Scandinavian Journal of Food and Nutrition in transition

Abstract

Dear Reader, This is the last issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Food and Nutrition, No 4/2007, concluding volume 51. The journal started as “Naringsforskning” in Swedish (i.e. Nutrition Research) in 1957 with the aim of informing Swedish and Nordic readers about progress in nutritional sciences. It was directed to professionals working with nutrition such as dieticians, nutritionists, medical doctors and nurses, teachers of home economics, and not the least the Swedish food industry that was keen on applying new results for nutritional improvements of their products. In 1961, the Swedish Nutrition Foundation was established and took over the journal as one way of realising its overall aim to promote nutrition research and its practical implications. The Swedish language was kept, occasionally with articles in the Danish and Norwegian languages and the aim was to satisfy the broad spectrum of readers with different kinds of articles, reviews, summaries and debate in the broad area of nutrition. From 1992 the name of the journal was changed to Scandinavian Journal of Nutrition/Naringsforskning with the ambition to increase the number of subscribers and readers both within and outside the Nordic countries. Members of the Swedish Society of Nutrition were an important part of the readers who got a discounted subscription included in their membership fee. Similar but discounted subscriptions were offered to societies in the other Nordic countries, and at times the journal had Scandinavian News from Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway in each issue. The journal was made more consistently bilingual, i.e. English and Scandinavian languages. Original articles in English were welcomed and appeared more and more. The journal was produced in the offices of the Swedish Nutrition Foundation. From 2002 a contract was signed with a well-reputed publisher of scientific journals, Taylor&Francis, now Informa Healthcare/Taylor&Francis, with the title “Scandinavian Journal of Nutrition”, and the journal was published consistently in the English language. The aim was to increase the attractiveness of publishing original articles as well as reviews in the journal and to increase the number of international subscribers through efficient marketing activities. However, neither of these expectations was realised, also not after broadening of the scope and change of name to Scandinavian Journal of Food and Nutrition from 2006. The journal has been indexed in several databases, CAB Abstracts; Elsevier Bibliographic Databases; EMBASE (Excerpta Medica); Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA); and SWEMED. However, applications to be indexed in Index Medicus/PubMed have failed so far. This fact and the absence of an official impact factor, are major and increasingly important obstacles in attracting good original articles, particularly from the biomedical area. With this background it was decided to discontinue the Scandinavian Journal of Food and Nutrition in its present form, volume 51 being the closing volume. From 2008, the Scandinavian Journal of Food and Nutrition will be continued in two separate forms: One purely scientific open access journal named Food & Nutrition Research (see adjacent advert), and a new information journal in Swedish, with certain articles in other Scandinavian languages, named Nordisk Nutrition (Nordic Nutrition).