One of the signs of maturity and quality of a medical journal is the willingness of experts in the field to contribute editorials or op-eds to the journal. Although most medical journals target the latest original scientific research articles, late-breaking trials, and publishing guidelines, some medical journals focus on interpretation of the data and its impact on the field. Often the editorial may be of equal importance to the original manuscript. We all want to learn about new technologies or strategies in our field, but readers are also interested in hearing views on a manuscript and analysis of the data from an objective expert. This helps put the manuscript content and data into perspective.

Writing an editorial is an art and requires a special skill set. Rather than summarizing the results and conclusions of a manuscript, the editorial should give directions on how the data or the technology detailed in the manuscript may impact practice, and it will often come with recommendations. The editorial can emphasize the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript; however, it is not another review. It is more of an objective perspective on the content of the manuscript and its impact on the field. Writing an editorial is also an opportunity for the author to share his or her own voice on the subject of interest and beyond.

Daily newspapers like op-eds and use them to better connect with their community and circle of readers and to allow competition with other media, such as television and radio commentators. In the field of medicine, you may read or hear comments on websites and blogs or at national meetings; however, these are not cited and usually forgotten over a short period of time. An editorial to a cited medical journal endures and gives the author of the editorial and the readers of the journal the opportunity to go back years after and to check the accuracy of the prediction and the opinion that was posted at the time of the publication.

Editorials also have an educational aspect, and some have an entertainment feature as well. In certain cases, a great editorial is better remembered and equally or more often cited than the original manuscript that it was written about.

As the editor-in-chief of the Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine ( CRM ) journal, I have written many editorials for the journal. At the beginning, these were limited to summaries of the original articles published in each issue. Lately, I’ve found that writing editorials for the CRM journal provides a wonderful and powerful platform to express thoughts on important issues involving our dynamic interventional cardiology arena.

In this issue, you will find an editorial on the field of renal denervation for the treatment of hypertension written by one of the experts and pioneers in the field, Dr. Vasilios Papademetriou. It is exemplary of how a good editorial can be supplementary to an original manuscript. I solicited the editorial for the manuscript entitled “Next generation renal denervation: chemical ‘perivascular’ renal denervation with alcohol using a novel drug infusion catheter,” which was written by Fischell et al. The technology was presented at the Cardiovascular Research Technologies (CRT) 2015 meeting, February 21–24, Washington, DC, and was awarded second place at the best innovation in cardiology contest. This article is one of many manuscripts that we are featuring in the current and upcoming issues of CRM that originated as an abstract presented at the CRT 2015 meeting.

It is with great pleasure as editor-in-chief of the CRM journal that I call upon you to submit editorials or op-eds to the CRM journal. This call is not limited to editorials on manuscripts published in the journal, and the editorial is not a substitute for a letter to the editor or a review article. The editorial board of the journal would like to hear your voice and opinion on the most important and controversial issues and topics in the field. If appropriate, these editorials will be printed in the journal and distributed electronically via the CRTonline mailing list.

You will find that writing editorials is not only an educational exercise but can also be fun!