Message from the President

Abstract

In early October, POSNA announced to membership that JPOSNA will become the official journal of POSNA as of 12/31/21, and that the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics (JPO) will change to an affiliated journal of POSNA. This decision was approved by the POSNA Board of Directors at the September board meeting in Chicago. This was after 2 years of careful consideration and analysis led by President-Elect Jeff Sawyer and publications consultant Paula Gantz. 

I want to provide more detail and perspective about this decision. Historically, JPO listed itself as the official journal of POSNA; however, we did not have an official relationship with a contract and revenue to POSNA until January 2017. The POSNA/JPO relationship was strong with the JPO editor sitting on the POSNA Board and advocating for the dissemination of pediatric orthopaedics scientific research. However, there were also challenges with Wolters Kluwer in terms of communication, trying to increase page counts, and adopting innovative content presentation. The revenue to POSNA remained fairly limited. 

Many orthopaedic subspecialty organizations do “own” their own journals which allows them to advance scientific publication, innovate with flexibility, increase their online presence, publish society news, and generate more revenue. This can be seen, for example, with the American Journal of Sports Medicine and AOSSM, the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery and ASES, and the Journal of Hand Surgery and ASSH. To explore these options for the benefit of POSNA and its members, we did our due diligence by discussing publication with other societies, engaging a consultant, and sending an RFP to a number of medical publishers. We learned that the medical publishing world is changing dramatically: margins and advertising are declining, online publishing is becoming more dominant, getting indexed in PubMed/Index Medicus is a long and involved process, and the focus is on bundling journals to institutional subscribers, not individual subscribers. We received only one proposal from publishers for a new publication which would have been revenue negative, limited in scope (four online publications yearly), and would require increasing POSNA staff and expertise. However, the publishers were very impressed with JPOSNA and thought that this would be an attractive product in the future were it able to publish original scientific research. 

The decision to have JPOSNA be the official journal of POSNA will allow us to publish original scientific research after January 1, 2022. Our relationship with JPO and its editors, Drs. Hensinger and Thompson, remains strong. JPO is an important journal to the field of pediatric orthopaedics and to our membership. As an affiliated journal of POSNA, members get a reduced subscription rate to JPO, although most of our membership has JPO access through their institutions. JPOSNA will be able to add to JPO to increase the number of scientific publications in our field. 

I think the innovation and breadth of JPOSNA offerings is well-demonstrated in this issue: you can delve into master’s technique for patella sleeve fracture and learn the essentials of concussion for sideline management. There are topics representing the breadth of pediatric orthopaedics including deformity, CP, spine, sports, and fractures. There are sections highlighting QSVI, the final installment in a series on EOS, and the ethics of global outreach. Congratulations to Ken Noonan (Editor-in-Chief), Lisa DuShane (POSNA Communications Specialist), and the JPOSNA Editorial Board on another fantastic edition of JPOSNA.