I am absolutely thrilled to have such an opportunity to make a unique contribution to my profession and the wider community. At heart, I have been a nurse for a very long time. I have spent many years in clinical practice and have been fortunate to have personally thrived in the pursuit of scientific inquiry, analysis, reporting and scholarship in nursing. As this is the first editorial of Nursing Reports, I would like to share my vision. An open access journal of this kind is intended, first and foremost, to provide a communication platform from which all levels of credible knowledge relative to nursing, from all reaches of the world, could be disseminated, diffused and debated. A key objective is to make rigorously conducted research accessible to the full spectrum of practicing nurses, academics, educators and interested members of the public. It will be the job of the editorial team to ensure that high academic and ethical standards for research and reporting are reached so that we can build a strong and sound reputation; we want the journal to be widely read and influential within the broad fields of nursing, health and social care. A second objective relates to the relatively new paradigm of open access journals; there is huge scope here to reach out to nurses in the world, not only those who have subscriptions or affiliated with academic or health service libraries. The focus of the journal is to present a global perspective of nursing, its advances and issues of current concern. As nurses we are committed to the health of communities – our personal contribution may be clinical, political, educative or academic. Therefore submissions on all areas relevant to nursing are requested, whether they are in the form of empirical reports, reviews of literature, conceptual analyses, debates, short reports from around the globe or open letters that are of concern to the international community. I believe that this journal could be so vibrant and dynamic! Our esteemed associate editors and editorial board currently includes experts in mental health, cancer care, aging, public health and family, acute care, palliative care, social sciences, health promotion, empowerment, disadvantaged groups and education – and statistics. A huge welcome to ALL! Now, let’s get writing and communicating!!
Launch of an Open Access peer-reviewed journal on the treatment of respiratory diseases with integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine