Editorial and Guest Editorial

One would think that the world of academia would have me well versed and prepared for constant change, however one area where I struggle, is the ever growing field of scientific journals. The noun publication is derived from the Latin word publicare, meaning “make public.” Nursing journals remain the primary method in which we share information and research findings. However, we are now in a world where our reading and interests are peaked by tweets and notifications and this has also transformed the way we share information. The down side of this is that paper based journals are now struggling to reach the wider public. For those returning from Croatia and the WFNN congress I am sure you can all appreciate the importance of sharing and collaboration, so it’s probably a fitting time to reflect on this further and strive towards making the AJON more accessible to the public.

With Florence Nightingale a revolution in nursing had begun and the first nursing journal The Nightingale was published in March 1886. The American Journal of Nursing soon followed in 1900, however it was not until 1952 that Nursing Research, the first dedicated research journal was published. There was a steady increase in the number and variety of nursing journals over the years, with the advent of evidenced-based nursing prompting further growth. The internet and online publishing perhaps prompted the largest changes and growth in the number of publications available.

I was recently reading a 1940 extract from the Medical Journal of Australia titled ‘The problem with medical literature’. The extract focused on the belief that there were far too many medical journals, describing the existence of 130 medical periodicals in Great Britain as appalling and terrifying as well as presenting increased stress for both librarians and researchers. I wonder what the author would think of today’s climate with the thousands upon thousands of scientific journals available.

Although online publishing has eased the burden of managing paper copies, the challenge for researchers has grown exponentially with the task of locating the most recent relevant literature from the best available source a constant challenge.

Neuroscience nurses must be astute and observant as effective, rapid change management continues to be at the forefront of improved outcomes. However, real change can only occur when we share those findings. The Nursing Board of Australia (2016) Standards of Practice dictate that Registered Nurses must engage in professional development, this is not only personal, but also of others through evidenced based educational activities including manuscripts. As we consider making new connections and publishing our work, it is a fitting time for the AJON to be making new connections as it heads to an online platform.

This is an exciting move, the Exeley team have been working hard in the background to develop this online platform and market the AJON. With this partnership we hope that the AJON will continue to grow and be more public. The AJON has always prided itself on the quality of papers and the comprehensive peer review process and as we move towards an electronic format, I know that this quality will continue.

In the world, over 95% of scholarly journals that offer open access to their electronic content are financed by the research institutes, societies, universities and other organizations, to which the journals belong. Such institutions crave solutions that grow the journals’ quality and status, but do not grow their budgets.

They often consider outsourcing some or all publishing functions to professional publishing companies. Also, many editors want to focus on the editorial work and would prefer to not get involved in journal production, distribution and marketing.

The most common outsourced services include:

Journal profile at the professional platform allocation of DOI and metadata distribution to CrossRef.

As a rule, journals owned by societies can afford only very basic electronic publishing solutions. They simply put their articles as PDF files on their own servers. Readers feel like they are at a car show. They can watch the cars, but cannot enjoy driving them. They can read the articles, but cannot enjoy all the functionalities offered by modern publishing technology solutions.

Exeley is filling the gap by offering top publishing technology to quality society journals all over the world.

The Australasian Journal of Neuroscience (AJON) recently joined Exeley and is now available through a sophisticated hosting platform. Readers can, for instance, read full texts on mobile devices, share content on social media with one click, use live links in references to easily visit cited papers and register for alerts to receive an automatic message if the journal has published a new issue or an article on the topic of their interest. Editors and Authors can track articles’ popularity by visiting a metrics dashboard that provides data on visits, mentions and citations thanks to the altmetrics board.

The most important thing is that AJON became a part of a network of scholarly content – will be integrated with databases and services by distributing the content and metadata via Exeley repository and will be linked to the other publications. When one journal becomes a member of this family they benefit from the integration – like neurons that persistently take part in “firing” each other.

Time to make new connections and welcome on board!