Looking back, 2011 has been another successful year for Journal of Interprofessional Care (JIC). This success is expressed in a number of different ways. The editorial office has continued to receive an increasing number of submissions over the past 12 months. Last year, the editorial team processed over 250 articles, editorials, commentaries, reports and reviews. The quality of the submissions has continued to increase, indicating that the academic work of our colleagues in the interprofessional field strives forward. For example, we have seen an expansion of methodological papers that outline innovative approaches by which we can build more robust empirical work. Also, our current call for papers on theoretical perspectives (due to be published later this year) has yielded nearly 20 potential contributions, with a range of stimulating ideas for using social science theories to illuminate and better understand the interprofessional domain.
Importantly, in 2011, JIC was awarded its first impact factor (0.793) from Thomson Reuters. Securing an impact factor provides an indication of the value of a journal in its academic domain, and is therefore a cause for celebration among editorial team and board members, authors, peer reviewers and our publisher – Informa. However, as the first JIC editorial of 2012 points out, while it is important to recognize the opportunities an impact factor offers an academic journal (e.g. increased attraction for authors), one also needs to understand the limitations of the methods used to calculate an impact factor (Reeves, Kenaszcuk, Sawatzky-Girling & Goldman 2012).
In 2011, we have also strengthened our editorial team by a number of new appointments whose talents will further enhance the quality of our editorial work. I am delighted to announce that we have four new associate editors – Julia Coyle (University of New South Wales, Australia), Craig Kuziemsky (University of Ottawa, Canada), Angus McFadyen (AKM-STATS, Glasgow, UK), Flemming Jakobsen (Regional Hospital Holstebro, Denmark); a new co-editor for the short reports section – Tina Martimianakis (University of Toronto, Canada) and a new co-editor of our reviews section – Tyler Law (McMaster University, Canada).
Encouragingly, the Journal’s social media sites continue to have a widening presence on the Internet. For example, the JIC Twitter account now has over 400 followers, while the JIC Facebook account has nearly 100 members. Earlier this year, the Journal launched its own YouTube Channel and Blog, and posted a number of podcasts on its main website. Collectively, these different forms of social media provide additional insights and information which aim to complement the Journal’s conceptual, empirical and theoretical papers and reports, editorials, commentaries and reviews.
Personally, this year has been one of change. After 6 years at the University of Toronto, I moved to the University of California, San Francisco, to begin an exciting new role as the Founding Director for the Center for Innovation in Interprofessional Healthcare Education. This new post allows me to extend my increasing interest in leading interprofessional initiatives while continuing my research and editorial work. As a result of this move, the editorial office is now more virtual in nature, spanning both San Francisco and Toronto, as Joanne Goldman continues her invaluable work as JIC Managing Editor based in Toronto. This means that the editorial office work is now undertaken by use of various information technologies, similar to many journals that have online submission systems like JIC.
Looking into 2012, our aim is to continue to build upon these successes: strengthen the quality of JIC papers through robust editorial work, work to increase our impact factor and extend our Internet presence by continued use of different social media applications. Once again, I would like to thank all the members of our editorial team and editorial board, whose hard work and contributions ensure the continued success of Journal of Interprofessional Care.
Thank you,Scott Reeves (Editor-in-Chief)
For more information, please see the Journal of Interprofessional Care: http://informahealthcare.com/journal/jic