The Journal of Chiropractic Education will now publish a regular issue in the month of March, containing original articles as well as abstracts from the ACC Annual Conference/Research Agenda Conference. As usual, we will continue to publish the Fall issue each year. Thus, the journal now has two full issues published each year, both in paper and online (free access).
Why the change? Simply stated, a journal cannot exist on abstracts alone. In order for the journal to enhance its image and improve its standing, full papers must be published each issue. Thus, I have been able to move some of our manuscripts to press sooner than expected. Adding manuscripts to the Spring issue of the journal has not come at the expense of sacrificing quality. The journal currently has a 72% acceptance rate. The papers are reviewed by two to four independent, blinded reviewers and the quality of peer review provided by the editorial board and additional peer reviewers has been outstanding. Our time-to-decision for submitted manuscripts is an average of 28 days. If you are looking for a home for your paper, I encourage you to submit it to The Journal of Chiropractic Education.
I am pleased to see the journal addressing issues important to society, such as public health, ethics, and economics, all presented from a perspective unique to chiropractic education. This issue takes an especially close look at faculty pay versus productivity and contains two articles that use pre–post measurements to investigate changes in the classroom. The Educational Research in Action section has an appendix that is available as a form that can be downloaded from the journal Web site, www.journalchiroed.com.
Unfortunately, we continue to see very few annual conference presentations about educational issues converted to full papers that are published in this, or any other, journal. This perplexes me. I realize that we all have a couple of projects sitting in the drawer that were never written up completely after a conference presentation, but some conference contributors have a long history of such behavior. Perhaps these contributors have a chronic ailment requiring midwinter travel to a warm location? Whatever the reason, I would like to extend any assistance that I can offer to prospective authors; please feel free to e-mail me any concerns or questions.
Several people have provided a great deal of support to me over the past year and I am very appreciative of their assistance and dedication to the journal. Thank you to Reed Phillips, Rob Ward, Claire Johnson, Anne Taylor-Vaisey, Cindy Lee Floyd, Betsy Winship, and David O'Bryon.
If you are in Phoenix for the conference, please enjoy it. It is always a wonderful time to meet old friends and make new ones.