PREVIOUS CHAPTER

The CAEP community is indebted to Jim Ducharme for his very able leadership as Editor-in-Chief of CJEM for more than a decade. Jim tirelessly oversaw all CJEM activities including business operations and editorial content. He has thoughtfully mentored dozens of editors and ensured that CJEM provides high-quality content for its readers. Jim was a stalwart defender of CJEM and helped a growing community of academic and community emergency physicians with his insight and vast experience. He built the CJEM journal community with the assistance of a core team including Managing Editors, Senior Editors, and Decision Editors, all of whom comprised the CJEM Editorial Board. The journal has been the beneficiary of the expertise, knowledge, and hard work of these dedicated individuals.

Under Jim’s tutelage, CJEM has grown and matured in tandem with the specialty of emergency medicine in Canada. Key accomplishments included the establishment of the journal’s first impact factor, the regular appearance of practice-changing research and CAEP position statements, as well as insightful editorials. From modest beginnings, CJEM is now one of the most cited country-specific journals in our specialty. Recent years have seen a number of publishing innovations, including the move to an increasingly interactive and user-friendly electronic interface, and the recruitment of CJEM’s social media editors who add value to CJEM’s articles with podcasts, infographics, and social media posts. Perhaps the most important contribution of this previous chapter has been the forging of a national identity and forum for the science of emergency care.

CURRENT CHALLENGES

As CJEM moves beyond its origins as a print-style scientific journal, those of us given the honour and privilege of stewardship of the journal face both challenges and opportunities. How to maintain the academic rigour of a peer-reviewed print style journal, yet respond better to the everyday clinical needs of readers? How to embrace online publishing styles, incorporate social media relevance, yet provide a reliable, long-lasting record of original research and contemporary reviews? How to nurture and encourage up and coming researchers to ensure future excellence for Canadian academics and writers, while ensuring that we provide what readers want and need in each issue? How to maintain quality peer review at the ever-increasing pace of modern online publishing? How to remain financially viable, yet spread the good news from Canadian emergency experts beyond the pay wall? We will endeavour to keep CJEM on the progressive path it has been travelling, to engage with researchers and readers and respond to their needs, to balance the requirements of publishers with the access to articles that readers want, to innovate, to collaborate and to continue to improve CJEM for CAEP members and the wider emergency medicine community, paper by paper, comment by comment, review by review, tweet by tweet, issue by issue.

NEW CHAPTER

We have restructured the existing editorial board with Ian Stiell as Editor-in-Chief, Eddy Lang and Paul Atkinson as Deputy Editors, 18 Decision Editors, 16 Associate Editors, and two Social Media Editors. We are proud of the depth and quality of the entire editorial board. We are also pleased to introduce Sue Gemmell as acting Managing Editor and Jennifer Brinkhurst as Assistant Managing Editor.

We plan to make significant changes to CJEM that will better serve both our readers and our authors. The CJEM Review Working Group presented its recommendations to the CAEP Board in August 2017 and many of these suggestions will soon be implemented (http://caep.ca/sites/caep.ca/files/crwg_final_report_1_august_2017_.pdf). The working group members represented all parts of Canada and gave thoughtful comments from the perspectives of learners, community physicians, teaching hospital physicians, as well as those of editors and reviewers. We received valuable feedback from CJEM staff and editors as well as the 694 Canadian emergency physicians who responded to our surveys. Readers want the best possible content, and that must be provided by authors who want to submit to CJEM because the editorial team provides great customer service in terms of timely and high-quality reviews. Hence, we believe that excellent CJEM processes will encourage high-quality article submissions and, consequently, superb CJEM reader experience. In particular we want to provide clinically relevant material to help front-line emergency physicians provide excellence in care while publishing cutting edge science and innovations. Over the next year, stay tuned for changes!