What’s going on at age 11: development of the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing

With the 11th issue coming up, the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing (EJCN) is on its way to becoming a teenager in the world of peer-reviewed journals. Children between 9 and 13 years are called ‘preteens’ or ‘tweens’. They are a sandwiched population with behaviors, circumstances, and needs distinct from children and young adults.1 At the age of 11 years, human ‘preteens’ face several challenges, such as staying healthy while growing and developing or the challenge of social changes and peer pressure. These challenges can be expected for the EJCN and you as reader are invited to help in its further growth. Developing the EJCN into a healthy and interesting journal entails many challenges – from manuscript flow to printing an article. First, a healthy flow of manuscripts is needed for a journal to be able to present work that is of high quality. In previous years, the EJCN has had a healthy manuscript flow. In its first years around 45 manuscripts were submitted each year but since then, manuscript flow has gradually increased to a total of 129 in the year 2011 of which only 50% can be published. The next step in staying healthy is a good and timely peer-review process. Once submitted to the EJCN, a manuscript is assigned three reviewers by the editorial team. A good peer review (2) can improve an article for publication and reviewers are asked to comment on the contribution of the specific paper to the body of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the reviewers will judge the rationale for the objectives of the study, question if the methods are appropriate and accurate, and comment on whether the results are appropriately presented and analyzed. Furthermore, they will scrutinize if the conclusions are justified and the findings significant.2 For the EJCN, reviewers will specifically comment on whether the manuscript is original, relevant, and new. To safeguard that this review process is accurate and quick, we recently introduced a fine line-up of Associate Editors to assist locally in the editorial work of the journal and handle the increasing number of submissions.3 Papers from within the group are handled by other editors, without involvement of the local team. To compile an interesting issue and to ensure an interesting and healthy reflection of the field, we continually invite authors to submit their work to the EJCN. The scope of the EJCN is the broad field of cardiovascular nursing, including chronic and acute care, pediatric cardiology, adult congenital heart disease, cardiac rehabilitation, primary and secondary prevention, heart failure, acute coronary syndromes, interventional cardiology, cardiac care, preventive cardiology, and vascular nursing. During the years, all these subjects have been covered, either in a regular issue or in a supplement. Looking back at 2011 it was notable that we published several papers particularly describing the consequences of cardiac disease on the lives of patients and of their partners.4–6EJCN also published several papers that describe instrument development or psychometric testing.4,7,8 These papers are highly relevant for the evaluation of the care of our cardiac patients and building our scientific knowledge. Scientific contributions have been related to all aspects of care: education, research, patient care, and organizational aspects. Additional contributions on genetics9 and critical reflections on the state of the science10,11 have been published. Human preteens need to adapt to social changes; in this period of their lives they often change schools, make new friends, and join new social networks. Peer pressure is used to influence a person to behave or think in a certain way or to make him or her belong to a group or conform to the group norm. Pressure in the ‘journal’ world’ is related to impact factors (IFs). An IF is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in scientific journals. Every year the IF is calculated for a journal and published. A journal’s IF is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the articles published in that journal during the previous two years.12 The impact factor of the EJCN was 1.48 in 2011. Compared to other nursing journals in the same field, the IF ranks the EJCN as 19 out of a total of 89. However, in our peer group there is pressure to increase the IF. This is because authors want to be published in the journal with the highest IF. Over time, the use of the IF has been extended to measuring the quality of scientific journals, the quality of individual articles, and the productivity of individual researchers.13 IFs are nowadays even used in academic appointments, to evaluate grant applications, and to allocate other financial support for research programs. In discussions in academia, IF is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, without correcting for the culture and need of the field.In other words: what kind of papers do the readers of the EJCN really need and what type of manuscript contributes to our mission statement – ‘the EJCN is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge in the field of cardiovascular nursing: promoting evidence-based clinical practice.’ To achieve that aim, the editorial team of the EJCN strives to publish scientific material that is sound, but clinically focused. In addition to reports of randomized clinical trials, other quantitative research reports, and qualitative studies, the EJCN still published articles on ‘how nurses perceive’ or ‘which interventions nurses use’, and articles that describe case studies that might be very interesting for healthcare providers working in direct patient care. It is a challenge to stay clinically focused, as well as delivering articles of good quality that are used (and cited) by other researchers and practitioners. With the support of an international editorial board, a critical and positive group of reviewers, a trustworthy and skillful publisher, and a dedicated editorial team, we are sure we will enjoy the preteen version of the EJCN.