February Issue: Caring for Hodgkin Lymphoma Survivors, Acute Flaccid Myelitis, Reducing Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia, More

“I experienced the inestimable value of a healing garden . . . Regardless of diagnosis, age, circumstances, or ability to pay, nature willingly extends her gifts and does not forsake us.”—Elaine C. Meyer, author of the February Reflections column

The February issue of AJN is now live. Here are some highlights.

CE: Original Research: Midlife Hypertension and Hypercholesterolemia in Relation to Cognitive Function Later in Life in Black Women

In light of a lack of research on the associations between vascular risk factors and cognitive function in black older adults, the authors explored the relationship between two such risk factors in midlife—hypertension and hypercholesterolemia—and cognitive function later in life among black women.

CE: Caring for Survivors of Hodgkin Lymphoma

This article—winner of the 2018 Nurse Faculty Scholars/AJN Mentored Writing Award—provides an overview of Hodgkin lymphoma, the most common late effects of treatment, and current recommendations for survivor surveillance and screening.

Cultivating Quality: A Nurse-Driven Oral Care Protocol to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia

The authors describe a quality improvement initiative to implement an oral care protocol in the adult in-patient care areas of a level 1 trauma hospital and evaluate its impact on the incidence of hospital-acquired pneumonia.

2019-01-25T09:58:43-05:00January 25th, 2019|Nursing|1 Comment

AJN Wants You! A Call for Peer Reviewers and Authors

nurse typing on keyboardTake your career to the next step—become a peer reviewer or author.

For over 118 years, AJN has presented its readers with timely and informative content to support best nursing practice and to examine issues of the day that are relevant to nurses and the profession. While that’s still our aim today, content development is more complex—it now includes peer review; fact-checking to ensure accuracy; citing evidence from the literature; ethical guidelines that govern editor, reviewer, and author behavior; careful editing to meet standards for quality writing; transparency to avoid bias and conflicts of interest. We’re proud of our commitment to high standards, and our success is borne out by the many awards we’ve received—more than any other nursing journal.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the help of peer reviewers and authors, who commit to making the content we publish the best that it can be: timely, accurate, readable, and useful.

Peer reviewers are essential to any scholarly journal.

Peer-reviewing is also an excellent way for fledgling writers to better understand what editors look for in manuscripts. We welcome new reviewers who have expertise in nursing, are current with the literature and practice in their area of expertise, have a master’s degree or higher (or a BSN and certification in a specialty area), and are willing to review three to six manuscripts […]

Editing a Journal: Not Bedside Nursing, But Still an Urgency to Get Things Right

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

‘Nurses practice based on what’s in the literature; we need editors who will draw lines and stand firm against publishing biased and inaccurate papers.’

Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons

I recently returned from a meeting in Las Vegas, the land of lights and bells and six-story marquees—and heat (it hit 109 when I was there, but “a dry heat”). The long flight home gave me time to reflect on the meeting I’d attended (of editors of nursing journals) and on what I do.

When I began my nursing career, I always thought I would stay in the acute care setting. I found the fast pace of the ER challenging and never boring. When I moved into a clinical specialist position and then an administrative one, I could still get involved in challenging situations, from dealing with problems that occurred on clinical units or with staff to navigating the politics of hospital committees and community liaisons.

But time passes and paths twist and turn, and here I am the editor of AJN—and it’s the most challenging and professionally fulfilling job I’ve had.

The International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE for short) meets annually. It’s a loose networking group, mainly held together through a Web site, blog, and […]

Have You Fallen Prey to a Predatory Publisher?

Predatory publishers promise prompt, easy publication. The hidden charges come later, as well as the realization that the journal has no real standing or quality control. Not only is this bad for potential authors, it’s bad for knowledge, flooding the market with inferior information made to superficially resemble the information you need.

Imagine this scenario: You receive an email from a seemingly respectable journal inviting you to submit a paper for publication. You’ve wanted to publish on this topic for some time, and this journal promises you a quick review and publication within a few months. As a new author, you are thrilled . . . that is, until you get charged an outrageous processing fee upon turning the article in. You’ve just fallen victim to a predatory publisher.

Unfortunately, this scenario is becoming all too common. These journals are often difficult to spot, with their professional-looking Web sites and names that sound legitimate, if a little vague. In fact, just recently at AJN, we stumbled across a Web site featuring a journal that looked a lot like ours and had a very similar name. (Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, has been tracking predatory publishers since 2009 and maintains a list of them on his Web site, Scholarly Open Access.)

shawnkennedyIn our April issue, editor-in-chief […]

There’s a Place for Speed in Online Publishing–But Peer Review Is More Important Than Ever

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN interim editor-in-chief

I read with interest, and also a little concern, a post on a newish blog called Nurse Story.com, which argued for faster Web-based publishing without peer review or much editing. 

Yes, the open access model of scientific publishing, with full transparency for all aspects of the review and revision process, is worth watching. Yes, more and more publishing companies are going the online only or online mostly route (and while it’s PC to say it’s in pursuit of being green, I’d bet the primary reason is because it’s cheaper). And yes, it’s much faster to publish on the Internet. You can throw up an article or blog post and change content online by the minute. But is fast and quick all we need? Technology is changing nursing practice, but is it changing our knowledge base so quickly that we shouldn’t take time to weigh and sift the good from the bad? […]

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