Hi all,
I've been enjoying the lively discussions lately and we thought it might be a good time to update the community on some of the updates to JLCP. This is on behalf of all of us at the journal: Tanya Rutherford-Owen (Managing Editor), Sonia Peterson (RehabPro Editor), and myself (JLCP Editor).
First is a general comment on the process of scholarship. There has been some reference to publication in recent posts and in my time here I've noticed some minor misconception in what that means. When a person writes an article, they participate in another kind of scientific discussion within the community. They share knowledge or make a case for why something happens the way it does, which gets memorialized in a different way than conference presentations or forum posts. I'll just name the elephant in the room here; articles about how a methodology of costing happens is a participation in a scholarly debate, not the final word, not gospel. It would make sense that those not accustomed to the scientific process, ie, some attorneys, would not fully understand this and might need some educating that just because one person writes something, does mean the whole community agrees with it. With that said, it is important that we have some platform for evidence-based discussion. When we get submissions, we screen them for clarity, quality of writing, whether they are a novel contribution to the field, scientific objectivity, and some other basic things like formatting. What we don't do is judge based on our own opinions. We leave that open for other authors to show evidence on the contrary. This is just adherence to the scientific process and I get contacted periodically about how difficult that makes publication or engagement in the scholarship process. We believe that while challenging, this will ultimately elevate the quality of the journal and all of your participation in it.
Here is an example of why that matters. One thing that we've been working on for several years now is making both IARP journals (JLCP and RehabPro) more widely available through search databases like proquest, pubmed, SCOPUS and others. This is an extensive process and doesn't mean that everyone will have access to everything. Due to the way the scientific publishing industry works, they are most easily accessed by academic institutions because they are the ones that pay for access. Ultimately we would like our journals to show up in google scholar and present the LCP knowledge to a wider world. In order to do that, we have to have all articles "indexed," which means they have to be accessible to the databases we apply to. It's a little bit like having to explain to google earth what our address is and verifying that it is an actual place on the earth. They don't, however, give an address to a camping tent, so we have to prove that our journal is of significant scientific quality, has high ethical standards, and that we have proper policies and procedures in place. We've been doing that in the background and are close to having something significant to share, hopefully by the end of the year. Fingers crossed.
Given the recent discussion about how others get access to our presentations and articles, we fully understand that this has potential to make the publishing process a little more scary. However, not only do we believe that it will ultimately help us grow, but we want to help you make sure that you are supported in your writing process to make your work as good as it can possibly be. For many of you clinicians, this somewhat academic process can be mysterious and seem overly restrictive to the idea that all of your knowledge is valuable. I'm happy to help anyone understand why we are making the decisions we are if you wish to know. Typically we do this on an individual basis when someone is wondering why their article was not chosen for publication, but I'm happy to talk generically with any of you.
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Aaron Mertes PhD, PCLC, CRC
Editor-in-Chief - Journal of Life Care Planning
amertesevals@gmail.comBillings, MT United States
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