A change of Editor in Chief: Reflections and looking ahead

Only one relationship in my life has lasted longer than my 25-years with Wiley (formerly Wiley-Blackwell, formerly Blackwell)—my marriage. In fact, my earliest direct contact with JAN was in 1989 when I published my first article (Watson, 1989) while a Staff Nurse in Ayrshire, Scotland. In 1994, by which time I was teaching at The University of Edinburgh, I received an invitation from the late Jim Smith (Watson, 2018) to join the editorial board of JAN, an invitation I definitely could not refuse. I had no idea how defining this decision would be for my academic career generally and, specifically, how it would be the start of an editorial career in academic publishing. My time with Wiley has afforded me the opportunity to be an editorial board member, a book reviews editor and a columnist at JAN, an editor, then Editor-in-Chief at Journal of Clinical Nursing and, finally, the dream job of being Editor-in-Chief of JAN, a position I have held for 8 years. At every stage in this career I have been supported by a succession of colleagues at Wiley and surrounded in various editorial teams by some of the most talented and inspiring people in nursing. The rate of change in academic publishing over the past 25 years has been rapid and significant. The most influential development was the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989. I recall JAN editorial board discussions where we discussed whether to make copy available on the World Wide Web, the pros and cons and how people may have difficulty finding us and reading the articles. Now, in addition to JAN, I edit another Wiley journal Nursing Open which has never existed in hard copy. When I first published in academic journals, the guidance for authors used to consist of a single page of paper with large print. Last time I printed the guidance for JAN it consisted of ten pages in small single-space print with copious links to other material. Where once we discussed what ethical practice was in publishing, we now have COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics); where once we debated how best to produce a range of difference types of study—principally clinical trials and reviews—we now have The Equator Network. Where it used to take several years to report similarity in published manuscripts, we can now detect it prior to publication. These and other developments have been positive and have undoubtedly improved the clarity and the quality of academic publishing and are mostly spin-offs of the World Wide Web. However, another major and concomitant development has been the rise of the predatory publishers. We have done our best to alert the profession to these (Pickler et al., 2014) but, as I write, we have not yet defeated them. JAN is a UK-based journal. At one time this defined the authorship and, to some extent, the readership. For most of its 26 years, most articles in JAN emanated from the UK. Gradually, the North American authorship increased and there are times when the number of submissions from the USA outweighs those from the UK. While most published articles are still from the UK, and the English speaking world, North America, and Australia dominate the published articles, I am very proud that articles from the Far East—specifically China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—have collectively and consistently outnumbered all other submissions for a few years and that we now publish as many articles from China as from North America. This has resulted from a deliberate strategy and in the years ahead I hope JAN will develop in other regions of the world. To my mind, nursing in the Middle East is developing rapidly and I hope to see this region more commonly represented in the pages of JAN. Twenty-five years is a long time with one publisher and the end of my time with JAN was in sight and planned for late 2021. But an offer was made by a leading publisher to become Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice and this was too tempting to ignore. Apart from anything else, it allows me to continue editing for a few more years up to and probably including my retirement as an academic. I leave JAN with great sadness, of course, but that is amply mitigated by the opportunities my departure has created for others. The reins at JAN will be handed over to Debra Jackson with whom I worked at Journal of Clinical Nursing. The journal is in safe hands. I am also pleased that Debra's departure from Journal of Clinical Nursing has created a space to be filled by my University of Hull and JAN colleague Mark Hayter. This also means that Journal of Clinical Nursing is in safe hands. But more than safe pairs of hands, these are experienced, imaginative, and dedicated editors, and both have stellar international academic reputations. JAN is much bigger than any of its editors and, while a flagship journal for Wiley, it has been and remains a flagship journal for nursing. It is with a great sense of honour and humility that I step into the role of Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Advanced Nursing. As it has for so many other nurses, this journal has always held a special place in my professional life and has been a sort of travelling companion to me on my journey as a nurse. From very early on in my career, when I would eagerly await each new issue of the journal and start to work through it, beginning at the table of contents, to plan the order I would read the papers in. As a young nurse I marvelled that every single issue, without fail, had papers that were relevant and of interest to me and helped me to become a better nurse. It was through reading the journal that I started to become aware of the scholarship and science of nursing, the thought leaders in nursing, and through the pages of the Journal of Advanced Nursing I learned about the work happening in other parts of the world to develop the knowledge base that underpinned the science and practice of nursing. Then there were the ‘ideas’ papers, those that challenged the ways I thought about nursing. One paper I read in the journal that really challenged my thinking was Margaret Dunlop's great paper ‘Is a science of caring possible’ (Dunlop, 1986). In many ways, that particular paper sent me on a journey of discovery through learning and education that lasted many years, and was instrumental in my professional development. Then when I made the decision to study up to the doctoral level, again, the Journal of Advanced Nursing was my ‘go-to’ journal and my peers and I continued to eagerly await each new issue. It was through the journal I first became aware of the work of Dr Philip Darbyshire, firstly through an editorial he wrote in the early 1990s’ with the very evocative title ’Preserving nurse caring in a destitute time’ (Darbyshire, 1993), in which he argued for ‘nursing as a real social force with an ethic of good immovably embedded within it’ (p. 507). Then I was further inspired, when the following year, he published a paper about the arts and humanities in nursing (Darbyshire, 1994). Later, I counted myself extremely fortunate to become one of Dr Darbyshire's doctoral students. Throughout those doctoral years, work published in the journal continued to challenge and enthuse me. I remember the excitement our whole doctoral group had when we read a paper published in the mid-90’s ‘Reforming the practice of nurses: decolonization or getting out from under’ (Huntington et al., 1996), and the great discussions that paper generated amongst us for weeks. I can still remember my excitement finally meeting Dr Huntington in the late 1990's at a conference, and being able to tell her how much I and my peers had enjoyed that work and how grateful we were that she had written it. That was about the time that I had my first co-authored publication in the journal (Raftos et al., 1997), while working in Sydney as a registered nurse. Much later in my career, I had the opportunity to join the editorial team at the Journal of Clinical Nursing, under the leadership of Dr Roger Watson, eventually stepping into Roger's shoes when he left JCN to take up the post at JAN. Now, again, I am honoured to follow Roger Watson as he departs JAN to take on an exciting new leadership challenge. As I take on this new role, I am grateful to the wonderful editors and Wiley colleagues I have worked with over the years, and from whom I have learned so much. I am grateful to the Journal of Advanced Nursing, as so much of my career development and thinking can be attributed to what lay within its pages. In the words of Roger Watson, the Journal of Advanced Nursing is a flagship journal for nursing and is the voice for nurses everywhere. Having the opportunity to serve the Journal of Advanced Nursing as Editor-in-Chief is a true honour, and I approach this role with gratitude for those who have gone before me, and excitement for what lies ahead.