The year 2021 has been challenging in so many ways! However, as we have learned over the last year and a half, unexpected challenges sometimes create new opportunities and even improvements. The tumult of our life and times has not gone unnoticed by the editorial team and has manifested itself in all aspects of Advances in Skin & Wound Care's processes.

For example, we have reflected this year on our journal guidelines and procedures. Critically, the journal's mission statement has been updated to reflect our international, interprofessional authors and audience. We have reworked the journal's departments including Letters to the Editors, Practice Points, and Practice Reflections to better accommodate the types of submissions we are receiving. Further, we have standardized terminology such as "pressure injury (PI)," which is now the preferred verbiage except in the context of previously published works. We urge you to thoroughly review our new author guidelines for this and other changes, including updated guidance on blinding submissions.

These changes are reflective of the immense interest in publishing with Advances. If we were concerned that clinicians would not have time to write manuscripts during the pandemic, those concerns were unfounded. The first 6 months of 2021 brought a 12% increase in submissions over the first half of 2020-a record year in its own right-and three of our five busiest months of all time have been in 2021 so far!

This record number of submissions does continue to impact the peer-review process; accordingly, we are constantly striving to expand our reviewer base. Having a large group of reviewers to draw from enables us to gracefully honor those who must decline and requests for more time to review while balancing these requests with authors eagerly awaiting manuscript decisions. These peer reviewers help our journal achieve and maintain the high scientific quality you know and expect.

September 20 to 24, 2021, is the week that the world celebrates peer reviewers. The theme for this year is "Identity in Peer Review," which mirrors the health disparities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to uplift the Black Lives Matter movement and reconciliation efforts for indigenous populations worldwide. As stated on the Peer Review Week website, participating organizations should explore "[horizontal ellipsis]the multifaceted nature of identity, how personal and social identity affects peer-review practices and experiences, and what's needed to foster more diverse, equitable, and inclusive peer-review processes."1 So how can our team improve our approach to diversity issues?

The diverse fabric of modern society must be reflected in the wound care literature. As mentioned in a previous editorial, there has been a lack of literature on and published images of skin of color and COVID-19 skin eruptions. Almost all of the published literature features white skin, ignoring brown (Fitzpatrick class 5) and black (Fitzpatrick class 6) skin. We encourage and are actively soliciting publications including images reflecting the entire diversity of skin colors globally to improve practice.

Concomitantly, Advances has increased our pool of potential peer reviewers. We are proud of the diversity of our more than 250 peer reviewers, hailing from more than 15 different countries, as well as the different disciplines and specialty areas of practice they represent. We also strive to have representation from individuals in the beginning, middle, and advanced stages of their careers. Having a wide range of outlooks contributes to the multidimensional and interprofessional perspectives with which we examine each manuscript, enhancing international conversation and providing a mechanism to share potential clinical strategies that could work well for clinicians the world over.

Although you may not know the names of the hundreds of peer reviewers in our database, you, our reader, do see the end result of their volunteer efforts that cumulate in accepted manuscripts for Advances in Skin & Wound Care; we all benefit from the evidence base they support. On behalf of the entire editorial team, we say a huge thank-you to all of our peer reviewers and authors, and Editorial Advisory Board and Peer-Review Panel. We salute you, our publication heroes.

Elizabeth A. Ayello, PhD, MS, BSN, RN, CWON, ETN, MAPWCA, FAAN

R. Gary Sibbald, MD, DSc (Hons), MEd, BSc, FRCPC (Med Derm), FAAD, MAPWCA, JM

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