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European Academy of Andrology revives the International Journal of Andrology Award and Lecture.

It is our pleasure to remind our readers about the revival of the European Academy of Andrology Prize for the best paper published in the International Journal of Andrology and to announce the first recipient of the new award. This award replaces previous annual prizes that were awarded between 1995 and 2005 for the best article and the runner-up that were published in the journal in a given year. They were sponsored for several years by Hamilton Thorne Research Ltd and we take this opportunity to thank the company for the generous support. After their support had stopped, the award was sponsored for a few years by the European Academy of Andrology but eventually died a ‘natural death’. The European Academy of Andrology decided to revive the prize and simultaneously boost its prestige and visibility. From now on the prize will be biennial and will recognize excellent research published as one or more papers in the International Journal of Andrology. The recipient will present a special plenary lecture at a European Congress of Andrology with all expenses paid and will receive a commemorative plaque. The first award was presented on October 1, 2010 at the 6th European Congress of Andrology in Athens, Greece. The laureate, Professor R. John Aitken (Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Biotechnology and Development, and School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia) deliveredan excellent lecture entitled ‘Sperm biology for andrologists’. The first award was exceptional, since it covered the period from 2005 to 2009. During those five years R. John Aitken published six papers in the International Journal of Andrology and his papers occupied four top positions on the citation list of the journal for this period. The top paper, an original experimental study (Aitken et al., 2005), was cited more than 40 times, the two next papers, both review articles on topics in which John is a well recognised expert (Aitken 2006; Aitken et al., 2009) were also popular among the readers. John is one of the giants in the field of andrology and is a recipient of numerous awards and honours. He has published over 450 research articles, his work has been cited >12,250 times, including one study published in Int J Androl, which to date has gathered >155 citations (Atiken et al. 1990). R. John Aitken has served on the editorial boards of eight journals, including the International Journal of Andrology, where in May 2009 he has kindly accepted to become an Associate Editor. Incidentally, a study from his group appears also in this issue of the journal (Mitchell et al., 2011). The next recipient will be selected among the authors of papers published within 2010 and 2011 and will present an award lecture at the 7th European Congress of Andrology to be held in Berlin in 2012. We urge all of our readers to send your best work to our journal; who knows maybe your next study published in the International Journal of Andrology will pave your way to Berlin! We wish all of you a very productive and successful year 2011!