President's Message September 2021

Well summer is behind us and for many, fall represents a respite from the heat and inclement weather so many have experienced this year.  Our 38^th annual conference is in a few weeks and preparations are well underway to make it the best ever, even though we must again meet virtually due to the pandemic. 

I wanted to take this opportunity to provide some information that is of interest to all members that relates to the AAHN journal, Nursing History Review.  As some of you may recall, Springer Publishing notified us in January that they would no longer be the publisher of NHR after this latest issue, which will be published in January 2022.  The NHR editor, Dr. Arlene Keeling, has been looking at various opportunities and presented the AAHN executive committee with an excellent option from TCU Press.  I have asked Arlene to provide our members with an update which is provided below:

A note from the NHR editor:

“It is with pleasure that I can announce that AAHN has just signed a contract with Texas Christian University (TCU) to publish the Nursing History Review. TCU is particularly interested in expanding their publications to include healthcare history, so the editors of NHR and members of AAHN’s executive committee – including Mary Gibson, Melissa Sherrod, and Brian Riggs -- determined it to be a good fit.  We are particularly pleased that NHR will be published by a university press! 

The deadlines for production of NHR remain the same as those with Springer. We need manuscripts by December 1 of each year (at the latest) so that they can go out for review in the winter and become final copy by June 1.  The journal will be published each year in January; so, Volume 31 will come out in January 2023.  (Volume 30, the last to be published by Springer, is scheduled to be mailed in January 2022.)  The journal will continue to be published both electronically and in hard copy.

Please send us manuscripts!  See the guidelines for authors at the back of Volume 29.  We are still interested in manuscripts for the special section: “Hidden in Plain Sight,” as well as manuscripts on past epidemics. Of course, as usual, we accept manuscripts on various topics relevant to nursing in healthcare history.  Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have questions about NHR’s interest in a specific topic.

 I am looking forward to working with our new publisher, Dr. Daniel Williams, at Texas Christian University.”

If anyone has any questions about our new association with TCU Press, please let me, Arlene or another member of the executive committee know and we will do our best to provide you with an answer.  TCU Press is committed to upholding the standards that AAHN has established with regard to NHR.  We also have opportunities by working with TCU Press that our previous publisher would not have granted and are optimistic about potential future publications.

I especially want to thank Arlene, Brian, and Mary for their work on this contract and look forward to a long association with Dr. Dan Williams and TCU Press.

Many thanks and I hope to “see“ you at the conference soon.

All the best,

Melissa

Melissa M. Sherrod, PhD, APRN, AGCNS-BC
[email protected]