We are honoured to follow Professors Willibrord Weijmar Schultz and Harry Van de Wiel' as Joint Editors in Chief of the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology (JPOG) – a journal with a strong interdisciplinary and open-minded identity, and a commitment to scientific rigour in a complex field.
Psychological, social and cultural factors inevitably interact with physical difficulties. Patients with psychosomatic illnesses often have a raw deal in traditional, post Cartesian healthcare structures which favour a clear distinction between physical and psychological diagnosis. Ill in inconvenient ways, they fail to fit conventional structures of thought and healthcare delivery, frequently fall between stools, acquiring misdiagnoses, professional resentments, poor healthcare experiences, frustrations and defences along the way. Denied emotion is commonplace, and the heat-to-light ratio in discussion is often high.
JPOG's job is to publish material which sheds light. This means promoting clinical and scientific awareness of biopsychosocial issues within obstetrics and gynaecology, and helping clinicians to approach them more effectively. It means publishing reliable material which develops our understanding of the ways in which psychological factors can interact with physical health, in both etiological and consequential ways. It also means influencing the international debate on health, based on a global perspective which acknowledges cultural difference. To achieve this, we think our minds need to be firmly focussed on the three areas of credibility, visibility and readability.
Good science is the guarantor of credibility. In an area of work where multiple methodological approaches are appropriate, emotional charge is inevitable, and its boundary-crossing, interdisciplinary nature invites both legitimate challenge and ill founded suspicion, methodological rigour needs to be a core value. We are keen to publish rigorous and accessible material, and need keen, constructive peer reviewers to help us distinguish new and rigorous information from well-intentioned speculation. We welcome new reviewers from all relevant fields, including obstetrics and gynaecology, midwifery, nursing, psychology, psychotherapy and psychiatry.
We know that visibility is more than just a matter of Impact Factor – important, if justifiably criticized, though that measure is (ref per seglen). Influence depends on wider ways of making a journal visible and rewarding to publish in. JPOG reflects subjects which are as close to the heart of patients as professionals – issues such as proper attention to clinical complexity, proper ways of valuing and evaluating, subjective experience. It is also close to wider ethical and cultural debates about ways in which medicine needs to evolve, both culturally and methodologically. So, although clinicians and researchers are our primary readers, we would love to see the work of JPOG authors cited more frequently in the European lay press, and we hope to foster constructive links with lay media outlets, via press-releases and tweets, but also by identifying “press representatives”, for each member country/language group.
We welcome quantitative and qualitative articles, original research and high quality review articles, an articles which reflect service user's perspectives and lived experience. We welcome criss fertilisation of ideas accrues societies. We hope to interest, challenge and sometimes entertain. We look forward to this challenge, and to working with you.