Midwifery Information at Your Fingertips: The Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health Online

Abstract

Are you one of the many American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) members who reads the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health (JMWH) when your copy of arrives in the mail every 2 months? If so, you are in a small majority. A JMWH March 2024 ACNM member survey revealed that just over 50% of respondents read the Journal when it arrives in their mailbox. However, you may be missing out on JMWH’s online offerings, including earlier access to excellent research and scholarship.

Did you know that articles are published online in Early View as soon as the publication processes are complete? This occurs before an article appears in a print issue and lands in your mailbox. Newly published articles can be found on the Journal's homepage at jmwh.org. Along with finding the most recently published articles online, readers can check and see which articles have been cited or downloaded most often. ACNM members and other readers can sign up to receive alerts with article links as soon they are published online. Email alerts can be selected for monthly, weekly, or daily notification. ACNM members can also locate instructions on the JMWH homepage to access all JMWH articles back to our 1955 founding via the ACNM website.

ACNM members receive the electronic table of contents (eTOC) via email when each new compiled issue goes up online, a few weeks before the hard copy arrives in the mail. ACNM membership staff can help members who have had an email address change, or who may have opted out of an association email, and thus are not receiving the eTOC.

Under the About dropdown menu on the homepage, readers can find information about the JMWH Editors and Editorial Board. The JMWH Aims and Scope, our recent Statement of Inclusivity, and other helpful information are also available.

The JMWH column Ask the Midwife, available via handouts that can be downloaded or printed freely, is a great resource to share with your patients. Ask the Midwife is located on both the homepage, and at a separate link from the homepage Ask the Midwife dropdown menu. This is a frequently used JMWH resource.

The JMWH website has information about the Journal to help authors, welcome and support peer reviewers, and share collections of our recent work on current topics with readers. From the JMWH homepage Contribute dropdown menu, authors can link to JMWH Instructions for Authors and the JMWH Preparation and Style Guide, invaluable resources for preparing manuscripts for submission. Authors can find information about citations and full text views of their article by linking to the article on the website. Likewise, individuals interested in becoming a peer reviewer or who are current reviewers can find resources and helpful information about peer review and JMWH.

JMWH leadership provides a number of article collections to bring JMWH articles on current topics together for ease of review under the Browse dropdown menu. The most recent collection, created in 2024, is on abortion issues that impact midwifery practice and education. Prior to that, a collection on transgender and nonbinary health care was launched. Our Racial Equity Library, linked near the top of the JMWH homepage, is a popular collection of articles on issues of racial equity and justice in health care, including an editorial with resources useful to clinicians, educators, and researchers.

The Journal editors surveyed ACNM members for your input in March as we considered the future of JMWH production options. In addition to the information above, we found that nearly a third of respondents read the Journal using a combination of reading online and the print issues. More than one third of members are not receiving the eTOC for each issue. A few respondents are not receiving print issues. Be sure to check with ACNM to receive these services.

Although there is no immediate timeline to stop sending print issues; this will become a reality in the future. JMWH is a highly valued (per previous surveys) member benefit. The subscription is provided at no additional charge to members, with publication costs being covered by Journal royalties. More than half of ACNM members who responded to the survey agreed that they would rather not receive print issues. Therefore, we will be offering members the opportunity to opt out of print issues, representing a chance to save a few trees and to reduce the use of plastic wrapping.

The publication landscape is changing rapidly, with more articles being published as Open Access (OA), which anyone with a computer and Internet access can read online whether they subscribe to the Journal or not. Some journals publish only OA articles. Many, like JMWH, publish both OA and subscription articles. A recent editorial provides additional information.¹ The cost to publish paper copies continues to increase along with United States Postal Service postage costs, while revenue from print advertising is declining rapidly. JMWH leadership will continue to examine the best options to provide a quality scholarly Journal to members in a cost-effective manner. We welcome your input as we move forward.