Let us hear from you

Article Outline

• Copyright

IT IS UNUSUAL to get letters from readers and authors. So imagine my surprise when I heard from a group of undergraduate students. Obviously, this was part of the assignment for their required research course. And the letter was negative and strongly criticized the substance of one of the articles published in Applied Nursing Research (ANR), and subsequently, the journal and me, as editor, for publishing a “less-than-perfect” manuscript.

I was elated. Sometimes, when an editor does not hear from readers, it feels like you have given a party and no guests have arrived. Except for the reports from the publisher about increasing circulation rates, you would wonder if anyone is reading the journal. So, receiving the communication from these undergraduate students was most heartening, even if they did not understand the nature of a peer review for a journal such as ANR.

As editor, I do not make the primary decision about the scientific merit of the articles. I do not “second guess” the peer reviewers who have content and methodological expertise in areas related to the manuscripts that we ask them to review. They are the experts, and, as editorial staff, we acknowledge their expertise. Do I ever intervene? Of course, especially when there are split decisions between and among reviewers. At times, we have widely divergent views among the reviewers for each manuscript. When this occurs, there are 2 usual courses of action from which I choose. First, I can send the divergent feedback to the author and ask them to revise and resubmit their manuscript, responding to the critiques. Second, I can seek the judgment of additional reviewers before making the decision about suitability of the article for ANR. Often, the former course of action is initiated because it frequently saves the author time. Once they have finished a study, many authors are anxious to see their results in print.

The most important message of this editorial is that I would like to hear from all of you, positive and negative, not only about individual articles but also about the special columns that we include in ANR. Does the “Ask an Expert” column really answer your burning questions about nursing research. Have the international editors brought forward issues across cultures that are important topics for nursing science? Does the “Research Brief” column give you a glimpse of the latest pilot work that is being done in nursing? And, overall, are we including enough articles in your area of clinical expertise? Is there a balance of methodologies?

At ANR, we strive to be responsive to our readers and to develop nursing knowledge for the discipline. We are aware that the most critical element of the research that we publish is its applicability to nursing. That does not preclude excellence in research. We never intended to be perfect, but we do intend to be excellent in our publication of applied nursing research. Keep the mail coming, and let us know what you think of how we are doing with this.