A golden anniversary for ANZJOG: The 'red journal' 50 years on: Editorial

I was just 5 years old when the first issue of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology was published in March, 1961. The USA had just seen the inauguration of JFK as its 35th President, the Cold War was at its height and the Beatles were still finalising their line‐up and yet to have a hit record. In those days, the journal was published only four times a year with an average of about 10 articles per issue so, we are now publishing more than three times the number of manuscripts each year. The content was mainly clinical and often with only one author, unlike the multi‐author papers we see today. It would be fair to say that much of the published work was ‘experience‐based’ rather than ‘evidence‐based’. The great majority of the articles were from Australia and New Zealand, although with a sprinkling of articles from the UK and elsewhere. Now nearly fifty years on, ANZJOG is a truly international journal with a rising impact factor and a very broad readership throughout the world. To celebrate this fact, we are planning to showcase an article from each of the first five decades in the first five issues of this volume. The article will be reproduced in full with a short editorial commentary by one of our Associate Editors. For the sixth, we will republish the most cited article ever published in our journal.