Aims and Scope

Aims & Scope — What the journal seeks to publish

Core aims

Our aims reflect the journal’s legacy commitment to ethical, evidence-based nursing practice and the nurse–patient relationship. We publish scholarship that informs day-to-day decisions at the point of care and strengthens the systems and teams that surround patients and families.

  • Investigate nursing care processes, clinical decision-making, and bedside interventions that are feasible and effective in real-world practice.
  • Report evidence from quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies that advance safety, quality, equity, and patient experience.
  • Present systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and evidence syntheses that summarize best available knowledge for clinicians.
  • Describe safe, ethical clinical innovations and case reports that provide practical insights and reflective learning for teams.
  • Explore professional issues—ethics, leadership, workforce, education, and policy—when they directly inform clinical care.
  • Promote transparency via robust methods, registered protocols where relevant, and clear statements about data, materials, and limitations.

Domains and settings of interest

CJNCP welcomes submissions across the lifespan and care continuum, including preventive, acute, chronic, rehabilitative, and end-of-life care. We are particularly interested in studies that explicitly link findings to practice change, implementation strategies, and measurable outcomes.

Representative clinical areas

  • Acute and Critical Care: Early warning systems, nurse-sensitive indicators, sedation and delirium, sepsis bundles, pressure injury prevention.
  • Medical–Surgical and Perioperative: Enhanced recovery, pain management, infusion therapy, device safety, fall prevention.
  • Maternal–Child & Neonatal: Breastfeeding support, family-centered rounds, neonatal pain assessment, thermoregulation, developmental care.
  • Mental Health & Substance Use: Trauma-informed care, suicide risk assessment, therapeutic communication, integrated behavioral health.
  • Community & Public Health: Immunization confidence, home care models, chronic disease self-management, school and occupational health.
  • Long-Term, Palliative, and End-of-Life: Symptom management, goals-of-care communication, caregiver burden, hospice transitions.
  • Informatics & Digital Health: Clinical decision support, telehealth nursing, documentation quality, algorithmic fairness.
  • Education & Workforce: Clinical preceptorships, transition-to-practice programs, simulation, continuing professional development.
  • Leadership & Policy: Staffing models, scope of practice, safety culture, implementation science in policy rollout.

Studies from low-resource or rural settings, and those incorporating patient, family, or community partners, are especially welcome. We encourage authors to discuss context and adaptability, not only efficacy.

Article types and expectations

Each article type must connect findings to nursing practice. Submissions should include a succinct “Implications for Practice” section and, where appropriate, implementation checklists or decision aids.

Original Research

  • Quantitative studies should define primary outcomes and analysis plans; report missing data handling and sensitivity analyses where relevant.
  • Qualitative studies should articulate epistemology and approach (e.g., grounded theory, phenomenology), sampling strategy, saturation rationale, reflexivity, and analytic steps.
  • Mixed-methods studies should specify the design (e.g., convergent, exploratory sequential), integration points, and how joint displays or meta-inferences inform practice.
  • Implementation and improvement studies should describe context, intervention components, fidelity/adaptation, measures, and a learning system (e.g., PDSA cycles).

Reviews and Syntheses

  • Systematic and scoping reviews should follow established guidance (e.g., PRISMA family), include protocol information, and assess evidence certainty where applicable.
  • Rapid reviews may use streamlined methods; justify shortcuts and discuss implications for decision-making under time constraints.
  • Meta-analyses should describe model choice, heterogeneity, small-study effects, and sensitivity analyses; provide forest plots where appropriate.
  • Evidence summaries & clinical guidelines should state methods for literature appraisal, stakeholder involvement, and strength-of-recommendation grading.

Practice Innovations & Case Work

  • Practice innovation reports should include implementation mapping, resource needs, training approach, outcomes, and sustainability/scale-up considerations.
  • Case reports/series must protect privacy, secure appropriate permissions/consent, and link observations to broader clinical principles.
  • Reflective practice submissions situate experience within theory and evidence, offering actionable insights and ethical analysis.

Methodological quality and transparency

We prize clarity over complexity. Authors should report enough methodological detail for clinicians and researchers to understand applicability, replication potential, and limitations. Where relevant, preregistered protocols, data dictionaries, and analytic code repositories may be linked or archived.

  • Design & reporting: Use design-appropriate reporting guidelines (e.g., CONSORT, STROBE, COREQ, SQUIRE). Provide a clear rationale for sample size and analytic choices.
  • Equity & access: Explain recruitment, representation, and any barriers that could affect generalizability. Discuss differential effects and mitigation strategies.
  • Outcomes: Emphasize nurse-sensitive outcomes, patient-reported measures, safety events, timeliness, and efficiency when appropriate.
  • Data & materials: Provide data availability statements; share de-identified data or instruments when permitted by policy and ethics review.
  • Ethics: Describe ethics/IRB approval or rationale for exemption, and consent processes tailored to the clinical context.
  • Integrity: Use similarity checking; avoid redundant publication; disclose funding and competing interests for all authors.

Practice transferability and implementation

Because nursing knowledge must be usable, accepted papers should help teams answer: What can we do differently on Monday? Authors should connect results to concrete actions, resources, and constraints faced by bedside clinicians and nurse leaders.

Elements that enhance clinical utility

  • Implementation checklist: Stepwise tasks, responsible roles, materials, training, and go/no-go criteria.
  • Adaptation guidance: What can change without harming effectiveness; what must remain stable.
  • Context mapping: Unit type, staffing model, patient mix, technology, and policy constraints.
  • Equity considerations: Impacts on diverse populations; language, literacy, disability accommodations; cultural safety.
  • Measures for monitoring: Process and outcome indicators with suggested data sources and collection cadence.

We welcome visual abstracts, flow diagrams, and joint displays that communicate pathways from intervention to outcome. Where feasible, include cost, workload, and feasibility information to support decision-making by managers and educators.

Intended audience and relevance

Our primary audience includes staff nurses, advanced practice nurses, clinical nurse specialists, educators, and nurse leaders. Secondary audiences include allied professionals, quality and safety teams, and policy stakeholders. Manuscripts should explicitly state how results inform clinical actions, education, or policy decisions that touch patient care.

“Relevance to Practice” guidance

  • Summarize the take-home message for bedside teams in bullet points.
  • Indicate required competencies and training time if implementing a change.
  • Highlight resource implications (equipment, staffing, IT support) and potential risks.
  • Provide fidelity checks and adaptation notes for different settings (e.g., rural clinic vs. tertiary ICU).

Assessing fit before submission

Before submitting, authors should review recent volumes and identify how their work advances the conversation. Fit is strongest when the problem is clearly clinical, outcomes are meaningful to patients and nurses, and findings are communicated with candor about limitations and context.

Question Why it matters
Does the manuscript address a practical clinical problem nurses face? Ensures direct relevance and enhances adoption potential.
Are the methods transparent and appropriate to the question? Supports credibility, replication, and evidence synthesis.
Are equity, accessibility, and patient perspectives considered? Improves generalizability and ethical quality of care.
Are outcomes nurse-sensitive or patient-centered? Aligns with the journal’s focus on bedside impact.
Are implementation steps and resources described? Facilitates translation from paper to practice.

Frequently asked questions

Do you consider pilot and feasibility studies?

Yes, when the clinical question is important and the design provides credible signals for future work. Authors should clarify feasibility endpoints, decision rules, and learning relevant to practice.

Is qualitative research welcome?

Absolutely. We value qualitative insights that deepen understanding of patient experience, clinician decision-making, teamwork, and implementation barriers. Demonstrate rigor and reflexivity, and connect findings to actionable implications.

What if my improvement project did not show benefit?

Negative or mixed results can be highly informative. We encourage transparent reporting of context, fidelity, and learning so other teams can avoid pitfalls or adapt approaches.

Do you publish protocols?

We consider study protocols and methodological papers that provide clear value for the nursing community, particularly for implementation, trial design, and instrument validation.

Can I submit a guideline or pathway developed at my institution?

Yes, if it includes evidence appraisal methods, stakeholder involvement, and outcomes from implementation or audit; or if it offers broadly applicable tools that other institutions can adapt.

Access, licensing, and research ethics

CJNCP is open access. Each article displays a license that governs reuse; authors must secure permissions for third-party content or ensure it is compatible with the article’s license. All submissions must adhere to research ethics and patient privacy requirements. For case material and images, consent and de-identification are mandatory unless clearly exempt and ethically justified.

Competing interests, funding, and author contributions should be declared transparently. The journal employs similarity checking to support originality and proper attribution.

Editorial process at a glance

  1. Initial assessment: Fit with Aims & Scope, ethical compliance, and baseline methodological soundness.
  2. Double-blind peer review: Two or more expert reviewers assess rigor, relevance, and clarity; editors synthesize recommendations.
  3. Decision and revisions: Clear, constructive guidance with attention to clinical utility and transparency.
  4. Acceptance: Final checks for ethics statements, data availability, and license clarity; preparation of accessible HTML/PDF galleys.
  5. Publication: Article-level metadata, persistent URLs for assets, and indexing updates.

For detailed steps, including timelines and appeals, consult the journal’s policies and author guidelines.

Keywords that describe our scope

Use specific keywords to improve discoverability. Examples include:

Clinical Nursing Patient Safety Quality Improvement Implementation Science Nurse-Sensitive Outcomes Maternal–Child Health Critical Care Community Health Palliative Care Mental Health Nursing Informatics Education & Workforce