Russian Journal of Child Neurology was founded on March 13, 2006. The founders were: Andrei S. Petrukhin, Professor, at that time – Head of the Department of Neurology and neurosurgey of the pediatric faculty of the State Budgetary Institution of Higher Education N.I. Pirogov Russian Research Medical University* and Konstantin Yu. Mukhin, child external professional, Chief Pediatric Neurologist of the Ministry of Health of Russia, Professor of the same Department and Head of the course of pediatric neurology of the faculty of physicians’ advanced training. Previously, the scientific secretary and Head of editorial board of the journal was psychiatrist Alexandr A. Chatenstein.

Then and now, this is the only specialized journal in Russia devoted to childhood neurology. In the beginning of the XX century, there was an attempt to created such journal of G.I. Rossolimo, a versatile and very educated person. But the journal did not last for long. Further attempts to create specialized journals in child neurology were not successful, and often they stopped existing together with their founders.

At the time when the journal was planned, almost every European country had its own journals devoted to research of the child's brain. What do Russian child neurologists need their own journal for? The reason is that diseases of the nervous system of children differ from those of adults, though most of adult diseases have their roots in childhood. "We all come from childhood," said Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Diseases of the nervous system of children are distinguished for extremely individual progress of each subject, which was called clinical polymorphism by an outstanding Russian neurologist S.N. Davidenkov. Clinical polymorphism is typical of hereditary diseases of the nervous system, in particular, for epilepsy.

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• Over the previous 50 years, the name of this higher educational institution was changed 5 times!

The frequency of epilepsy in children is twice as high as in adults. Its prevalence rate is approximately 5:1000 and while there are not more than a dozen of forms of adult epilepsy, there are over 40 forms of child epilepsy and all of them differ in progress and prognosis. That is why the most of articles in the journal are devoted to this disease. In order to diagnose the disease, a physician must know the functional organization of the developing child's brain perfectly. Besides, there are exceptionally child diseases (diseases of the developing brain), such as autism and its symptomatic forms (Angelman syndrome).

Monographs and other specialized references contain typical and outdated information, while the journal can promptly report all atypical cases of progress of diseases, new therapeutic methods, summarize experience of physicians in application of new drugs.

One more objective of the journal is providing the opportunity to doctors not only from central regions and cities of Russia to get scientific information in the form accessible to the most distant places of Russia, so that doctors from such distant regions could publish their own observations.

That is why main attention in the journal is concentrated on summarizing of the practical experience of treatment of diseases of the nervous system of children. The journal practically has no articles devoted to fundamentals of neurology, except for certain articles devoted to pathogenesis of epilepsy (S.Kh. Gataullin, "Mesial Sclerosis and Temporal Epilepsy"). The target audience of the journal are the practitioners.

In order to express the most modern achievements of the world neurology and to catch the trends of the research development in studying the child's brain, the iternational professionals were included into the editorial boards in addition to the leading child neurologists of Russia (A.A. Alikhanov (Moscow), V.V. Belopasov (Astrakhan), E.D. Belousova (Moscow), P.N. Vlasov (Moscow), V.I. Guzeva (St. Petersburg), V.P. Zykov (Moscow), Y.I. Kravtsov (Perm), S.A. Malmberg (Moscow), O.I. Maslova (Moscow), M.B. Mironov (Moscow), V.F. Prusakov (Kazan), I.G. Rudakova (Moscow), A.A. Kholin (Moscow), namely:

Professor Oliver Dulac, MD Hanz Holthausen, specialist in the field of social pediatrics, Professor Hubertus von Foss. These doctors are very friendly to Russian people and have done a lot to develop medicine in our country. In particular, Dr. Holthausen put much effort to develop epilepsy surgery in our country. Thanks to him hundreds of children get rid of seizures of pharmacoresistant epilepsy every year, and 10 years ago it was impossible to help such patients in our country and they had to go abroad to receive therapy.

Why the journal is called Russian Journal of Child Neurology? It targets the Russian-speaking audience and is published in Russian (the summary is in two languages).

For the previous 5 years, the science editor was Olga A. Pylayeva, a splendid doctor, a very responsible person that speaks perfect English and is an excellent translator, which is very important for editorial work. In 2013, the journal underwent rebranding: it received attractive cover; the quality of paper was improved.

As opposite to many other journals, Russian Journal of Child Neurology received no governmental funding and is published exceptionally for its own funds.