• pediatric surgery

Pediatric surgery is a very young subspecialty, which was established much later than both adult surgery and pediatrics, but its fast-paced development and tremendous achievements to date are remarkable. Children are the future of our world, and pediatric surgery plays a critical role in securing their health. The discipline of pediatric surgery is also facing many challenges. In China, the mortality rate of children less than 5 years of age decreased from 61.0 per 1000 in 1991 to 10.7 per 1000 in 2015; however, perinatal birth defects increased from 109.79 per 10 000 in 2000 to 153.23 per 10 000 in 2011. Serious shortages of pediatricians and disparities of medical resources are the most prominent challenges in China.1 It is gratifying that, with economic development and technological progress, breakthroughs in new areas such as artificial intelligence, precision medicine, new artificial materials, and medical robots have brought tremendous power and potential to pediatric surgery.2–5 In addition, frequent international pediatric medical collaboration and communication, along with medical volunteer programs for underserved areas, are undoubtedly making huge efforts to eliminate the healthcare gap in pediatrics.6

Thus, we launch the World Journal of Pediatric Surgery (WJPS), which aims to reflect the current situation of clinical practices of pediatric surgery across the world, and focuses on the future development of pediatric surgery. Serving as a comprehensive open-access journal, WJPS includes high-quality original articles, reviews, commentaries, brief reports, letters, case reports, and clinical images on all aspects of pediatric surgery. The journal is particularly interested in interdisciplinary studies including, but not limited to, minimally invasive techniques, robotic surgery, molecular imaging, precision surgery, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, new materials, and medical instruments. WJPS provides high-quality services to attract talented authors and reviewers worldwide, so that we can provide the best-quality content to our readers.

The Children’s Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine (ZUCH) is among the best and the largest children’s hospitals in China. After 60 years of development, ZUCH is among the national leaders in multiple specialties. In July 2005, ZUCH launched World Journal of Pediatrics (WJP), the first English journal in the field of pediatrics in China. After 10 years of hard work, WJP is nationally and internationally influential and has become an important window to demonstrate pediatric research results and clinical practices around the world. One of WJP’s previous initiatives was to mail free copies internationally, especially to the hospitals, universities, and research institutions in low/middle-income countries and underserved areas, so that medical students, physicians, and researchers in those regions can obtain the latest pediatric research progress around the world. In that spirit, WJPS will adopt an open-access model, so that readers will have continual free access to all content published in the journal. At the same time, we will still provide free mail services for readers in countries where access to the internet is difficult and inconvenient.

In summary, WJPS aims to become a comprehensive journal with rich content and wide coverage. By reporting on the pediatric surgical practices in different countries and regions across the world and by publishing significant findings and cutting-edge results in pediatric surgery, WJPS will work together with pediatric surgeons and researchers internationally to improve children’s surgical care. We would like to invite you to submit suitable articles to the journal for evaluation, to help build this resource for the international pediatric surgery community. Articles can be submitted to the journal at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wjps.