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Epilepsia Open was launched in September 2016 as the official open access International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) journal with the main goal of providing a publishing opportunity for high quality and rigorous basic, translational or clinical research and reviews in epilepsy. Recognizing the importance of communicating research data that have the potential of not only providing novel information but also of clarifying the scientific and translational value of existing observations, Epilepsia Open has been also accepting submissions of high quality research articles that report negative or confirmatory or preliminary studies, provided that these follow the rigorous and transparent reporting practices. Despite its young course in the publishing field, Epilepsia Open has made strides in getting established as a reputable journal in epilepsy research. We have seen a steady increase in visitors to our site and submissions, both direct submissions to our journal (currently comprising 65% of our submissions) but also articles transferred from Epilepsia that have been pre-selected by the editors for their potential to contribute in epilepsy research and care. Our quarterly regular issues have reported on a variety of topics on clinical care, basic, translational and clinical research, critical reviews, case reports, special reports from ILAE committees and Task Forces which have undergone a meticulous peer review from our editorial board and invited expertreviewers. To recognize the young investigators publishing high quality articles in Epilepsia Open , in 2018 we instituted for the first time the annual Prizes for best Clinical Research and Basic Science Research written by young investigators and epileptologists. In 2018, we are also highly anticipating two special issues that are cover key issues in epilepsy. The first special issue is planned on preclinical common data elements (CDEs) and is edited by Drs Galanopoulou, Scharfman, French, Harte-Hargrove, Pitk€anen and Whittemore. These CDEs have been developed for preclinical epilepsy researchers by the TASK3 group of the ILAE/American Epilepsy Society (AES) Joint Translational Task Force and will be offered for community feedback, in an effort to offer tools that could facilitate collaborations and data inclusions in big databases. The second special issue, edited by Drs Mazarati and Mosh e, is on epilepsy therapies, honoring Dr Raman Sankar, and will include a broad collection of clinical and preclinical epilepsy research and care articles written by authorities in the field presenting critical updates on biomarkers, therapy development, mechanisms, and treatments. Our published articles have drawn a growing interest by our readership, as evidenced by the doubling of the numbers Aristea S. Galanopoulou is a co-Editor-in-Chief of Epilepsia Open Dong Zhou is a co-Editor-in-Chief of Epilepsia Open