EDITORIAL
Sébastien S. Prat1,2
1 McMaster University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Hamilton, Canada
2 St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, Forensic Psychiatry Program, Hamilton, Canada
A few years ago, members of the forensic psychiatry research team at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton started an exciting journey with the decision to create a new forensic mental health journal.
The project arose from the success of an annual conference, the Risk and Recovery Forensic Conference, that brings professionals from the criminal justice and mental health systems together in sharing expertise and experiences when working with offenders and victims. The conference has been an avenue to share practice experiences, to learn from others on a national and international platform, and to bring hope and support to individuals with mental illness who are in the recovery process following contact with the criminal justice system.
The International Journal of Risk and Recovery found its name echoing the conference and the purpose of this new journal also parallels the stimulating framework of the conference. It aims in providing topical scholarly and scientific publications and in offering practical knowledge that professionals, academics, and frontline staff can become inspired to implement.
Creating a journal is an exciting process when you’re working with highly motivated contributors. We have been fortunate to be collaborating with McMaster University Library Press who have provided access to the Open Journal Access System software. This system enables us to develop free content for both authors and our readers. The ease of accessibility aligns with our goal to not only publish academic papers but also to include relevant topics and practical knowledge that resonate with professionals’ daily practices.
Developing a scientific journal also has inherit challenges and as the International Journal of Risk and Recovery seeks to attract authors’ submission for high-quality publications, we also recognize that the journal has yet to gain a strong impact factor and currently has a limited number of database references. Like all early projects, indexing a journal in databases requires time and it is our mission to obtain an impact factor through the promotion of papers to databases according to their criteria.
As with any journal, obtaining reviewers that can dedicate their time and contribute their expertise in the selection of articles is an ongoing task. With time we expect to increase the number of our collaborators and improve the timeline process for reviewing of submissions. We are thankful for those who have dedicated their time already and have been helping in the peer review analysis of manuscripts.
Accessibility and availability of information is our primary goal for publishing a free of charge journal, but it also requires motivated volunteers to hold some of the publishing positions, such as copyediting, layout editing, and proofreading. We have been fortunate to find individuals, volunteers and staff at St Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton and McMaster University to participate in the publication process and their contribution is gratefully acknowledged. We also welcome those interested in having an editorial experience to become part of our team.
The editorial and management team of the International Journal of Risk and Recovery will continue to work hard to offer high-quality scholarly content. We are thankful to our authors and readers in being part of our journey and we’re excited to continue expanding our scholarly impact with interested colleagues.
Corresponding author
Sébastien Prat, Forensic Psychiatry Program, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, Hamilton ON L9C 0E3, Canada – email: prats@mcmaster.ca