African Journal of Emergency Medicine: Minutes, 25 Nov 2009
Cape Town International Convention Centre
1. ATTENDANCE
Everyone was welcomed to the meeting.
The description point was around the need for a journal, if there was a need the logistics of the journal in terms of online vs print, Medline indexing and so on, and the composition of editorial board / peer review process.
2. DISCUSSION
- There was clearly agreed need for a journal.
- This must be Africa centric
- It must be the same standard of other journals but have in it aims and objectives to increase the access to publication for the African Emergency Care practitioners.
- It must be African focused and relevant.
- It must be period.
Everyone agreed it must be medline indexed and listed with appropriate organizations for funding through universities such as the (South African Department of Education).
There was a lot of discussion around internet verses print. Most people felt that internet is the right way to go and the journal task team will have to look at this.
The international forum of journal editors may help to build journal editorial capacity. They may also be able to provide some advice on how to go to setting up the journal.
There may be a need to publish work at a lower standard initially. Use of a peer and mentor system to hold the hands of authors and develop a co-author network would also be really helpful. Tim Coats’ course may be a vehicle for improving writing skills. It was also suggested that the journal can publish a series of commission articles to help people write. More details provided later.
Tim Coats was recently involved in a launch of Scandinavian journal. It has been directed at the community of Emergency Care to guide the conversation in emergency care in that area that includes critical appraisal, applying evidence, network building and international development articles. This would be very helpful in our settings. We would need to start with a higher proportion of commissioned articles initially.
Access and funding will be a real issue and it wasn’t rely clear how to do that other then this should be initially open access to try and drive leadership. Where internet access is poor printed special editions on certain topics may well help to get the message out on this.
It was accepted that it is going to take 5 years or so to look how we really want it to look. There was discussion that a board when establish should have representation from each of the major countries. Following discussions around the African Federation of Emergency Medicine it was felt that actually housing the journal under the federation would be most sensible way to ensure representivity and ease of access.
3. PLAN GOING FORWARD
Under AFEM a task team has been established one of the functions is of which to look at the issue of a journal. The task team is actually looking at services so may need a sub-committee with co-opted members from outside to address all of the important points about the journal.
The task team should look at funding options, internet verses print options, how to set up an editorial board, how to set up a advisory committee and how more sort of commission articles would be the best place to start. Suggested things include writing articles, reading articles,
International emergency medicine development, how to take overseas literature and how to implement it in a resource constrain setting and scans of other journal articles such as the EMJ Sophia system.