PLoS is getting ready for this year's ASTMH meeting [2](Washington, D. C., November 18–22), where you’ll find us at Booth 501 [3] in the exhibition hall.

This month’s editorial [7] in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases introduces Serap Aksoy [8], who steps up as Editor-in-Chief alongside Peter Hotez [9]. Together they examine the articles being submitted to the journal, and the different ways in which the impact and quality of the journal can be measured.

A Review article [12] published today in PLoS Computational Biology [13] describes the process of semantically enhancing a research article to enrich content, providing a striking example of how open-access content can be re-used and how scientific articles might take much greater advantage of the online medium in future.

Partnership aims to eliminate blinding trachoma and scale up the fight against other neglected tropical diseases

  Guest blog by Ibrahim Jabr, President, International Trachoma Initiative

This week has seen a significant development in the fight against blinding trachoma. As president of the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) [18], I was pleased to announce on March 18 that we are joining forces with The Task Force for Child Survival and Development [19] (the Task Force) to significantly scale up efforts and leverage additional resources for eliminating trachoma, a neglected tropical disease (NTD) that is the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) [22] and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) [23] issued a call today for ramping up funding and governmental support for R&D to combat neglected diseases [24]. Related research appears in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases [25], among other journals, and we applaud such publications for bringing much-needed attention to these overlooked diseases, which primarily affect the world’s poor and neglected populations.