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Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice ISSN 1365-2753
EDITORIAL NOTE TO READERS
Editorial note to readers on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of publication of the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice doi:10.1111/jep.12315
To the Reader The Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice (JECP) published its very first issue in September 1994, having been established with the aim of building a prestigious international forum for scholarly exchange within the fields of health services research and public health sciences. Writing on the occasions of the 10th and 15th anniversaries of publication of the Journal in the years 2004 and 2009, respectively [1,2], I was able to speak of the remarkably rapid progress the Journal had made in achieving that aim and how the JECP looked forward eagerly to publishing its 20th anniversary edition. That time has now come. Following its launch two decades ago, the Journal excited fairly immediate interest not only within Europe, but also across the whole of North America and Oceania. Since that time, the rate of ‘diffusion’ of interest in the JECP, as a function of its unique perspectives on a range of topics of crucial importance to health services, has continued to rise exponentially and, at the time of writing, the JECP can claim, without exaggeration, to be widely consulted by colleagues in all countries of the developed world and in many areas of the developing world in addition. The Journal is now subscribed to by several thousands of medical and health sciences libraries across the globe, with the total number of annual full-text downloads from its website being well in excess of one million, indicating a direct and enthusiastic use of the JECP as a major academic and clinical resource for practice, teaching and research. Our Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) rankings reflect JECP’s popularity, with the Journal currently ranked as 10 out of 25 for medical informatics, 50 out of 85 for health care sciences and services and 62 out of 150 for general and internal medicine. Most recently, the JECP impact factor (IF) in the current year saw a 5% increase on the last, from IF 1.508 to IF 1.580, demonstrating a continuously upward trend. The JECP continues to retain its broad interest in all aspects of the evaluation and development of clinical practice and in the organization and delivery of health services. The Journal serves the needs of no one health care discipline such as medicine, but rather all, with a great emphasis on the necessity of multidisciplinarity. Our readers continue to include large and increasing numbers of non-clinical academics working within the health science disciplines and also health services managers, policymakers, economists and even political advisers and politicians themselves as health care management becomes the defining interest of our age. Apart from having contributed an extensive number of papers on general aspects of evaluation and development in health care to the international health sciences literature and to have made a substantial contribution to the advancement of the quality of care
as a result, the JECP has over two decades published an equally extensive number of articles focused specifically on the evidencebased medicine (EBM) movement. This very particular contribution to global health care discourse has been made principally through the so called ‘EBM Thematic Issues’ of the JECP, substantial collections of robust critiques and analyses which have been highly complemented in recent years by the publication of our thematic issues on health philosophy led by Michael Loughlin and by the creation of a forum for complexity in health coordinated jointly by Joachim Sturmberg and Carmel Martin. The current 20th anniversary issue celebrates the nature and impact of these activities by constituting three of its four sections with papers drawn from these initiatives. Through our constant work on the EBM thesis, the JECP is immensely proud to have changed the direction of the international EBM debate away from scientistic reductionism towards the embrace of the complex in clinical practice. A consequence of this shift has been the opportunity for the Journal to foster the development of a new way of ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ in clinical practice and health systems which has come to be termed person-centred health care (PCH) [3]. PCH has, in many ways, grown out of the seemingly endless and highly fraught debates on the value of EBM-type, paternalistic approaches, on the one hand, and the value of consumerist, patient-directed approaches to care on the other. Both have been placed in the balance over recent decades and both have been found wanting. The new model, PCH, argues that health care is primarily a human endeavour with a moral character that cannot by its nature rely solely on a single source of clinical knowledge such as scientific evidence (as in evidencebased medicine), but must be free to draw on a wide range of other sources of knowledge for decision making, not least those deriving from the subjective experience of illness by the patient. Its value is seen overwhelmingly in the management of the current epidemic of long-term chronic co-morbid and multimorbid illness which is not amenable to the classical ‘diagnose, treat, discharge’ model of health care and which requires an altogether different approach. The Journal feels justly proud, then, in having provided much of the thinking over the past two decades that has facilitated the emergence of PCH and it is in this context that the reader is referred to the Editorial Notification which follows and which describes a new and exciting development – the creation of a European Society for Person Centered Healthcare [4]. In concluding this editorial introduction, it falls to me to extend sincere thanks to the range of close colleagues who have worked with me over the last 20 years in making the JECP the powerful voice in global health discourse that it is today. To lead a journal is an arduous and time-consuming task and to do so successfully requires the wisdom, encouragement and direct involvement of a
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 20 (2015) 727–728 © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
727
range of colleagues and co-workers. I refrain here from an extended listing of such colleagues, but all are members of the Editorial Board of the JECP and regular contributors to the pages of the Journal. As the JECP now prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary, I extend my gratitude also to all of our readers and to our authors, occasional and regular, whose support of the JECP is acknowledged and greatly appreciated. Professor Andrew Miles MSc MPhil PhD DSc (hc)
2. Miles, A. (2009) From the editor-in-chief. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 15 (1), 1–3. 3. Miles, A. & Asbridge, J. E. (2013) Contextualizing science in the aftermath of the evidence-based medicine era: on the need for personcentered healthcare. European Journal for Person Centered Healthcare, 1 (2), 285–289. 4. Miles, A. & Asbridge, J. E. (2014) The European Society for Person Centered Healthcare (ESPCH) – raising the bar of healthcare quality in the Century of the Patient. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 20 (6), 729–733.
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice
References 1. Miles, A. (2004) From the editor-in-chief. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 10 (1), 1.
728
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright of Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice ISSN 1365-2753
EDITORIAL NOTE TO READERS
Editorial note to readers on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of publication of the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice doi:10.1111/jep.12315
To the Reader The Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice (JECP) published its very first issue in September 1994, having been established with the aim of building a prestigious international forum for scholarly exchange within the fields of health services research and public health sciences. Writing on the occasions of the 10th and 15th anniversaries of publication of the Journal in the years 2004 and 2009, respectively [1,2], I was able to speak of the remarkably rapid progress the Journal had made in achieving that aim and how the JECP looked forward eagerly to publishing its 20th anniversary edition. That time has now come. Following its launch two decades ago, the Journal excited fairly immediate interest not only within Europe, but also across the whole of North America and Oceania. Since that time, the rate of ‘diffusion’ of interest in the JECP, as a function of its unique perspectives on a range of topics of crucial importance to health services, has continued to rise exponentially and, at the time of writing, the JECP can claim, without exaggeration, to be widely consulted by colleagues in all countries of the developed world and in many areas of the developing world in addition. The Journal is now subscribed to by several thousands of medical and health sciences libraries across the globe, with the total number of annual full-text downloads from its website being well in excess of one million, indicating a direct and enthusiastic use of the JECP as a major academic and clinical resource for practice, teaching and research. Our Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) rankings reflect JECP’s popularity, with the Journal currently ranked as 10 out of 25 for medical informatics, 50 out of 85 for health care sciences and services and 62 out of 150 for general and internal medicine. Most recently, the JECP impact factor (IF) in the current year saw a 5% increase on the last, from IF 1.508 to IF 1.580, demonstrating a continuously upward trend. The JECP continues to retain its broad interest in all aspects of the evaluation and development of clinical practice and in the organization and delivery of health services. The Journal serves the needs of no one health care discipline such as medicine, but rather all, with a great emphasis on the necessity of multidisciplinarity. Our readers continue to include large and increasing numbers of non-clinical academics working within the health science disciplines and also health services managers, policymakers, economists and even political advisers and politicians themselves as health care management becomes the defining interest of our age. Apart from having contributed an extensive number of papers on general aspects of evaluation and development in health care to the international health sciences literature and to have made a substantial contribution to the advancement of the quality of care
as a result, the JECP has over two decades published an equally extensive number of articles focused specifically on the evidencebased medicine (EBM) movement. This very particular contribution to global health care discourse has been made principally through the so called ‘EBM Thematic Issues’ of the JECP, substantial collections of robust critiques and analyses which have been highly complemented in recent years by the publication of our thematic issues on health philosophy led by Michael Loughlin and by the creation of a forum for complexity in health coordinated jointly by Joachim Sturmberg and Carmel Martin. The current 20th anniversary issue celebrates the nature and impact of these activities by constituting three of its four sections with papers drawn from these initiatives. Through our constant work on the EBM thesis, the JECP is immensely proud to have changed the direction of the international EBM debate away from scientistic reductionism towards the embrace of the complex in clinical practice. A consequence of this shift has been the opportunity for the Journal to foster the development of a new way of ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ in clinical practice and health systems which has come to be termed person-centred health care (PCH) [3]. PCH has, in many ways, grown out of the seemingly endless and highly fraught debates on the value of EBM-type, paternalistic approaches, on the one hand, and the value of consumerist, patient-directed approaches to care on the other. Both have been placed in the balance over recent decades and both have been found wanting. The new model, PCH, argues that health care is primarily a human endeavour with a moral character that cannot by its nature rely solely on a single source of clinical knowledge such as scientific evidence (as in evidencebased medicine), but must be free to draw on a wide range of other sources of knowledge for decision making, not least those deriving from the subjective experience of illness by the patient. Its value is seen overwhelmingly in the management of the current epidemic of long-term chronic co-morbid and multimorbid illness which is not amenable to the classical ‘diagnose, treat, discharge’ model of health care and which requires an altogether different approach. The Journal feels justly proud, then, in having provided much of the thinking over the past two decades that has facilitated the emergence of PCH and it is in this context that the reader is referred to the Editorial Notification which follows and which describes a new and exciting development – the creation of a European Society for Person Centered Healthcare [4]. In concluding this editorial introduction, it falls to me to extend sincere thanks to the range of close colleagues who have worked with me over the last 20 years in making the JECP the powerful voice in global health discourse that it is today. To lead a journal is an arduous and time-consuming task and to do so successfully requires the wisdom, encouragement and direct involvement of a
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 20 (2015) 727–728 © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
727
range of colleagues and co-workers. I refrain here from an extended listing of such colleagues, but all are members of the Editorial Board of the JECP and regular contributors to the pages of the Journal. As the JECP now prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary, I extend my gratitude also to all of our readers and to our authors, occasional and regular, whose support of the JECP is acknowledged and greatly appreciated. Professor Andrew Miles MSc MPhil PhD DSc (hc)
2. Miles, A. (2009) From the editor-in-chief. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 15 (1), 1–3. 3. Miles, A. & Asbridge, J. E. (2013) Contextualizing science in the aftermath of the evidence-based medicine era: on the need for personcentered healthcare. European Journal for Person Centered Healthcare, 1 (2), 285–289. 4. Miles, A. & Asbridge, J. E. (2014) The European Society for Person Centered Healthcare (ESPCH) – raising the bar of healthcare quality in the Century of the Patient. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 20 (6), 729–733.
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice
References 1. Miles, A. (2004) From the editor-in-chief. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 10 (1), 1.
728
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright of Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
