When a well-established journal such as Medical History has a change in ownership and editorial office, the attendant arrangements require time. I am delighted to report that the shifts have occurred thanks to the Wellcome Trust’s support and Cambridge University Press’s boundless energy. The editorial office has now dealt with backlogs of articles created by the shift, thanks mainly to enthusiastic support from members of the editorial advisory board and legions of colleagues all over the world. Alex Medcalf, my editorial assistant in York, is to be commended for his hard work and powers of organisation. And, the University of York has generously provided dedicated space for the editorial office. I am very grateful for such wide-ranging support.

This seems to be an appropriate time for an important clarification. Medical History will continue to be fully archived on PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) upon publication. The content deposited there will be the final, published version of record, as soon as possible after publication, with no embargo. The existing content on PMC/UKPMC – covering the entire back-run of Medical History and the Supplement – will also remain available.

Print copies of the journal will continue to be available to individual and institutional subscribers, as they have been previously. Subscribers also have the option to access content on the Cambridge Journals Online platform, which offers users search functionality, reference linking and the option to view content on e-readers and other mobile devices.

Material included on PMC/UKPMC will remain the copyright of the author. From 2012 authors will also have the option to publish their work under a Creative Commons, Attribution-only (CC-BY) licence. Articles published under this licence will be available for download immediately upon publication on the Cambridge University Press site (journals.cambridge.org/mdh). Authors or their funding bodies will pay an article processing fee in order to publish their work in this way. All other authors will be able to publish their work under the traditional model of a regular transfer of copyright form.

Subject to the growth in the number of authors (and research funders) willing to support the cost for CC-BY licensing, the aim is for Medical History to eventually move to a fully open access model and discontinue its subscription model.

Thanks to the work of the Wellcome Trust and Cambridge University Press, the long-term future of the journal is secure.