New year greetings from the Editor-in-Chief of the Asia–Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing

Time flies, and we have passed through 2022. This is a good time for us to reflect on what we have achieved and what we have learnt in the past year and to look forward to the years to come. More than 19.2 million new cancer cases and 9.9 million cancer deaths were reported worldwide. Nearly 50% of new cases and more than half of cancer deaths occurred in the Asia–Pacific region.1International Agency for Research on CancerThe Global Cancer Observatory 2020.2022https://gco.iarc.fr/today/homeGoogle Scholar These statistics indicate that the Asia–Pacific region bears the greatest cancer burden. As nurses contribute to more than half of the oncology healthcare workforce, new knowledge and evidence-based practice are of utmost important for us to deliver efficient and effective cancer care. We have a mission to support oncology nurses through knowledge dissemination. Asia–Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing (APJON) became a monthly issue journal in 2022, and its development is aligned with our plan. APJON started as a quarterly journal in 2014, changed to a bimonthly journal in 2021 and a monthly journal from 2022 to 2023 and will become a bi-weekly journal in 2024. While the number of issues increased to 12 (including two special issues) in 2022, we have confidence in the quality of the published articles. First, there is an increasing trend in the number of manuscripts submitted. Second, we have a strong and committed team to screen and review all submitted manuscripts, and the acceptance rate is 30%. The average times from the submission date to the editorial outcome date and the final editorial outcome date are 3.8 weeks and 9 weeks, respectively. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the managing editorial team involved in first-line screening; Dr Gregg Nelson, Dr Yingchun Zeng and Dr Boran Wang who were guest editors of the two special issues; 66 editorial board members and more than 200 reviewers from 45 countries/regions for their time and valuable comments, which have helped to speed up the review process and uphold the quality of the published articles. We received our second impact factor (IF) ranking in July 2022, and we experienced a decrease from 2.509 to 2.20. As a young journal, maintaining an IF above 2 again is a good result and fluctuations in the IF are inevitable. There is no doubt that the IF may not adequately reflect the quality and popularity of a journal. A decrease in the IF reminds us to review the publication and dissemination process and identify areas for improvement, if any. One of the reasons for the decreased IF may be changes in the publisher and the fact that the transition period took 4 months, which hindered the timely dissemination of newly published articles via our indexed databases (PMC and Scopus). Now that the new publisher is on board and all logistic arrangements for publisher transfer have been settled, the publicity and popularity of our publications have greatly improved. The total number of downloads of the top 10 articles in 2022 increased more than 10-fold compared with the number of downloads in 2021. It is also our responsibility to ensure that high-quality articles are widely disseminated to a global audience via APJON. In 2022, we published more than 120 articles, including reviews, original articles, editorials and opinions, in 12 issues. The articles addressed various topics related to oncology nursing, including, but not limited to, the following.⁃Interventions for improving patient and caregiver outcomes. Our articles focused on evidence-based interventions for symptom relief, wound management, the management of treatment side effects and the relief of psychological distress in cancer patients and their caregivers.⁃Understanding the experience and needs of patients during their cancer journey. Our articles provided in-depth understanding of the patient experience during and after treatment, with relevance to Asian culture.⁃Supporting and equipping healthcare professionals. Our articles identified the learning needs of healthcare professionals and evaluated the effects of evidence-based training programs on improving their communication and skills for delivering better cancer care.⁃Contemporary and innovative interventions. Our articles covered how to utilize eHealth and artificial intelligence to deliver efficient and effective cancer care.⁃Instrument development and evaluation. To facilitate the adoption of valid and reliable tools by clinicians and scientists, our articles included the development and psychometric evaluation of instruments in languages used in Asia, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Finally, we published various thought-provoking articles on topics such as the connection between humans and nature as a healing power, the power of small data for promoting personalized care, the importance of fundamental nursing care for improving natural healing power and using a story-telling approach to emphasize the importance of nurses being present and being listeners to support cancer patients in end-of life care. We will continue to uphold the quality of our publications to address clinical problems and societal needs related to oncology nursing. I am very pleased to inform you that Prof. Qiuping Li, Prof. Meifen Zhang, Dr. Yingchun Zeng, Dr. Guiping Liu and Dr. Lu Lin have joined the editorial board or the managing editorial team. Their brief biographies are provided below. Qiuping Li, RN, PhD, MD, FAAN, is a Professor at Jiangnan University and the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and an Active Member of the International Psycho-Oncology Society. She has a strong background in cancer-related research and clinical practice in cancer care. She was one of the first researchers to draw attention to the needs of both cancer patients and their family caregivers in China. Her conceptualization of the “Live with Love Conceptual Framework” has played a key role in guiding the development of interventions to care for couples experiencing cancer. Through various funded research projects, her work has been used as evidence to formulate healthcare policies and contribute to professional healthcare practice. As a nurse scientist, she works closely with nursing communities in the Asia–Pacific region to promote nursing research and foster social and professional networks. Meifen Zhang, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a Professor and the Director of the Global Consortium for Chronic Care Research Center at the School of Nursing, Sun Yat-sen University. She won the honor of “Outstanding Teacher of Sun Yat-sen University.” Prof. Zhang has almost 30 years of experience in nursing research and education. Her research fields are mainly oncology nursing, chronic disease management in older adults and nursing education. She has received funding for nearly 20 research projects from national and provincial governmental organizations in the Chinese mainland, and she has published more than 150 articles. One of her articles, titled “Establishing and implementing the training mode of master of nursing specialist programs” (in Chinese), was awarded as one of the “Outstanding Academic Papers with High Citation Standardized Index, High Citations and High Downloads” by the China Scientometrics and Bibliometrics Research Center in 2022. As an Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor-in-Chief, she has compiled more than 20 national-level textbooks and monographs, including the textbook, “Surgical Nursing,” which has been widely used by nursing undergraduates throughout China. She is also a member of the Editorial Board for the Asian Journal of Medical Humanities and is a peer reviewer for the Asia–Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing, the Journal of Clinical Nursing, the Chinese Journal of Nursing and other local and international nursing journals. She has served as the Vice Chairman of the Humanistic Nursing Professional Committee of the Chinese Association for Life Care, the 9th Executive Director of the Guangdong Nursing Association, the Chair of the Nursing Theory and Research Committee of the Guangdong Nursing Association and the Vice Chair of the 2nd Council of the Guangdong Nurses’ Association. Yingchun Zeng, PhD, RN, FAAN, is responsible for leading the development of the nursing discipline at the School of Medicine, Zhejiang University City College. She is also a board member of Integrative Cancer Therapies and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cancer Survivorship. Her main research interest is applying artificial intelligence to cancer survivorship care. Supported by seven funded research projects, she has more than 70 publications in international peer-reviewed healthcare journals, two patents and copyright on five virtual reality software applications. The results of her sustained research efforts have had a sustained impact on improving the quality of life of cancer survivors. Guiping Liu, PhD, is a research analyst at the Centre for Health Service and Policy Research, the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research activities focus on the application of statistical methods in healthcare. He has expertise in applying patient-reported outcome measures and has routinely collected administrative data. Dr Liu promotes teamwork by helping find solutions to practical issues, and he has worked with professors, senior scientists, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students on campus, clinicians, physicians and surgeons in hospitals and professionals in health authorities. The research projects that he has worked on include hospital funding policies, physician incentive programs, quality of life before and after surgical interventions, adverse events in healthcare settings, economic evaluations of healthcare and the quality of patient-reported outcome measures. Lu Lin, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University and the Head of the Research Office of Geriatric Nursing and Nursing Humanities at the School of Nursing, Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University. In 2019, she was a visiting scholar at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, the University of Toronto. She has 15 years of experience in nursing research and education. Her research work focuses on geriatric care for older adults living with mild cognitive impairment or cancer-related/chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment, identifying feasible non-pharmacological intervention measures for patients experiencing cancer-related fatigue and exploring the supportive care needs of cancer patients and their caregivers. She has been productive in her academic career, as she is the first author or corresponding author of more than 25 peer-reviewed articles and the co-author of eight nursing books. She also serves as a peer reviewer for several nursing journals. Meanwhile, she is committed to advancing the global academic exchange in nursing, given her role as the coordinator and translator/interpreter for a number of international nursing conferences. Please join me in welcoming Prof. Li, Prof. Zhang, Dr. Zeng, Dr. Liu and Dr. Lin. Their participation will make our journal stronger and better. I look forward to working with all of them. While new members are on board, six editorial board members (Prof. Marjana Bernot, Prof. Yeur-Hur Lai, Dr. David Larkin, Dr. Janelle Levesque, Dr. Biemba K. Maliti and Prof. Shigeaki Watanuki) ended their term of service in 2022. I thank them for their contributions to APJON. An updated list of Editorial Board members is now available on the journal webpage at https://www.journals.elsevier.com/asia-pacific-journal-of-oncology-nursing/editorial-board. We plan to publish the following five special issues in 2023: (1) Nursing roles in chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy for hematology–oncology, (2) Promoting health equity in cancer care, (3) Reducing the global cancer burden via prevention and early detection, (4) Multidisciplinary cancer cachexia care, and (5) Artificial intelligence in cancer care. In addition, we welcome more submissions to address clinical problems relevant to oncology nursing and societal needs. For example, we welcome articles focused on the prevention and management of side effects of new cancer treatments, evidence-based innovative interventions for improving the health and well-being of cancer patients and their caregivers, the situation regarding cancer and cancer care in hard-to-reach countries in the Asia–Pacific region and effective strategies to diminish the burden of cancer by reducing health disparities. I look forward to receiving your scholarly work. Finally, I would like to wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2023.

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