Death of a journal: lost opportunities, new challenges, or both?

The announced cessation of publication of CRNA: The Clinical Forum for Nurse Anesthetists brings into focus the problems that confront smaller subscription-based professional journals in a print or paper mode. We are in an age in which there is a high level of competition for peoples' time and attention, in an environment where there is a danger of information overload. Electronic media are competing with print media, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. This is not only within the realm of news, sports, and entertainment, but professional information as well. Debates will abound as to how best, and in what medium, research should be made available to professions and the public. Unfortunately, the revelations in the past few years of the poor state of published research in our print journals, despite peer review, makes it more difficult to advocate them in a climate where the shift may well be toward electronic journals. Although many print journals have also gone online, they usually limit the viewership to abstracts or a few articles. Some of thejournals that have been created as online journals and have their articles peer reviewed have not been in existence long enough to examine the extent to which the peer-review system is any better than for print journals. It is exceedingly important that research and its conclusions that make its way into either print or online journals are reliable and valid before we apply them to our practice. Relying on individual readers to make that determination is problematic, because most readers are not that astute in sophisticated research methods and statistics. With the loss of this journal, CRNA opportunities for research and commentary publication are lost. It will produce new challenges to interested CRNAs who choose to balance this loss with new opportunities.