On behalf of JAMA and the BMJ, we invite you to join us in Chicago for the Seventh International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication. We have been planning this Congress for the last 4 years, and we are delighted at the amount of interest it has generated.

Drummond Rennie, Congress Director
Annette Flanagin, Congress Coordinator
Fiona Godlee, European Director
Trish Groves, European Coordinator

Why Attend? The goals of the Congress are to present new research into peer review and the other processes used to evaluate and disseminate medical and scientific information, and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of biomedical communications worldwide.

Who Should Attend? Editors and publishers of biomedical and scientific peer-reviewed journals, researchers, funders, biomedical informatics experts, information innovators, librarians, biomedical writers, journalists, policymakers, ethicists, information disseminators, and anyone else interested in the progress of the biomedical/scientific information enterprise and the quality of biomedical/scientific information.

Early Registration Rate Available Until July 1! 

Registration includes the complete 3-day program and welcome reception, as well as a continental breakfast, lunch, and refreshment breaks each day.

Registration Rates:

Early registration (before July 1): $575
Regular registration (after July 1): $675
One-day registration: $250 

The Preliminary Program and Registration information is available on the Peer Review Congress website.

Dr Turale, previously Editor-in-Chief and Editor of the journal Nursing & Health Sciences, said, “I am delighted to be appointed to work with the International Council of Nurses and the INR Editorial Board, reviewers and authors around the world.  This is a prestigious and historic journal. I have observed it to play an important global role in the dissemination of knowledge to improve nursing and midwifery practices, health, health care and health policy. Since I love working across cultures and countries, sharing ideas, learning from others and developing scholarship, I value this opportunity to build on the significant work of Dr Robinson and others to grow INR as an even more vital resource for the future”.

Dr Sue Turale

Dr Turale trained as a psychiatric nurse, general nurse and midwife, and holds nurse registration in Australia.  She received a Diploma of Applied Science (Advanced Psychiatric Nursing) and a Bachelor of Applied Science (Advanced Nursing) from Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne (now RMIT) and a Master of Nursing Studies from La Trobe University, Melbourne.  In 1999 she obtained a Doctor of Education from the University of Melbourne, and is a Fellow of both the Australian College of Nursing and the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses.

After many years working in clinical, management and education roles in psychiatric nursing, Dr Turale became a lecturer at the University of Ballarat, Australia where she later worked as Deputy Head and Director of International Programs, and Associate Professor and Head of the School of Nursing. From 2001-2003 she was the Inaugural General Manager of the Helen Macpherson Smith Institute of Community Health, part of the Royal District Nursing Service in Melbourne.  She then became Director of Nursing and Strategic Planning Consultant at Medea Park Residential Care in St Helens, Tasmania. In 2005, Dr Turale managed the National Indigenous Nursing and Midwifery Education Project at CATSIN, and then became Professor of International Nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, Yamaguchi University, Ube, Japan – a position she held for seven years. In 2006, she also took on the job of Editor-in-Chief, Nursing & Health Sciences. Currently she works as visiting professor in a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region assisting in capacity building of the profession and health care systems through education, research, and developing scholarship.

Jane Robinson, who has been editor of the INR since 2003, said: ” I have loved editing INR and working with authors in helping to disseminate so much valuable scholarship across the globe.  It is time to move on, and I am delighted to hand over to the capable hands of Dr Sue Turale.  I know that we share the same values in encouraging nurses to publish from around the world, and the future is bright for INR.  I also thank ICN for this wonderful opportunity to work internationally, and to be a small part of ICN’s incredibly important global mission.”

Notes to editors:

About International Nursing Review

The International Nursing Review (INR) is the official journal of the International Council of Nurses (ICN). It is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal that focuses predominantly on nursing and health policy issues of relevance to nurses and has an increasing impact factor. INR welcomes original articles that help to forward ICN’s global mission by representing nursing, advancing the profession and shaping health policy. INR also contributes to the ongoing development of nursing internationally with its regular section on International Perspectives. The diverse international readership of INR is located in more than 130 countries. Published both in hard copy and on-line, INR is a key resource for nurses worldwide.

INR encourages unsolicited original manuscripts where nurses describe the policy relevance of their work and document their experience and research. Authors are encouraged to develop a ‘global intelligence’ on nursing and to address INR’s diverse audience by exploring beyond local or national interests to the more general, global application of the principles underlying their work. Background information on the local arrangements for nursing and health care in a country also provides useful context for this global readership. Policy concerns of this journal include: regulation of the profession, workplace issues, innovations in practice, patient safety, quality improvement education, ethics, nurses’ and midwives’ work-life experiences, and the impact of globalization and technology on nursing and health and social policy.

The International Council of Nurses (ICN) is a federation of more than 130 national nurses associations representing the millions of nurses worldwide. Operated by nurses and leading nursing internationally, ICN works to ensure quality care for all and sound health policies globally.

The NLN Scholarly Writing Retreat is designed to help nurse educators enhance writing skills and disseminate research findings and other work in scholarly publications. By the end of the retreat, the goal is for each participant to have a complete, edited paper ready for submission to a scholarly journal.

Due to the intense nature of the work, retreat participants are limited to ten and selected through a competitive application process. Participants work closely with the facilitator for two months prior to the retreat, interacting via telephone, email, and the private blog created specially for the retreat, My Name in Print!. Participants will have access to the facilitator for up to one year after the retreat ends, to assist them through the revision and resubmission process. Access to the blog is ongoing.

The retreat is funded by a generous grant from Pocket Nurse Enterprises, Inc., and the NLN Foundation for Education.

Applications are due by August 15, 2013. Click here to learn more about the retreat and download an application.

Please spread the word about this exciting educational opportunity!

Nursing Explorations 2013

Strengths-Based Nursing: Practice, Education and Leadership

Event is co-hosted by the McGill University – Ingram School of Nursing and the Nursing Departments at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, the Jewish General Hospital, and the McGill University Health Centre.

Thursday, November 14, 2013 |  7 am – 5 pm

Registration and Exhibition 7 – 8:15 am  |  Program 8:15 am – 5 pm
Career Fair 5 – 7 pm

Palais des congrès de Montréal (Montreal Convention Centre) – 201 Viger West, 7^th Floor, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Conference Website:

http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/nursing-explorations2013

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/NursingEx

Keynote Speakers:

Patricia BENNER, RN, PhD, FAAN
Professor Emerita, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Nursing
University of California, San Francisco
Strengths-Based Nursing Care: Recovering and Re-entering One’s Lifeworld

Laurie N. GOTTLIEB, RN, PhD
Professor and Flora Madeline Shaw Chair of Nursing
McGill University – Ingram School of Nursing
Nurse Scholar-in-Residence, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal
Strengths-Based Nursing: Building on the Past, Creating the Future

Judith SHAMIAN, RN, PhD, LLD (hon), DSci (hon), FAAN
President Emerita, Victorian Order of Nurses and past-President, Canadian Nurses Association;
Professor, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing
University of Toronto, Toronto
Let’s Explore the Possibilities for Strengths-Based Nursing to Influence Global Health

Sessions will be presented in English. Simultaneous translation will be provided in French.

Registration:

• Participant (On Site): Early Bird registration (until September 30, 2013): $235 (plus applicable taxes) | After September 30, registration: $260 (plus applicable taxes)
• Webcast: Early Bird registration (until September 30, 2013): $175 (plus applicable taxes) | After September 30, registration: $200 (plus applicable taxes).
• Student: reduced rate of $65 for the first 50 students to register; $150 for others.

Conference Goals:

 The goals of this Conference are to:

• Learn about Strengths-Based Nursing: what it is and how it fulfills nursing’s mandate of health and healing for person and family.
• Highlight how a Strengths-Based Nursing approach can enhance professional clinical practice, leadership/management, education, research, and global action.
• Gain an appreciation of how Strengths-Based Nursing provides nurses with an approach that complements medicine.
• Increase understanding of how Strengths-Based Nursing is key to person and family-focused care, student-centered, teaching and learning, and creating healthy workplace environments.

Join us in our mission to expand our knowledge and explore the competencies required to empower our nursing profession to achieve sustainable patient care excellence.

Nursing Explorations Secretariat

c/o Curly Dog Communications Inc.
T: 866-661-0880 x1 | explorations.nursing@mcgill.ca

Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)

By GINA KOLATA

The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects.

But they found out the hard way that they were wrong. The prestigious, academically sanctioned conference they had in mind has a slightly different name: Entomology 2013 (without the hyphen). The one they had signed up for featured speakers who were recruited by e-mail, not vetted by leading academics. Those who agreed to appear were later charged a hefty fee for the privilege, and pretty much anyone who paid got a spot on the podium that could be used to pad a résumé.

“I think we were duped,” one of the scientists wrote in an e-mail to the Entomological Society.

Those scientists had stumbled into a parallel world of pseudo-academia, complete with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that sponsor them. Many of the journals and meetings have names that are nearly identical to those of established, well-known publications and events.

Steven Goodman, a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor of the journal Clinical Trials, which has its own imitators, called this phenomenon “the dark side of open access,” the movement to make scholarly publications freely available.

The number of these journals and conferences has exploded in recent years as scientific publishing has shifted from a traditional business model for professional societies and organizations built almost entirely on subscription revenues to open access, which relies on authors or their backers to pay for the publication of papers online, where anyone can read them.

Open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those published by the Public Library of Science, known as PLoS. Such articles were listed in databases like PubMed, which is maintained by the National Library of Medicine, and selected for their quality.

But some researchers are now raising the alarm about what they see as the proliferation of online journals that will print seemingly anything for a fee. They warn that nonexperts doing online research will have trouble distinguishing credible research from junk. “Most people don’t know the journal universe,” Dr. Goodman said. “They will not know from a journal’s title if it is for real or not.”

Researchers also say that universities are facing new challenges in assessing the résumés of academics. Are the publications they list in highly competitive journals or ones masquerading as such? And some academics themselves say they have found it difficult to disentangle themselves from these journals once they mistakenly agree to serve on their editorial boards.

The phenomenon has caught the attention of Nature, one of the most competitive and well-regarded scientific journals. In a news report published recently, the journal noted “the rise of questionable operators” and explored whether it was better to blacklist them or to create a “white list” of those open-access journals that meet certain standards. Nature included a checklist on “how to perform due diligence before submitting to a journal or a publisher.”

Jeffrey Beall, Librarian at the University of Denver

Jeffrey Beall, a research librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, has developed his own blacklist of what he calls “predatory open-access journals.” There were 20 publishers on his list in 2010, and now there are more than 300. He estimates that there are as many as 4,000 predatory journals today, at least 25 percent of the total number of open-access journals.

“It’s almost like the word is out,” he said. “This is easy money, very little work, a low barrier start-up.”

Journals on what has become known as “Beall’s list” generally do not post the fees they charge on their Web sites and may not even inform authors of them until after an article is submitted. They barrage academics with e-mail invitations to submit articles and to be on editorial boards.

One publisher on Beall’s list, Avens Publishing Group, even sweetened the pot for those who agreed to be on the editorial board of The Journal of Clinical Trails & Patenting, offering 20 percent of its revenues to each editor.

One of the most prolific publishers on Beall’s list, Srinubabu Gedela, the director of the Omics Group, has about 250 journals and charges authors as much as $2,700 per paper. Dr. Gedela, who lists a Ph.D. from Andhra University in India, says on his Web site that he “learnt to devise wonders in biotechnology.”

Open-access publishers say that the papers they publish are reviewed and that their businesses are legitimate and ethical.

“There is no compromise on quality review policy,” Dr. Gedela wrote in an e-mail. “Our team’s hard work and dedicated services to the scientific community will answer all the baseless and defamatory comments that have been made about Omics.”

But some academics say many of these journals’ methods are little different from spam e-mails offering business deals that are too good to be true.

Paulino Martínez, a doctor in Celaya, Mexico, said he was gullible enough to send two articles in response to an e-mail invitation he received last year from The Journal of Clinical Case Reports. They were accepted. Then came a bill saying he owed $2,900. He was shocked, having had no idea there was a fee for publishing. He asked to withdraw the papers, but they were published anyway.

“I am a doctor in a hospital in the province of Mexico, and I don’t have the amount they requested,” Dr. Martínez said. The journal offered to reduce his bill to $2,600. Finally, after a year and many e-mails and a phone call, the journal forgave the money it claimed he owed.

Some professors listed on the Web sites of journals on Beall’s list, and the associated conferences, say they made a big mistake getting involved with the journals and cannot seem to escape them.

Thomas Price, an associate professor of reproductive endocrinology and fertility at the Duke University School of Medicine, agreed to be on the editorial board of The Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics because he saw the name of a well-respected academic expert on its Web site and wanted to support open-access journals. He was surprised, though, when the journal repeatedly asked him to recruit authors and submit his own papers. Mainstream journals do not do this because researchers ordinarily want to publish their papers in the best journal that will accept them. Dr. Price, appalled by the request, refused and asked repeatedly over three years to be removed from the journal’s editorial board. But his name was still there.

“They just don’t pay any attention,” Dr. Price said.

About two years ago, James White, a plant pathologist at Rutgers, accepted an invitation to serve on the editorial board of a new journal, Plant Pathology & Microbiology, not realizing the nature of the journal. Meanwhile, his name, photograph and résumé were on the journal’s Web site. Then he learned that he was listed as an organizer and speaker on a Web site advertising Entomology-2013.

“I am not even an entomologist,” he said.

He thinks the publisher of the plant journal, which also sponsored the entomology conference, — just pasted his name, photograph and résumé onto the conference Web site. At this point, he said, outraged that the conference and journal were “using a person’s credentials to rip off other unaware scientists,” Dr. White asked that his name be removed from the journal and the conference.

Weeks went by and nothing happened, he said. Last Monday, in response to this reporter’s e-mail to the conference organizers, Jessica Lincy, who said only that she was a conference member, wrote to explain that the conference had “technical problems” removing Dr. White’s name. On Tuesday, his name was gone. But it remained on the Web site of the journal.

Dr. Gedela, the publisher of the journals and sponsor of the conference, said in an e-mail on Thursday that Dr. Price and Dr. White’s names remained on the Web sites “because of communication gap between the EB member and the editorial assistant,” referring to editorial board members. That day, their names were gone from the journals’ Web sites.

“I really should have known better,” Dr. White said of his editorial board membership, adding that he did not fully realize how the publishing world had changed. “It seems like the Wild West now.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 9, 2013

An article on Monday about questionable scientific journals and conferences misstated the name of a city in Mexico that is home to a doctor who sent articles to a pseudo-academic journal. It is Celaya, not Ceyala.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 10, 2013

An article on Monday about questionable scientific journals and conferences erroneously included one publishing company among those on a list of “predatory open-access journals,” known as Beall’s list. Although Dove Press was on the list in 2012, it has since been removed.

Coordinators for this year’s conference are Geraldine McCarthy, MEd, MSN, PhD, Professor Emerita, Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery and Joyce J. Fitzpatrick, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN, Elizabeth Brooks Ford Professor, Case Western Reserve University. Editor, Applied Nursing Research, Archives of Psychiatric Nursing and Nursing Education Perspectives

Registration Fee:

The conference registration fee is €348 or 450 USD The Registration fee includes Cocktail Reception for one (if you wish to include additional guests please indicate this in the following ‘optional’ section for accompanying persons) on 29th of July and Conference materials.

Cocktail Reception:

Cocktail reception: Tickets for Accompanying Persons Monday, July 29th Imperial Hotel Cork Duration: 2.5 Hours 5.00-7.30 pm Includes: Cocktail reception, two beverage tickets, administration, gratuities and taxes.

Optional Cobh Tour:

Date: Tuesday, July 30th Duration: 3.5 hours Fee: €100 ($129) Come and enjoy a trip to Cobh and have Dinner at the Luxury Fota Island Resort. You will be collected from the Imperial hotel and driven by coach to Cobh heritage centre where you will take an hour long tour of the Titanic centre and hear some traditional Irish music. Following this you will be brought to Fota Hotel for an evening meal (wine included) and return coach to the Imperial hotel in the city.

To register for this year’s INANE Conference, click here.

Any problems with the registration, contact: Nicola Cornally tel: +353 21 4901460. Email: n.cornally@ucc.ie

For more information, contact Joyce Fitzpatrick at jjfitzpatrick@hotmail.com. The conference program will be released soon.

Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care

Detailed information can be found here.

The successful candidate for the position of Editor will be recognized as a person who has demonstrated leadership in work and research in the field of maternal and newborn health, will have worked at a strategic level within academia or health care, will have an impressive track record of publications and conference presentations arising from research and scholarship, and demonstrate commitment to the effective dissemination of new knowledge and advocacy for the care of childbearing women and their infants.

The ideal candidate will possess the following skills:

• Professional qualifications in a relevant discipline
• Commitment to the values that matter to pregnant women and their families
• Leadership qualities
• Sound scientific judgment and focus on evidence-based care
• Broad knowledge of perinatal care and maternal /newborn health issues and trends globally
• Broad understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of maternity care and a commitment to enhance collaboration, dialog, and interaction among maternity care professionals
• Previous editorial experience
• Willingness to publish commentaries and articles that challenge prevailing opinion and practice in maternal and child health
• Excellent written and verbal communication, and computer literacy
• Ability to work to tight deadlines

Responsibilities of the Editor:

• The Editor will assume editorial control of Birth and will determine the scope to be covered by each issue.

In general, the Editor will:

• Preserve Birth as an independent and autonomous journal.
• Contribute to the strategy for the journal in collaboration with the publisher and the Editorial Board.
• Provide leadership to the Editorial Board, and appoint new members to serve, in collaboration with the Publisher.
• Make editorial decisions to ensure that Birth is publishing high quality, relevant content that is in compliance with accepted editorial standards.
• Oversee and direct editorial and publishing policies that are relevant to Birth, in collaboration with the Publisher.
• Alongside the Managing Editor, oversee the submission, peer-review, and revision processes through an online system.
• Work with the Production Editor, putting together issues for online and print publication in accordance with an established publication schedule.

• Promote Birth at national and international conferences and meetings, and help market the journal

  through relevant listservs and networks.

The post involves working closely with the Publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, and the Editorial Board.

Applicants should note that this position requires a significant weekly commitment of time (approximately 14 hours a week), with additional days required for meetings, conferences and international travel over the year. The successful candidate will receive a competitive remuneration package. The Editor can be based in any international location. Appointment will formally begin in June/July, 2013, for 2 years in the first instance with a probationary period of 6 months.

Applications should include (1) a short summary of your curriculum vitae, (2) a full list of publications, (3) a list of appointments as a reviewer, editor, or editorial board member, and (4) a short assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Birth, including details of the skills you will bring to this position, an outline of your vision for this Journal and how you would like to see it develop in the future. Interviews will be held by telephone in the first instance in May and June, 2013. Recommendation letters will be required only in the case of successful candidates.

Please send your application, in confidence, to:
Jamie Wielgus, Associate Editor, Wiley-Blackwell, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148
E-mail to jwielgus@wiley.com
Applications to arrive no later than May 13, 2013

~~

It is my distinct honor to be here today to introduce the founding of this award, and its first recipient for whom it is named – Margaret Comerford Freda.

This award came about in the finest of INANE non-traditions. First, someone had an idea that would benefit the group. Second, they made it happen! The “someone” in this case is Shawn Kennedy, who is the Editor of the esteemed American Journal of Nursing. Shawn asked a number of us what we thought of the idea, and found enthusiastic support for the idea. She recently recounted to me her motivation for pursuing this award:

“It dawned on me that there were no awards for nurses who excelled or made significant contributions as an editor, or who “raised the bar” in editing nursing publications. And while INANE likes to think of itself as “not an organization”, it’s the only organization where nurses involved in publishing nursing work and scholarship gather as peers and promote best practices.”

Shawn gathered together a group of INANE members – Mickey Dougherty, Jan Fulton, Kathy Schoonover-Schoffner, Leslie Nicoll and me. We exchanged a number of emails, and had a couple of conference calls – and today we are sharing the outcome of our deliberations. From the outset of our discussions, we were in agreement that the first recipient of this award should be Margaret Comerford Freda, and we also concurred that this award should be named in her honor. To be fair, we did step back a bit to consider if there were other options that we should consider, and while we put several ideas on the virtual table, in the end we did not waver from our early desire to establish this award in Margaret’s honor. But in stepping back, we also considered at length the foundation that we wanted to establish – the basis upon which this award would be given in the years to come – characteristics we recognized in Margaret’s achievements. We have provided on a handout a statement of the purpose, and the criteria upon which we base this award now, and in the future.

So now I will share a brief summary of Margaret Comerford Freda’s specific achievements, and why we had no hesitation in presenting this award to her, and also naming this award in her honor. Margaret is Professor Emerita, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Women’s Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center. She has been the voice and presence of MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing since 1998 and has developed this journal as a vital professional resource. Its success today is a testimony to her efforts.

Margaret is well known in the world of MCN nursing for her leadership on behalf of mothers and children. In her editorial role her influence reaches nurses practicing in perinatal, midwifery, neonatal and pediatric specialties. She played a key role in developing the March of Dimes Foundation nursing program, and was recognized for her service with the “Save the Babies” award.

INANE has benefited from Margaret’s search for excellence through her leadership in research on Editors’ roles – research that addresses many issues related to the editorial community that had never before been addressed and that provides a vital source of information for all of us and those who follow us. We have the publications that came from this work listed in the “Resources” section of our INANE web site. She and Leslie Nicoll wrote and published the extremely valuable “The Editors Handbook: An Online Resource and CE Course” that is available on NursingCenter.com; we also maintain a link to this resource on our INANE web site.

Less visible, but very important to all of us as Editors, was Margaret’s tireless and courageous work to assure that the ISI Web of Knowledge include, in their Journal Citation Reports, the number of nursing journals that our discipline deserves and demands. Margaret described her efforts in Nursing Outlook a few years ago in a column she appropriately titled “Don Quixote, David and Me” (Freda, 2006). Armed with the support of many individual nursing journal editors, librarians who work with nurses seeking evidence upon which to base practice and to guide future research, facts about our discipline world-wide and the importance of nursing literature for health care, she courageously challenged the assumptions embedded in the early selection of only 33 nursing journals. She describes the challenge involved by recounting one of the meetings she engineered with the ISI personnel:

“ . . . when it became clear that a comprehensive understanding of the nature of nursing research was necessary for the ISI personnel, Dr. [Judith] Lewis and I seized the opportunity. We explained how nursing research is different from medical research, the genesis of NINR and what it has accomplished, the necessity of evidence-based practice for all practicing nurses, the nature of translational research, the scholarly work of visionary groups [in nursing], and why the compression of nursing knowledge into so few journals is detrimental to our profession.” (Freda, 2006).

As a result of this groundbreaking effort, today there are over 95 nursing journals included in the report, and the number continues to grow.

For those of us who know Margaret, there is still much more, beyond her professional accomplishments, to say in honoring her today. Her portrait we have before us today conveys much about her warmth and her engaging persona that wins over hearts and minds. Here are a few quotes from members of our self-assigned committee:

• Margaret is a “go to” person… she is knowledgeable and engaging. Tactful yet candid. (Jan Fulton)

• When I attended my first INANE in 2004 she reached out to me, was extremely friendly and encouraging. As a brand new editor and INANE attendee, her encouragement was valuable. I’m thinking that’s Margaret, an encourager. (Kathy Schoonover-Schoffner)

• She is generous – always helping other editors in any way that she can. She is a gracious and generous author willing to share sources and insights that will help others with their work. (Mickey Dougherty)

• Margaret has been a significant force in pushing/pulling/promoting quality practices and she should be recognized by her peers. (Shawn Kennedy)

And I add my own comments – Margaret Freda represents, for me, exactly the very best of what INANE stands for – a common concern for the excellence and well-being of nursing literature, an abiding conviction that nursing has a vital role in promoting health around the world, and a hefty helping of collegiality that surpasses the boundaries of corporate or national entities.

In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge the support we have received from Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins in providing financial support for the award.

Without further ado, I hereby present the 2012 Margaret Comerford Freda Award for Editorial Leadership in Nursing Publication to Dr. Margaret Comerford Freda. We regret, as does Margaret, the fact that she could not be with us today to accept this award. Accepting the award on her behalf is Dr. Margaret Kearney, who has worked closely with Dr. Freda in their research on the editorial role.

Reference:

Freda MC. (2006). Don Quixote, David and Me. Nursing Outlook 54(1):58-59.

After spending time in many windowless conference rooms, it is a pleasure to be in a venue where all the rooms have lots of windows and terrific views. Making my way around the circular floor, I looked north towards McGill, south towards the river, and east and west across Montréal. They are beautiful views of a beautiful city and it’s great to be here for this year’s INANE.

Laurie Gottlieb, the conference coordinator and editor of the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research welcomed everyone to the conference. She noted that the Château Champlain had been built in 1966, just a year before “Montréal welcomed the world to the 1967 Expo.” She also noted that her journal has been published since 1969 and the only university-based nursing journal in Canada.

Dr. Helene Ezer

After Laurie, Dr. Hélène Ezer, Director of the School of Nursing at McGill University presented a few opening remarks. Of note, the School of Nursing at McGill was established in 1920 and is the only English language School of Nursing in Quebec.  The School of Nursing at McGill University has been a leader in nursing education, research. It is recognized globally for the excellence, creativity, and rigour of its academic programs. Graduates of the School have made remarkable contributions to the development of the discipline and to the delivery of health care in Quebec, Canada and internationally.

The keynote speaker for the evening was Derek Drummond, William C. Macdonald Emeritus Professor of Architecture at McGill. A life-long Montréal resident , Derek had everyone laughing at his funny descriptions of his beloved city and the people who live here.

Instead of using a computer and PowerPoint, Derek opted for slides. I have to say, this was the first time I’ve seen a slide projector in many years! Two minutes into the presentation, the screen went dark. Disaster? Amazingly, the AV people at the hotel found a bulb within 2 minutes and Derek was back in action. Crisis averted!

Derek Drummond

Derek described winter in Montréal (cold and snowy) and showed us a picture of his home with a mountain of snow in front, burying his car. His comment, “I’ve lived in this same home for 50 years and even more amazingly, I lived there with the same woman.” He also had commentaries on how Montréalers cross the street (impatiently), what “Arrêt” means on a stop sign (“Slow down if you must but never, ever stop”), and the history of the tripex: three flat homes that provide good housing density without shared common spaces. Who knew?

The meeting adjourned and everyone gathered again for more conviviality. I was feeling a little tuckered out from my travels so I adjourned early, ready to begin day two bright and early at 8:30 am.

Signing off for now, more later!

Cherry Ames, RN, blogging live for INANE 2012

Note: ‘Cherry Ames’ is a registered trademark of Springer Publishing Company, LLC and used with permission.