPTJ indexed in Scopus will enhance our global visibility and help build the path toward PubMed indexing. I will keep you posted about any progress. In this issue, Dr. Todd Davenport1 leads the special issue in Long-COVID with a great summary about the disease and the phenomenal work included here. From the personal experience of living with Long-COVID2 to different clinical perspectives from the United States,3-5 New Zealand,6 and Ireland,7 case reports from the United States8 and Ireland,9 and original research from the United States10,11 and Portugal,12 this special issue covers the global impact of these postpandemic times. Furthermore, there are a few more articles that were not ready on time for this issue, but they will be included in our April issue and will be available online first on our website as soon as they are ready. Finally, you will also find in this issue all the abstracts that will be presented at CSM in Houston, TX, both platform and poster presentations. This special issue and all the new initiatives that CPTJ has been moving forward are strong statements of our commitment to enhance our profession and specialty via research dissemination, which creates unlimited opportunities for clinicians and faculty members to contribute to excellence. ONWARD!