The road from Duck End Farm: the formative years of RBMOnline

Reproductive BioMedicine Online has now reached its 25th year and in marking the anniversary this article looks back to its earliest years and the practicalities faced by its founder, Sir Robert Edwards, in establishing a new journal based on internet publication. The narrative follows the first years of production, with a full-time staff of just two, and how the journal quickly set a forward-looking tone of innovation in reproductive medicine. Despite its name, and despite its originating principle of internet production, since 2010 RBMO has been produced – online and in print – in collaboration with a commercial publisher, which greatly streamlined the management of manuscripts and their rapid publication. While Bob Edwards has remained the inspiration for the journal's progress, each of the editors who succeeded him – Jacques Cohen, Bart Fauser, Juan Garcia-Velasco and Nick Macklon – each gave renewed identity to the title, expanded its reach and nurtured its growth.