The closer collaboration between the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care and the Nordic Congresses of General Practice Citation[1] was demonstrated at a workshop organised by the Journal at the 14th Nordic Congress of General Practice in Stockholm this June. The editors invited participants to discuss the future of the Journal and a large number of readers and authors turned up.
In some ways the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care is an “authors’ journal”. It was launched 23 years ago to facilitate research among general practitioners (GPs) by offering a platform for international peer-reviewed publication. This is still an important mission of the Journal and the main reason for the support from the Nordic colleges of general practice. It is, however, important that clinically working GPs, who are not themselves researchers, should find articles worth reading. It was suggested by participants of the workshop that the Journal should have more news about developments in family medicine. In response the Journal will invite the colleges of general practice from the Nordic countries to take turns writing a news section. It was also suggested that the number of review articles could be increased. Such reviews should give a broader and more clinically relevant framework for the articles reporting original research projects. The editorial group agrees with this and would like to invite more reviews, especially about topics that are frequent in the original papers. A look in recent issues of the Journal suggests a need for reviews on diversified topics such as “risk communication” Citation[2–5], “urinary incontinence” Citation[6–9] and “the organisation of primary care” Citation[10–13].
The future of our Journal may lie on the Internet, and it is our ambition to become an open access journal, i.e. all articles should be accessible on the Internet. For this purpose we have created a website (www.sjphc.org) which provides access to the articles. We hope to improve our accessibility from PubMed in the future. Some of the authors attending the workshop would prefer electronic manuscript submission and handling instead of the paperwork involved today. Electronic management of manuscripts may also have advantages for the editorial office and we will investigate the possibilities in the next months.
Part of the workshop dealt with the question: how to get published in the SJPHC? Our Journal has a limited number of pages per year, and we therefore have to reject approximately 60% of submitted manuscripts (like many other research journals). It was suggested by the audience that the Journal should develop a “school for authors” – a course for researchers in general practice about the skill of writing an acceptable manuscript. It would not be a course on research methods but about “selling” and communicating a project to readers and editors. The editorial group will work with the idea and possibly offer something in connection with the next Nordic Congress of General Practice to be held in Iceland 13–16 June 2007.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jakob Kragstrup
New Icelandic Assistant Editor We welcome Pétur Ingvi Pétursson as new Assistant Icelandic National Editor. Pétur is a general practitioner and Medical Chief of the Primary Health Care Center of Akureyri. His research areas are antibiotic prescribing habits, doping and public health and prevention. Pétur is an active communicator within his research areas and on different subjects such as the ideology of family medicine and medical humour.
References
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