On April 30, 2021, Dominique Charron and Reem Al-Daccak published the editorial announcing the launch of a new journal, Exploration of Immunology. As a new journal in immunology, no title for the editorial could have been more fitting than “Exploration of Immunology: challenging knowledge, developing curiosity, and transforming passion into discovery” [1]. And over the years, the journal has indeed served as a forum for high-quality, open-source, free-access knowledge in immunology covering, although not exclusively but mostly, the areas of immune system development, innate immunity and inflammation, molecular and structural immunology, autoimmunity, immunogenetics, vaccines, antigen recognition, allergy and other hypersensitivities, immune regulation, mucosal immunology, system immunology, tumor immunology, microbial immunopathology, immune based therapy and transplantation immunology.

This forum has been (and will be) open access since the publishing house participates to a movement aiming to remove the barriers to sharing any kind of research outputs, resources, methods or tools, at any stage of the research process. Open Science embodies a number of aspects, the core of which is Open Access, Open Data, Open Source, Open Access Monographs, Open Access References, and Open Standards that offer unfettered dissemination of scientific discourse a more universal level. It is fundamental to develop the 21st century biology and medicine [2].

I acknowledge that these first years have been years of hard work, dedication, and collaboration among the entire editorial team, authors, reviewers, and contributors, culminating in June of this year with the awarding of a CiteScore of 1 by Scopus. It is trilling that we can read on the Scopus site the CiteScore Tracker 2024 is 1.3 (180 citations/143 documents) [3]. These results should motivate myself as new Editor in Chief and all people involved in the journal to reach new milestones, such as indexing in PubMed and Web of Science.

As the title of this editorial and as a development plan for the coming years during which the journal will be under my leadership, I have chosen “Immunology Through the Ages”, inspired by the title of the 2024 International Day of Immunology webinar, “Immunity Through the Ages: Navigating the Science of Ageing and Immunology”. Although immunology initially focused on infectious diseases and vaccines, its scope expanded throughout the 20th century to include autoimmune disorders and transplant rejection. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that immunology plays a role not only in the etiopathogenetic mechanisms and, consequently, in the diagnosis and therapy of cancer, inflammatory, and neurodegenerative diseases, but also in the ageing process, where it might provide useful biological markers capable of assessing the positive (healthy ageing) or negative (unhealthy ageing) progression of the process [5, 6]. Moreover, it has been suggested a role for an efficient immune system in the achievement of extreme longevity [7]. This does not exclude the involvement of other organs and systems. It should be noted that the immune system has been the subjects of more extensive and in-depth research compared to other systems and organs in the body, primarily due to their suitability for ex vivo studies. Additionally, it should be considered that an efficient immune system could be the effect of a well-functioning organism rather than its cause.

However, in an era of increasing global life expectancy, immunological research also focuses on the possibility to improve the quality of extended years. So, I hope that Exploration of Immunology will become a forum also for these new, interesting, and intriguing aspects of immunological research.