“How can we drive innovation to lead to better patient outcomes for newborns around the world?”
This was the core question that brought together the Hospital for Sick Children, Mount Sinai Hospital, St. Michael’s Hospital and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre to form the Toronto Centre for Neonatal Health (TCNH). In working to address this question, the partners quickly identified the need for a global community of neonatologists to collaborate and share insights.
Collaboration is a cornerstone of progress across industries and sectors – and in academia, it can be challenging. While there is no shortage of subject matter experts, even in highly specialised fields of study, who are ready to contribute, inform and review content, these experts are often found in different institutions and regions around the world. Resources to produce, promote and share new ideas are often disjointed. International collaborations can also be time-consuming and costly, and specialists may not have the resources required to disseminate the information at scale. These factors create a barrier, despite the need and desire to share research findings and insights.
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An interesting opportunity for communities of practice can be to partner with publishers, experts in knowledge-sharing with the infrastructure in place to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. Journals provide a means of collaboration across disciplines, institutions and geographies. Developing new journals is, and should be, a thoughtful process, starting with a review of the landscape and careful assessment of the question of how a new publication will serve a community that is underserved by existing publications. When combined with a clear and compelling vision, market landscape analysis is a powerful tool that helps shape the aim and scope for new journals.
As global platforms, journals enable scholars to build and expand on research, and improve the speed of discovery and quality of innovation. Scholars in specialised fields can quickly and efficiently search for information to support their work, saving time and resources that can be funnelled into producing new studies.
Key reasons journals are an effective way to collaborate and share ideas include:
- Rigorous peer review, fact-checking and verification standards before content can be shared: This process is critical because it ensures the integrity and validity of content that will inform future research and innovation and builds trust among the content’s audience.
- High production values: How the content in a journal is organised and presented to its audience shapes how – and if – it is consumed. While specialists are knowledge-holders, the publisher is responsible for packaging and presenting content in ways that audiences will find easy to access and digest.
- The ability to disseminate content broadly: Journal publishers have infrastructure for global distribution.
The University of Toronto Press (UTP) has been publishing academic journals since 1920, working closely with societies and researchers. More recently, UTP has been working to broaden audience and impact in the fields of health, medicine and the environment, working with researchers as well as policymakers. One example of this type of journal that crosses the boundaries of academia and practice is the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, which is the result of a partnership between UTP and C40 Cities, a network of nearly 100 cities around the world working to confront the climate crisis. The journal is one of the ways the group contributes to the urban climate agenda and supports governmental policy.
In a similar mode, TCNH and UTP have developed a partnership to launch the Journal of Clinical Insights in Neonatology this spring, to address the need for a global community of neonatologists. In this collaboration, experts from TCNH form the editorial board and develop the aim and scope of the journal. The board is responsible for editorial review and direction, while the UTP produces, disseminates and promotes the journal globally. The journal will serve as a platform for neonatologists, clinicians and researchers to share and discuss complex and impactful case studies.
The collaboration between TCHN and UTP is an example of the essential role publishers play in bringing together subject matter expertise with content and production skills, technical infrastructure and global dissemination capabilities. Together, these elements support knowledge-sharing and meet the needs of diverse communities of researchers to help answer critical questions such as: “How can we better elevate the care of newborns around the world?”
Antonia Pop is vice-president of the publishing division of the University of Toronto Press.
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