Journal of the American Geriatrics Society : Evolving Strategies and Processes

This July will mark 1 year that our new editorial team has led your Journal. Our strategy has been to build on the superb legacy of our predecessor, Dr. Thomas Yoshikawa.1 JAGS looks and feels much as it did when Tom was Editor in Chief, but changes in strategy and processes are now underway.2 We are committed to further increasing JAGS profile and influence on clinical care and policy nationally and internationally. Our overarching goal is to make JAGS a compelling read and professionally indispensable to our readers and authors. We will be “raising the bar” on the articles we accept by prioritizing clinical investigation and policy papers that are likely to have a direct effect on the provision of clinical care. Over the past several years, JAGS strategy has been to use its full allotment of pages to maximize the opportunity for authors and researchers in geriatrics and gerontology to publish their work. We will continue to support the careers of our readership with opportunities to publish but will give highest priority to articles that are most likely to influence clinical practice or healthcare policy.3 Therefore, we will soon ask authors to state, at the time of submission, how their manuscript adds to the current literature and what effect it might have on future practice or policy. In addition, to further increase JAGS’ clinical relevance, our goal is to publish one or two clinical reviews and one or two editorials per issue. We are seeking more clinical systematic reviews and metaanalyses in major evolving areas. As we push to raise JAGS’ influence nationally and internationally, we will monitor our progress with the available publication indices, including impact factor and altmetrics. The increasing importance of social media in linking publications with a larger societal dialogue requires that we focus increasingly on altmetrics. Many general medical journals now competitively seek research papers on geriatrics. We are very proud that the importance of work in our field is now more widely recognized. We believe that JAGS has helped with this, but the real tribute goes to the healthcare professionals in our field. If one explores back issues of JAGS over the last 2 to 3 decades, it becomes readily apparent that many of the defining clinical and policy achievements in geriatrics were first published and described in JAGS. Articles related to frailty, geriatric assessment, geriatric syndromes, long-term care, multimorbidity, and death and dying have been prominently featured in our pages.6, 7 Over time, many national leaders in geriatrics have published early or career-initiating studies in JAGS; we reference a few here.8-18 This brings us to a major request to potential authors. As you have expanded opportunities for publication, please remember that JAGS is a crucial venue for the continued development of our field. As you consider target journals for your work, please send us some of your papers with the potential to have a strong influence on our field in the coming years. Remember, JAGS SUPPORTS ALL OF US; LET'S ALL SUPPORT JAGS.