AJCC Goes Green

Those of you who have been readers of the American Journal of Critical Care (AJCC) for many years will certainly remember the journal’s solid green cover, which was retired when we redesigned the journal in May 2007. We hope you’ve been enjoying our many enhancements, especially the redesigned cover featuring abstract art, but with this issue we are once again asking readers to think “green” as they read AJCC.

Beginning with this issue, the journal will be simultaneously available in print and digital replica editions. The digital edition, a “green” alternative, eliminates the wait for the print publication and provides an alternative for those readers who prefer digital access to the content, with attendant benefits such as audio and flash animation, hyperlinks to online resources, and a mobile version for readers on the go. (Of course, our content remains accessible to readers and researchers via the AJCC Web site, www.ajcconline.org.) To access the digital edition, simply visit our home page or click on the link you receive every 2 months in a convenient e-mail alert.

After you’ve tried a few of our digital issues, you may decide to contact AACN’s customer care department to let them know that you’d be happy to receive AJCC only in the digital replica format. By reading AJCC digitally, you can help the environment by saving the paper and energy related to printing and shipping your journal the old-fashioned way.

Beyond ecology and economics, digital delivery also helps us to more effectively fulfill our mission to you as scholars and critical care practitioners. Offering our content digitally enables us to get potentially lifesaving science in front of you more quickly and efficiently, so it can be more rapidly translated to improving patient care at the bedside.

Digital delivery provides several key advantages to time-strapped readers:

• Faster delivery of issues via an e-mail link, with no postal delays

• Easy download of articles as PDFs anytime, for reading anywhere

• Paperless, clutter-free archiving

• Adjustable font size for easier reading

• Advanced search capabilities

• Easy navigation with the “feel” of print

• Hot links to related sites and databases

• Available via Black-Berry^®, iPhone^®, and PDA devices

• Ability to share clinical practice information with colleagues via provided e-mail links

Some readers may already be familiar with the digital replica format through reading AACN’s Bold Voices, but a tutorial for use is available with each digital AJCC issue opposite the cover.

AJCC Coeditor Cindy Munro introduced herself earlier this year with a message of hope, noting the inherent optimism of clinical research. ¹ Publishing, too, is fueled by hope and optimism: the hope that our work will help to communicate new and better ways of caring for critically and acutely ill patients, and the optimistic belief that embracing 21st-century communications technology will enable us to more quickly and effectively disseminate essential and often lifesaving research to our readers.

• ©2009 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses