Really good stuff just got even better

Abstract

After a quarter century, Really Good Stuff (RGS) deserves a really good refresh. Introduced to the world in November of 1999,¹ RGS was published annually for 3 years before its early success led to it becoming a bi-annual celebration of the insights gained through innovations in educational practice. Those were the early days of online submissions, a time when author guidelines were still available by fax¹ and when print copies were the norm in academic journals. The year 1999 was also a year in which the journal received a total of 393 submissions. To create a vibrant RGS section, as a result, it was necessary to aggregate papers over the course of 12 (eventually declining to 6) months.

How times have changed. Fifty-four   days into 2025, the journal reached the same number of submissions as were received in the entirety of the year RGS began. In 2024, the 393 total submissions of 1999 were nearly eclipsed by the number of submissions to RGS alone. To keep up, we started publishing ‘Extra Really Good Stuff’ 2.5 years ago.² There is enough inflow now, however, to warrant and allow even more routine (i.e., monthly) publication   of this section.

The main advantages to our authors of evolving RGS to a monthly publication schedule are two-fold: No longer will they have to wait for a specific date to pass before peer review will start in full. Rather, submissions will be received, reviewed and published on a rolling basis (i.e. with no set deadline), effective immediately. Further, by ending the bi-annual publication practice, we will create more opportunity for authors to strengthen their submissions by virtue of having time to allow revisions that account for the feedback provided during peer review. We will no longer, in other words, be so constrained by biannual production deadlines that decisions need to be dichotomous (publish or not). We hope this change will allow readers and authors to discover and create more RGS that, previously, was not competitive for publication.

For our readers, we will continue to do our best to prioritise publication of the ‘really great’ submissions (i.e. those that go beyond descriptive demonstrations of success to share genuine insight regarding what was learned from the experience).³ We will also continue to do our best to contextualise what is ‘really great’ by recognising that new insight can be gained by examining established practices in novel settings.²

To enable these changes, we have established an RGS Peer Review panel, consisting of health professional educators from around the globe, who have agreed to offer five reviews of 500-word RGS submissions per year. If you are interested in helping to adjudicate decisions for this section, with all the benefits that come from conducting peer review,⁴ please let us know by emailing [email protected].