["Investigación Clínica": 50 years disseminating biomedical research]

INVESTIGACION CLINICA was founded by the initiative of Américo Negrette, who became its first editor, and it has been published uninterruptedly since July 1960, with a quarterly frequency. The first issues consisted mainly of a collection of reviews of seminars held at the now called Instituto de Investigaciones Clínicas "Dr. Américo Negrette", Facultad de Medicina, Universidad del Zulia, its publisher. Very soon, original research results from this institution were included in the novel journal. In the 60's, papers on results obtained during the outbreaks of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis present in the area, were prominent. Originally, the journal published 3-4 papers, but due to the increased number of contributions, in 2001, its format changed from 1/16 to 1/8, and now each number includes 11 original articles. Currently, INVESTIGACION CLINICA publishes 44 papers a year, in Spanish or English on different biomedical topics, from contributors all around the world. Progressively it has been included in different renowned indexes, such as PubMed/MEDLINE, Science Citation Index Expanded, Excerpta Medica, Tropical Diseases Bulletin, Copernicus, Scopus, Periodica, and several others. Besides, it can be found in open access through www.Scielo.org.ve, www.freemedicaljournals.com and in our new Web page: https://sites. google.com/site/revistainvestigacionesclinicas/home. Most papers published in INVESTIGACION CLINICA have been cited in the regional or foreign literature accumulating more than 1200 citations by now. For this particular issue, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of INVESTIGACION CLINICA, we have invited some of our more recent referees or authors to contribute with Reviews in their respective areas of expertise.