Special announcement: an updated mission statement and a new publisher for the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia

Abstract

The most immediately apparent change to the Journal is reflected in its updated mission statement: ‘‘Excellence in research and knowledge translation in anesthesia, pain, perioperative medicine, and critical care’’. Following a period of consultation with the Editorial Board, we agreed on the importance of building on the mission first introduced in 2000, while highlighting the Journal’s broad, yet defined, mandate. The updated mission statement reflects the editorial, scientific, continuing medical education (CME), and related content that is published in the Journal. As to advancing new knowledge, the Journal publishes reports of original investigations, meta-analyses and cohort studies, and a limited number of clinically-related basic science studies originating in Canada and internationally. With regard to knowledge translation, the editorial and scientific content continues to focus, to the greatest extent possible, on a bench-to-bedside approach, and special articles will address innovation in medical education and topics of broader perioperative medical interest to our readership. Also, readers increasingly turn to their journals as an invaluable and effective means to advance their continuing medical education. In this regard, the Journal’s commitment to foster the development of accredited CME content is reaffirmed. Within the context of a specialty journal, the Journal’s updated mission statement also reflects the fact that the scope of its content is expansive. While anesthesia remains a core clinical, research, and educational activity for many readers of the Journal, anesthesiologists are recognized experts in acute and chronic pain and in the expanding field of perioperative medicine. Critical care medicine is the final content domain of the mission statement. Modern critical care medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving specialists in anesthesia, internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and neonatology. Going forward, we anticipate that contributions to critical care medicine, from both Canadian and international authors, will increasingly reflect the roots of these multidisciplinary backgrounds. While the mission statement has been updated, the Journal title will remain in all instances: Canadian Journal of Anesthesia/Journal canadien d’anesthesie. We are very proud to publish in Canada’s two official languages, and the English and French versions of the mission statement reflect this unique element of the Canadian linguistic heritage of the Journal. In order to advance the mission of the Journal, we anticipate some restructuring and expansion of the Editorial Board. We look forward to developing a senior editorial team to ensure our ability to capture interesting and innovative content, to provide excellence in editorial peer review, and to publish according to the best internationally accepted standards of scientific reporting. Soon, new associate editors and guest editors will be appointed, D. R. Miller, MD (&) Department of Anesthesia, The Ottawa Hospital, General Campus, Room 1409, 501 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1H 8L6 e-mail: dmiller@ottawahospital.on.ca