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Getting there slowly but surely: where do we stand at launch time ?

by Michel O'Neill, Université Laval, Canada

Where are we now ?

In a few weeks time, the Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online (RHP&EO) will be launched during the XVIIth global conference of the International Union of Health Promotion and Health Education (IUHPE) in Paris. I would like here to report on the developments that have occurred over the recent months, since the first paper I wrote as Editor in chief of the journal (O'Neill, 2000).

The bad news is that we are far less advanced than I thought we would be at launch time when, in September 2000, I accepted the job of Editor in chief. The good news though is that the steady dialogue between IUHPE Board of Trustees and the Editorial Board of RHP&EO has led a few significant changes in the way the journal will function. What happened is that the original intent of the terms of reference voted by IUHPE Board of Trustees met with the reality check of trying to implement them, leading to adjustments that will reflect much better the reality of the Union as well as the need of the field. This work has led to three interesting adjustments, reflected in the revised terms of reference that will be discussed and adopted by the IUHPE Board during the Paris conference, and posted on the website after their adoption. The issue of the pace of work has also been challenging and had to be considered.

Three adjustments

The first adjustment was about the title of the journal.  The letter "s" was added to the first word of the title, transforming it from Review to Reviews in order to carry clearly the fact that it is not a journal of original material but a journal of reviews of original material.

The second adjustment was about the rating of articles. The members of RHP&EO Editorial Board reacted to the terms of reference proposed to them by pointing out that resources useful to people working in health promotion and health education throughout the world go way beyond the published scientific or professional literature and that this should be considered. Secondly, rating "objectively" a diversity of resources in a systematic and culturally sensible manner would require the development of tools that are way beyond the resources RHP&EO is able to muster at this point in time; the fact that systematic reviews of the scientific literature are done in other places (notably by the Cochrane Connexion) was also seen as an occasion for IUHPE to do something different. Finally, the very idea of rating things seemed to the majority of the board as a process with several negative elements that could be avoided if another way to evaluate the resources was implemented.

Given these reactions, it was decided that the best service IUHPE could provide to the field was to offer a set of papers where reviewers would comment on what they had found useful resources in their work in health promotion and health education, that these papers would be organized as thematic series, and that there would be a monitored electronic discussion forum for each series, allowing the readership to engage in a dialogue about the relative merit of the resources commented on by the reviewers. This process seemed to the Editorial Board a more inclusive one closer to the philosophy and functioning of IUHPE, and making a better use of the electronic format of the journal.

The third and final adjustment was about the process by which reviewers would be selected. In the terms of reference, these were to be nominated by the Editorial Board, with no process specified. The process we tried (ask members of IUHPE Board of Trustees as well as members of RHP&EO Editorial Board to nominate people, having in mind a gender, geographical and content balance) did not work properly. Members of the Editorial Board were so uncomfortable in front of the list of 70 or so nominees elicited by this process that most refused to select 25 among these 70. This led us to a revised process where the bulk of the reviewers will now be designated by the various regional offices of IUHPE, proportionally to the relative importance of the region. This will increase the capacity to choose interested and able reviewers from each region, significantly improving the likelihood to get a good balance as well as the sense of ownership of the journal by the IUHPE members at the regional level. Additional reviewers will also be designated by the Editorial Board of the journal to complement the previous process and make sure an optimal balance is reached.

The issue of pace

As this is an electronic journal and as all exchanges are done through the internet, at the speed of light, I also had an expectation of a steady and speedy process in the operationalisation of the terms of reference. However, the process proved to be less straightforward and much slower for a variety of reasons: people travel; reasonable turnaround time has to be left if meaningful consultation is to take place; a global environment has characteristics different than the more homogenous local or national ones; this is a new venture involving an organisation whose membership is spread out across the globe, with differential access to electronic communications; etc. At each step of the development of the journal (nomination of the Editorial Board, development of an operational scheme and a work plan for the journal, selection of the reviewers), the decisions turned out to be much slower and much more cumbersome than we had foreseen. The outcome of this phenomenon was however much better decisions, closer to the true nature of a global organisation run mostly on voluntary time like IUHPE .

Getting face to face contact once in a while or occasional conference calls (although costly and complicated to organize with members of the Editorial Board in Australia, Canada, Congo, Mexico, The Netherlands and USA, in very different time zones indeed) will thus be required as complementary tools to help us function better. Finally, the Editorial Board wishes to begin small and slow and to grow steadily as our collective learning to run an electronic journal improves, rather than beginning faster and larger.

So...

In conclusion then,  even at the electronic age, there is probably more truth than we sometimes would like to believe in the old French saying: "Qui va lentement va sûrement" (Who goes slowly goes safely...). I will thus continue to report periodically on the development of the journal and would like to thank sincerely the members of the Editorial Board, the webmaster of the website, the members of IUHPE global Board of Trustees as well as IUHPE staff in Paris for the constant time and effort they have put in this exciting venture up to now. I will also be more than pleased to get reactions and comments from the readership of the journal as the number of reviews grow. As you read this paper, the first series of reviews is online ! Go and check it out !

Reference

1. O'Neill, M. (2000). A word from the Editor in Chief: from IJPH to RHP&EO; Reviews of Health Promotion and Education Online; reviews/2000/1/index.htm.
   

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