REPORT: July/August 2006

Letters to the Editor

Journal switch should concern NYSNA members

In October, NYSNA members will no longer receive copies of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) as a benefit of membership in the American Nurses Association.

The ANA has decided to designate a new official journal titled American Nurse Today. This will be a publication of HealthCom Media (HCM), a subsidiary of Health Affinities, LLC, which characterizes itself as “a seasoned sales and marketing organization….with a combined 75 years of experience in healthcare and pharmaceutical sales, advertising, and promotion” (emphasis added).

The ANA has cited financial reasons in its decision to sever its 107-year-old relationship with AJN. However, I understand that Lippincott proposed a discounted individual subscription rate for ANA members with a royalty paid to ANA for each member who subscribed. ANA turned down this reasonable and mutually beneficial offer.

Whatever the reasons may be for this change, I am concerned that the new journal’s relationship to the pharmaceutical industry raises serious questions about its editorial independence. A scientific journal without editorial independence has the potential to degrade practice and skew decisions about important issues in nursing, medicine, and health care.

ANA has stated that American Nurse Today “will feature five pages of ANA content in each issue, with the remainder to be developed by HCM with the input of ANA.” This is not a recipe for editorial independence, especially when the focus of HCM’s parent company is pharmaceutical marketing, not nursing.

Concerned about “the implications this decision holds for ANA, AJN, and the nursing profession,” members of the International Academy of Nursing Editors have posted a statement at www.INANE.vcu.edu that presents some of the larger issues at stake in ANA’s withdrawal of support from AJN. The statement also has been published in the June issue of AJN and is well worth reading.

Why is our professional association choosing not to invest in a high-quality journal of unimpeachable editorial integrity? I would suggest that ANA doesn’t understand AJN’s role as a strategic tool for nursing. Whether or not you are a regular reader of AJN, its prominent position in the nursing and healthcare communities cannot be overlooked.

If you also are concerned about the replacement of an acclaimed journal with a periodical of limited depth and questionable editorial independence, I suggest several courses of action:

• Write or e-mail members of the ANA board of directors about their decision.
• Talk to other nurses about this change and its implications for nursing.
• Subscribe to AJN. Call 800.627.0484, or go to www.AJNonline.com and click on “new subscriptions.”

If you don’t find American Nursing Today to be an acceptable substitute for AJN, send your first issue back to ANA headquarters and explain why you are dissatisfied.

— Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Betsy Todd is a nurse epidemiologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She is a contributing editor to the American Journal of Nursing on the subject of infectious diseases.

Ed. Note: AJN is planning to send a mailing to NYSNA members offering them a reduced subscription rate. Please watch for the mailing and take advantage of this offer if you want to keep receiving AJN after October.