Remaining original aspirations, seeking innovation, striving for excellence

Prof. Xiaoying Jiang

Director of the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House

As time passes, a new chapter emerges. Looking back at the year 2022, under the leadership and strong support of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) and the Chinese Nursing Association, the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House, with its original aspirations, has always insisted on serving the overall national construction and development of nursing disciplines. We have strived to improve the quality of the journals, led the innovation of nursing science and technology, and continued to explore the way of development for world-class academic journals.

1. Promoting quality and efficiency and improving journal publishing services

In 2022, the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House closely tracked international nursing research hotspots and served the overall Healthy China Action. We always adhere to the concept of “content is king and quality is first,” focusing on the frontier topics in the nursing field, and take multiple measures for strict quality control in manuscript processing and publication, including featured issues. These works are to serve better the readers and authors who contribute to the development of the nursing discipline.

1.1. Planning featured issues and meeting the needs of developing the discipline

Following the nursing development trend and national health policies, the journals of the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House made the 2022 plan for special issues based on each journal’s characteristics and readers needs. Focusing on discipline development, we have optimized columns of the journals, actively solicited featured articles, and published 43 important special issues or collections in 2022.

The Chinese Journal of Nursing has published special issues on critical care nursing, organ transplant nursing, hospice care, nursing information technology, and vascular access safety management, according to the guiding documents, including the Nursing Development Plan in China (2021–2025), Circular of the General Office of the National Health Commission on Further Strengthening Nursing Work in Medical Institutions, 2022 National Medical Quality and Safety Improvement Goals, and so on. Guidelines or expert consensuses, such as Expert Consensus on Clinical Practice of Safe Injection for Hemodialysis, Expert Consensus on Safe Infusion of Parenteral Nutrition, and Expert Consensus on Risk Assessment and Prevention of Venous Thromboembolism in General Surgery Patients, were compiled in relevant special issues, which enhanced the guidance and practicality of the issues as well as the leading role of the journal in academic circles.

The Chinese Journal of Nursing Education published 12 special issues, following important guiding documents, including the National Plan for the Development of Aging Undertaking and Geriatric Care Service System during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period (2021–2025) and the 2022 goals of the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education. These special issues focus on training nursing talents, including hot topics on cultivating creative ability, promoting education through competition, ideological and political theories construction in curriculum and training geriatric nurses. Based on the journal citation analysis by the Wanfang Database and the background of healthy China, the journal added a new column titled “Health Education” to promote research on people’s health education and promotion.

The Chinese Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Nursing published six special issues, including topics on pediatric and neonatal intensive care nursing, critical maternal care, emergency care for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and emergency care for trauma, reflecting social concerns in the field of acute and critical care. To highlight the characteristics of the journal specializing in emergency and critical care, the journal optimized the fixed columns and replaced the former “Clinical Research” and “Clinical Practice” with “Emergency Care Nursing Research” and “Critical Care Nursing Research.”

The International Journal of Nursing Sciences released two special issues, “Creating a Caring Environment: From Policy to Practice” and “Support and Care for Patients with Long-Term Conditions,” as well as several virtual special issues, including Care for Older People, Improving Patient Safety, and so on. The journal set subdivided columns for original research papers: Clinical Nursing Research, Nursing Management Research, Nursing Education Research, Community Nursing and Public Health, and other sections. To highlight the role of Evidence-Based Nursing and Knowledge Translation in improvement of nursing quality and clinical nursing decision-making, a special column was established and named after it.

1.2. Enhancing the journal’s publication capacity and serving the needs of nursing research

In 2022, submissions to these journals have steadily increased. To publish more high-quality nursing manuscripts timely, the Chinese Journal of Nursing was changed to a semimonthly journal with 128 pages per issue in 2022; the number of manuscripts published increased by 60% compared with 2021, which improved the timeliness and acceptance rate of high-quality manuscripts. Readers and authors well received this change. In 2023, the Chinese Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Nursing will change from bimonthly to monthly; the number of pages of the Chinese Journal of Nursing Education will increase from 96 to 128 pages per issue; the International Journal of Nursing Sciences will expand from the average of 128 pages to 150 pages per issue. We hope these approaches will further improve the ability to publish quality academic papers, enhance the efficiency of manuscript processing, and meet nursing scholars’ needs to promote their research results to readers.

1.3. Focusing on the construction of the editing team and promoting the development of nursing research

Talent is the foundation for developing journals. Establishing a team of talents who “want to work, can work, and achieve” is the fundamental guarantee for building an excellent journal. The Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House attaches great importance to constructing the editorial team and author center. First, we hold seminars on nursing research and academic exchange every year, involving editorial board members and reviewers of the journals. These seminars are expected to be helpful in improving their abilities of nursing research and peer review and to ensure that the editorial boards are excelling in their role. Second, we believe that qualified editors are crutial to develop world-leading journals and strive to build a knowledgeable editorial team. In addition to participating in on-the-job training organized by the China Periodicals Association and other departments, the editors also attended the online training by the International Association of Nursing Editors (INANE) to continuously update the editors’ international perspectives. Third, we focus on improving editors’ competency. We hold in-the-office training monthly according to a schedule made at the beginning of the year. Every full-time editor has a chance to share a topic, e.g., “Combining learning and working in daily editorial work,” “Hot topics of nursing research from special issues of world-leading nursing journals,” “Production of special issue planning and reflection,” and others. We insist on the regular perusal and review of hard copies of each issue, involving all editors to evaluate the publication quality in aspects of publication content, editorial and production quality, and reflect and improve editorial performance. Fourth, we make great efforts in research and paper writing training for young scholars. These activities focus on the difficulties, common problems, and scientific approaches in nursing research, manuscript preparation and submission, and research project application and management, which are pretty acceptable to nursing researchers and postgraduates. More than 1,000 participants attended each session, showing the popularity and impact of these activities, which will contribute to the cultivation of nursing research talents in China and promote more and more valuable research in the future.

2. Multi-dimensional innovation to improve the competitiveness of journals

Innovation is the source of publishing and the driving force of development. The Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House insists on innovation and development; constantly promotes upgrades of publishing modes, technology, and service; strengthens channel expansion; reforms creative publishing and communication channels; promotes the dissemination and application of academic research results; builds various communication platforms, and enhances and improves academic communication power.

2.1. Emerging digital technology to upgrade publishing services

Under the premise of continuously improving the content quality of journals, the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House has responded to developing trends of digitalization and networking in journal publishing, incorporated developing strategies based on the internet, and formed a multi-media publishing model. In 2022, the digital publishing platform has been further upgraded and optimized, and emerging digital technologies were used to transform academic content into video or audio to disseminate widely and offer satisfied usage experience to readers, especially for content including innovations of the technical operation process and nursing equipment. Based on research directions and reading preferences of editorial board members of each journal, core authors, and readers, mailing lists were built for different categories of users. As of October 2022, nearly 600 articles, including several virtual special issues, reached nearly 58,000 users through email campaigns.

2.2. Promoting the dissemination of high-quality papers via multiple channels

To effectively promote the dissemination and application of academic research results and enhance the impact of the journals, the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House has strengthened the dissemination of quality papers through the journals’ official websites, WeChat platform, and Toutiao (one of China’s largest information, news, and entertainment sources). In 2022, we opened a new channel on Shipinhao (a short video platform embedded in WeChat) to further expand the communication matrix; the total views on Shipinhao and Tik Tok hit 20,000. The number of followers on our WeChat platform increased by 50,000 this year, and the total number of followers has exceeded 270,000. A content delivery mechanism of “one production, multiple forms and multiple channels of publication” has been established for journal promotion. For example, nearly 50 research papers were rewritten and posted on the WeChat platform, reaching 150,000 views as of October 2022. Based on the advantages of the four journals, we released five combined virtual special issues on the WeChat platform and named “Annual Overview” for these issues, including geriatric nursing, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation nursing, and other hot topics.

3. Ride the momentum and strive for excellence

“By joining the river and the sea, the trickle of water will never dry up; by integrating into the times, the development will be infinite and wonderful.” To accelerate the development of the goal towards excellent nursing journals, the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House makes a great effort to seize opportunities and strengthen brand promotion. With the support of relevant policies, projects, and national data platforms, the publishing house has continuously improved the impacts of its journals. In 2022, the publishing house was included in the China Publishing Yearbook (Volume 2021) as a winner of the Fifth China Publishing Government Award for Advanced Publishing Units. As the top nursing journal in China, the Chinese Journal of Nursing was included in the Report on the Development of China’s Scientific and Technical Journal Industry. The Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House successfully completed the project sponsored by CAST to publish a grading catalog of high-quality scientific and technical journals by field, and the Grading Catalogue of High-Quality Scientific Journals in the Field of Nursing (2022 edition) was officially released on July 4, 2022. The publishing house completed the “Excellence Action Plan for China’s STM Journals (2022)” and the “2021 National Society Journal Publication Capacity Enhancement Program – International Academic Exchange Program.” The China Journals Association invited the director of the publishing house to share journal management experience at a seminar. The speech titled “Seeking development and innovation, upholding righteousness and serving the overall, and creating world-leading journal – The practice of the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House” was well received by counterparts from other journals.

Given its global impact and academic authority in nursing, the Chinese Journal of Nursing has become a partner journal of the CNKI Journal Translation Project -- A Bilingual Database of Chinese Academic Journals（http://jtp.cnki.net), relying on digital publishing technologies and platforms for global promotion. In addition, the Chinese Journal of Nursing, Chinese Journal of Nursing Education, and Chinese Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Nursing have been selected for the Bilingual Dissemination Project of Science and Technology Journals led by CAST. A total of 32 articles were published bilingually, helping to enhance the international influence of China’s nursing research achievements.

It is the right time to embark on this new journey, and we set out again with a concentrated effort. Under the leadership of the Chinese Nursing Association, the Chinese Nursing Journals Publishing House will do its best in all the work and demonstrate a dynamic performance in this new era. We will continue to strengthen the quality of journal content, build a series of high-quality journals on Chinese nursing, and enhance the impact of our journals domestically and oversea. We will also strengthen the cultivation of young talents, promote the cluster of Chinese nursing journals, lead scientific and technological innovation, serve the development of nursing disciplines, and contribute to working towards world-leading nursing journals.