After completing the first year as Editor of our journal, the Journal of Pediatric Surgical Nursing (JPSN), and receiving a lot of questions regarding accessing articles, indexing, and Impact Factor, I felt it important to explain the current status of JPSN and try to answer some of the questions I have received.
JPSN is published by Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), and our publisher is Kathleen Phelan. In addition to providing JPSN to the APSNA membership through the journal Web site, the iPad App, as well as selling subscriptions to individual nonmember subscribers, JPSN is sold to institutions through a division of Wolters Kluwer called Ovid. Through the Ovid platform, JPSN is sold to institutions, libraries, and universities either a la carte or in a variety of journal collections, including three of the most popular-LWW Pediatric Journals Collection, LWW Total Access Collection minus Neurology, and LWW Total Access Collection with Neurology. You can check with your institution to see if they subscribe to Ovid and if they purchase one of these collections.
To maximize revenue for JPSN and the other society journals they publish, LWW does not have a contract with Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, a for-profit company and a direct competitor to Ovid. An article title from JPSN may occasionally be included in a Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature listing but will not include the full article, only the title and abstract. JPSN may also be accessed via search engines such as Google or Google Scholar, and Web site data collected by LWW reflect that a significant amount of Web site traffic come from such search engines.
Indexing in databases such as PubMed or the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Report (JCR), which awards the Impact Factor, is a goal for JPSN. Both Medline (PubMed) and the JCR apply very strict criteria to the selection of journals to be included for indexing. For example, for the JCR, "many factors are taken into account when evaluating journals for coverage in Web of Science, ranging from the qualitative to the quantitative. The journal's basic publishing standards, its editorial content, the international diversity of its authorship, and the citation data associated with it are all considered. No one factor is considered in isolation, but by combination and interrelation of data, the Thomson Reuters editor is able to determine the journal's overall strengths and weaknesses" (Testa, 2012). Many journals, although of high quality and well regarded by their readers, are initially rejected for indexing. Because the standards for inclusion in the databases are so rigorous, it is strongly advised that a journal delay submission for acceptance in PubMed or the JCR until it has attained a publishing history of several years and the content meets many of the requirements mentioned (Freda & Nicoll, 2010).
If an article in JPSN is based on NIH-funded research, LWW is required to submit the article to Medline. JPSN had an article this year that was NIH funded, and it was submitted to the Medline database by LWW. Until JPSN is submitted and accepted for indexing in PubMed, funded articles are the only type currently included in the PubMed database.
How can you support our eventual goal of inclusion in these prestigious databases? To write articles for JPSN, cite articles published in JPSN when authoring your articles and assisting in peer reviewing journal articles. It is also important to have an international influence, and we would love to have an international representative on the editorial board. I am also excited to share that Kelly Rothman from Children's Hospital Colorado came across JPSN, contacted the Editorial Board, was directed to mentoring (Nancy Browne) and assistance with statistical analysis (Pam Pieper) for her manuscript to be published, and then, with help from Membership Chair Jen Reitsma, was able to join APSNA bringing along 11 of her colleagues! Fantastic teamwork!
Please contact me for further questions and suggestions: [email protected].
We look forward to reading your manuscripts!
Kimberly McIltrot, DNP, CPNP, CWOCN
JPSN Editor in Chief
References