Editorial: |
The 3rd Conference on Nursing Research of Ibero-American and Portuguese-speaking Countries was organized by the Research Unit of the Nursing School of Coimbra from June 12th to June 15th, 2012. Within the scope of the specialty meetings before the conference, the Nursing Journal Referência celebrated its 14th anniversary by holding a meeting between peer reviewers and editors. The contribution of the Journal’s reviewers and of foreign participants working in the publication of scientific journals generated a very useful discussion on strategies to promote the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, particularly the promotion of Scientific Nursing Journals though databases which use bibliometric indexes, such as the impact factor – ISI, the SCImago H-index or the RIC-Cuiden index.
As a result of this meeting and the work developed by the Editorial Board, and in order to continuously improve the Nursing Journal Referência and the effectiveness of the review process, we expect to make significant changes to this procedure later this year. To assess the formal aspects of the manuscript, quotations and references, we will follow the guidelines by the American Psychological Association. Authors will have: the single form for copyright notice and ethical-legal requirements, pre-analysis checklists, and new guidelines for critical manuscript appraisal. The reviewers and the different professionals who intervene in the double blind review process can also benefit from these tools as they provide more accuracy to the review. Therefore, we expect to improve the inter-rater agreement, achieve a higher performance in the average waiting period and a higher level of author satisfaction with the access to and interaction with the Editor and the participants in the review process. |