Nursing journals should require articles to highlight policy implications

Nursing journals need to make policy evident in the nursing literature that goes beyond mentioning it at the end of an article, a Nursing Outlook study concludes. The authors offer recommendations to journal editors, editorial boards and manuscript reviewers to incorporate health policy consistently across the journal to enable nurses to disseminate policy agendas and translate them into action. The study analyzed how peer-reviewed nurse journals’ editorial information communicates policy expectations to readers and authors and how published articles emphasize the need for nurses to engage in policy discussions. The authors found only half the journals included policy as a focus in author guidelines or as a column. Of those journals, only 267 articles out of 4,805 (5.6%) published in 2022 made policy a subject focus. (Nursing Outlook article, 2/5/25)