Editorial 1 Editorial LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Jeri W. Dunkin, PhD, RN Editor As you know the Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care is a peer- reviewed journal. That means that a professional panel must review all manuscripts. This is a completely volunteer professional service. Without this effort the journal would not be the quality journal that it is. Because this work is voluntary, I am hesitant to send more than four manuscripts to any one reviewer in a year’s time. Therefore, we need a large number of reviewers to complete the work. If you would be interested in this professional service activity for the Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care, please send me a note by email telling me of your area of interest and attaching your curriculum vitae. My email address is jdunkin@bama.ua.edu. Please put “Manuscript Reviewer” in the subject box so that I might efficiently respond. Thank you for assisting us in continuing to make the Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care the fine e-journal that it is. It seems that every state in the United States and areas of Canada are currently facing budgetary deficits and economic hard times. That is true in Alabama as well and as a result the amount of time and effort that the Webmaster and information management staff can contribute is in serious jeopardy. It is clear that we will have to begin compensating them for their work. This is very difficult, as the journal has no revenue-generating capacity of its own, and RNO needs additional funds to provide this level of financial support to the journal. Currently, the Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care is open to all readers, and we do not require that authors be members to publish in the journal. The board of RNO made this decision as a way to provide support for rural nurses and health care practitioners because resources are always less available in rural areas as compared to urban. However, we are revisiting that decision. This is one of the few organization- based journals that are open to non-members. Other journals are supported by member dues, where members freely access to the journal, and non-members must pay for access or they are subscription based. Additionally, many of the medical related journals have an advertising department where they solicit paid advertisements to assist with support of the journal. The RNO governing board and the editorial board of the journal are wrestling with the need for revenue, and our mission to support rural practitioners. It appears that we are either going to have to limit the opportunity to publish in the journal to members only or limit the reading of the journal articles to members only. We do not want to limit readership and will probably start with limiting the opportunity to publish to those who hold membership. We may possibly have to limit access to the journal to members only at some time in the future. It is in that spirit that I ask our readers to consider supporting the online journal by joining the RNO. The membership application can be accessed and printed at www.rno.org. Mail it and your check for $55.00 to RNO at Rural Nurse Organization Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care, vol. 4, no. 1, Spring 2004 mailto:jdunkin@bama.ua.edu 2 Administrative Offices, c/o Letterman Lanning, P.O. Box 248, Spokane, Washington 99210-0248, USA. My email address is jdunkin@bama.ua.edu. You may also email the administrative offices at RuralNurseOrganization@msn.com. Please let us hear from you. Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care, vol. 4, no. 1, Spring 2004 mailto:jdunkin@bama.ua.edu mailto:RuralNurseOrganization@msn.com