This issue of BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care comes with two themes, prompted this time by two shoals of submissions, one of papers relating to chest medicine, concerning both cancerous and chronic conditions. We have research reports, a feature, a review and a short report on various aspects of respiratory and cardiac symptom control.

The other group of papers tackles questions of research methodology. We launched this journal with the aim of engaging clinicians and we do not encourage papers that are only of interest to researchers, however my editor's choice, Julia Addington-Hall's paper on the …