Raising BRN: Growth of a journal

It is unbelievable how quickly time flies when you’re having fun. We have now been editing BRN for 8.5 years, and we are still speaking to one another! Over this time, numerous changes have occurred in our editorial procedures. We started our editing positions working in adjoining offices at the University of Florida, yelling back and forth to one another; we now work 2,200 miles from each other, communicating on a regular basis via e-mail. We started off using a homemade database combined with a complicated e-mail filing system; we now use ScholarOne’s Manuscript Central, a web-based system easily accessible to both of us as well as to our guest editors, reviewers, and authors. When we took on this project, the journal was a mere toddler of 3 years. We signed an initial contract with Sage and had no idea what might happen at the end of that period. We have since signed two more contracts and now find ourselves the proud editors of a ‘‘tween’’; sometimes we just cannot believe how much our little upstart has grown. Initially each four-issue volume of BRN contained 320 print pages and no online prepublication, and we struggled to attract the 40 or so manuscripts per year it took to fill the pages. The journal has since grown to 416 pages per volume with online publication ahead of print and still we have a queue of manuscripts awaiting print publication. In 2009, we processed 99 new submissions and 70 revised submissions. Of the new submissions, 64% were reports of original research, 19% were literature reviews, and the remainder were methodological or theoretical manuscripts. This year, we are on pace to receive more than 100 new submissions for the first time. As the volume and quality of submissions has increased, our acceptance rate, of necessity, has decreased. In the early days, we accepted nearly all of the manuscripts submitted. These days, our acceptance rate is less than 63% (#mss accepted/[#mss accepted þ #mss rejected]). Our journal has grown more worldly over this time period as well. Once upon a time, it was a big event to receive a submission from outside of the United States. Last year, only 70% of our submissions came from within the United States, with themajority of the rest coming from Asia (17%) and Europe (6%). But perhaps the biggest change we have seen over these 8.5 years—and one that undoubtedly both grew out of and fed into the others—was watching our young journal enter the ‘‘big leagues’’ with its inclusion, in 2005, in what is now Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index and the publication of its first impact factor in the 2007 index

Persons With Dementia Who Become Lost in the Community: A Case Study, Current Research and Recommendations

Providing care for persons with dementia presents several serious challenges. Among these is the possibility that a person with dementia will become lost in the community and face the risk of injury or death. Caregivers often cite anxiety about this possibility as a reason for placing their loved ones in a professional-care setting. Our case study and review of research show that all persons with dementia are at risk, regardless of age, past behavior, and sex. Thus, health care providers have an important role to play in educating caregivers about this risk and assisting them in preventing or responding to such situations. In addition, health care providers should ensure that their respective professional-care facilities have appropriate measures in place to prevent and respond to these eventualities. Finally, health care providers can educate local law enforcement personnel about dementia in general and more specifically about research-based strategies for searching for persons with dementia who have become lost in the community