Contributor: Maureen “Shawn” Kennedy, MA, RN
History of Nursing Journals
Mysteries of Publishing

“The American Journal of Nursing (AJN)is the oldest (since 1900) continually circulated and most honored broad-based nursing journal in the world. Peer-reviewed and evidence-based, AJN adheres to publishing standards set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; www.icmje.org), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME; www.wame.org), and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; http://publicationethics.org/).

AJN‘s mission is to promote excellence in nursing and health care through the dissemination of evidence-based, peer-reviewed clinical information and original research, discussion of relevant and controversial professional issues, adherence to the standards of journalistic integrity and excellence, and promotion of nursing perspectives to the broader health care community and the public.”

From AJN’s Web site, www.ajnonline.com

Known simply as “the Journal” in its early days, AJN has served as American nursing’s legacy journal, documenting the growth and development of nursing in the United States in the context of society and the events that shaped the nation, the US health care system and nursing’s place in it.

Early Beginnings

In 1899, the Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (later to become the American Nurses Association, ANA) charged Mary E.P. Davis and colleagues Elizabeth Hampton Robb, the association president, and Sophia Palmer to develop a plan for a nursing journal. According to Davis,

“In order to secure freedom of expression of opinion or criticism or advocacy of plan or policy in nursing matters, it became evident that the journal must be something more than an adjunct. It must be independent, unhampered by fear, favor or prejudice in its expressions of truths, as seen and interpreted by nurses. To that end, it must be owned, edited and controlled by nurses.”¹

In one short year, this committee formed a stock company, sold 24 shares to association members and 550 subscriptions at $2 each, enlisted colleagues to edit and write, hired a publisher and produced the first issue of “the Journal” in October 1900.²  Contributors included such early nursing notables as Lavinia Dock, Katherine De Witt, Isabel Hampton Robb and Lillian Wald. Sophia Palmer was the first editor, and the editorial office was a room in her home in Rochester, New York and continued there until 1912. They secured J.B.Lippincott Company in Philadelphia as publishers, a relationship that lasted into the 1990s when the company was acquired by Wolters Kluwer, a Dutch publishing firm.

AJN was a wholly owned subsidiary of the ANA up until 1996, when it sold the journal to Lippincott Publishers. There were many proposals to provide the journal with ANA membership, beginning in 1908, as well as 1912, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1920, and further attempts into the 1970s.⁴ Costs and other factors could not be resolved given the complexity of arrangements and  the reluctance of the association to raise dues to support the cost. The final discussion was in 2009. By then, the ANA had developed its own publication.

The journal’s mission was to disseminate evidence-based information and it has appeared in nurses’ mailboxes since 1900. However, with the Internet, the mailboxes changed, and nurses were looking for information more and more online. AJN had an online presence, but it was little more than posting of journals. In 2009, AJN launched its new Web site, www.ajnonline.com, and jumped into the digital world with complete searchable archives from 1900, podcasts, videos, and a blog (AJNOffthecharts.com). It added Facebook, Twitter (now X), and Instagram, and became a leader among nursing publications using social media.

AJN’s Editorial Philosophy

Sophia Palmer laid out the journal’s editorial philosophy in the first issue:

“It will be the aim of the editors to present month by month the most useful facts, the most progressive thought, and the latest news that the profession has to offer in the most attractive form that can be secured… It will be the policy of the magazine to lend its pages freely to the discussion of subjects of general interest, presenting every question fairly and without partisanship, giving full recognition to all persons offering a suggestion that shall be in the line of nursing progress, excluding only such controversy as shall seem to be personally malicious or lacking in broad interest to the profession.” ³

Palmer S. The Editor. AJN, 1(1), October 1900, 64-65

Palmer also received the support of the board of directors, that “the Journal should express its opinions freely and fearlessly without restrictions on the editor,” thus establishing the editorial freedom that has continued to characterize AJN. ⁴ 

After Sophia Palmer’s sudden death in 1921, Mary M. Roberts took over as editor until 1949, and through the years, the journal has had many editors: Nell V. Beeby, 1949-1956; Jeannette V. White, 1956-1957; Edith P. Lewis, 1957-1959; Barbara G. Schutt, 1959-1971; Thelma M. Schorr, 1971-1981; Mary B. Mallison, 1981-1993; Lucille A. Joel, 1993-1998; Diana J. Mason, 1998-2009; Maureen Shawn Kennedy, 2009-2022. The current editor in chief is Carl A. Kirton.

Today, AJN publishes a wide range of content for a broad-based nursing readership – it covers what nurses need to know about professional issues, cutting-edge clinical content, practice-oriented research and quality improvement reports, news, a variety of clinical columns, commentary and special series on timely issues.

For more information about the history of AJN, see

Wheeler, C. E. (1985). The American Journal of Nursing and the socialization of a profession, 1900-1920. ANS. Advances in Nursing Science, 7(2), 20–34. https://doi.org/10.1097/00012272-198501000-00006.

Sources

1. Davis MEP. Short History of the Founding of the American Journal of Nursing. Rapports de la Conference International of Nursing, June 1907.
2. Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the Associated Alumnae of Trained Nurses. AJN 1(1), October 1900, 69-85.
3. Palmer S. The Editor. AJN, 1(1), October 1900, 64-65.
4. The American Journal of Nursing and Its Company: A Chronicle 1900-1975. The American Journal of Nursing Company. New York: 1975.

About Maureen “Shawn” Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN

Maureen “Shawn” Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN was the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Nursing from 2009 – 2021. Before arriving at the journal, she worked as the director of education for a private CE firm and as adjunct faculty. As a clinician, Shawn was a clinical nurse specialist in acute care at a community hospital in New Jersey, a chemotherapy nurse in a Manhattan medical practice, and an emergency nurse at Bellevue Hospital Medical Center in New York City. She has a BSN from Hunter College-Bellevue School of Nursing and a master’s degree from New York University College of Nursing. Author of several book chapters and numerous articles in AJN and other professional journals, she coauthored with Thelma Schorr, 100 Years of American Nursing, a pictorial documentary of nursing in the 19th century. She’s been inducted into the Hunter College Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Nursing. In 2016, she received the Margaret Comerford Freda Award for Editorial Leadership from the International Academy of Nurse Editors, and in 2017, she was awarded The Nightingale Initiative for Global Health Advocacy in Action Award for excellence in promoting nursing scholarship. She is a member of the American Nurses Association, the New Jersey State Nurses Association, the American Academy of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International and the Association of Healthcare Journalists. (from https://community.ana.org/network/members/profile?UserKey=8092047e-aa37-4670-891f-2a6831165cc9&ssopc=1)