Editorial

This is the last editorial for 2003 and it marks the beginning of a few changes in style and format of JCN, which will become apparent in 2004. The most obvious change will be to the cover of the journal which will change colour to a more striking shade of blue – a superficial change, admittedly – and a more open and contemporary style of formatting within the papers. Changes of more substance will include the structuring of abstracts to make clear what the papers are contributing to their fields, and specifically, their relevance to clinical practice. While the main features of JCN will remain, we hope to generate more comment on papers and to regenerate the Clinical Notes section, thus providing for articles on clinical practice which do not necessarily follow the standard original research or review format. The Guidelines for Contributors have been revised to accommodate these changes and the Aims and Scope of JCN have been updated to clarify the purpose and focus of the journal. By the time of publication of the first issue of 2004 there will be some changes to the Editorial Board to ensure that JCN continues to be represented by, and gain the expertise of, the best people in nursing across the world. In addition, to represent the growing international content and readership of JCN, we have succeeded in appointing Assistant Editors for North America and the Southern Hemisphere. Dr Elaine Amella from the Medical University of South Carolina, USA, will become the Assistant Editor for North America and Professor Merilyn Annells from La Trobe University, Australia, will become Assistant Editor for the Southern Hemisphere. In addition, Professor Kader Parahoo from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, UK, will become Assistant Editor for Research in brief. Another important development in 2004 will be the publication of eight issues of JCN (an increase from six), providing an extra 11% of material. This reflects the increasing number of manuscripts submitted to JCN and the concomitant acceptance of papers by JCN. To accommodate this we have more than doubled our number of referees. We are also clear that JCN is maintaining its clinical focus and a survey of the contents from 2000 to 2002 showed that all of the papers could be classified clinically with the majority concerned with specific disorders and diseases (27.9%); patient problems (24.4%) and workforce issues (20.2%). The remainder was composed of papers on specific patient groups, specific clinical areas and clinical procedures. The international content of JCN is increasing: most published papers continue to come from the UK with Scandinavia and several countries including Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan making up the majority. However, unlike in the period 1996–2002 when there were no papers from North America, in 2003 we published three papers from the US and Canada and one from South America. In addition to the above changes, Blackwell Publishing is delighted to announce that in 2004 subscribers to JCN will also receive two issues of International Journal of Older People Nursing (OPN). This prelaunch of OPN, in association with JCN, represents an important step for JCN, as it will play a key role in the future launch of this much needed publication. In particular, it is clear that the reputation and profile of JCN will introduce this new publication to an influential international readership. OPN will be edited by Professor Brendan McCormack of the University of Ulster and Professor Jan Reed of the University of Northumbria, both of whom have formidable reputations in research and practice development in the field of gerontological nursing. OPN welcomes scholarly papers on all aspects of older people nursing including policy, management, education and research related to practice. Furthermore, it will help nurses engage in the debates about the health and social care context of services for older people, by providing scholarly and accessible material that will challenge assumptions and provoke new ideas, set within an overall aim of developing nursing practice. It will provide nurses, who work with older people, with access to key resources to inform practice at a variety of levels. For more information on OPN, please contact the editors at: [email protected] The Editor, Assistant Editors and Editorial Board of JCN are privileged to be associated with this exciting development and wish the editors of OPN every success. Returning to JCN, the years ahead present many challenges. The increasing internationalization of nursing, the increasing amount of research and scholarship in nursing and increasing competition from high quality publications for the output from this activity have to be met ‘head on’. If you wish to be involved with JCN by writing, refereeing papers or reviewing books then please contact the Editorial Office at: [email protected]

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.