Editorial: Promotion, Policy, and Practice

I have just returned from three days at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto, where the CJA had a table at the Festival of International Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology (FICCDAT). FICCDAT is an umbrella for five conferences, which took place simultaneously with approximately 1200 participants from around the world. At the beginning of the year, when I decided that the CJA should have a table at FICCDAT, I saw the festival as an opportunity to promote the journal and, coincidentally, the CAG to an international audience of potential authors and readers. This is actually the second time I have done this during my term as editor-in-chief. We made a similar effort at the VIII^e Congrès international francophone de gerontology et gériatrie in Quebec City in October 2006. I would have liked to report that our table was overwhelmed with interested delegates from both conferences. While the numbers were steady in Quebec City and our experience was much the same in Toronto, the numbers were hardly overwhelming.

What lessons can the CJA and the CAG draw from these two experiences? First, even the though the number of people who visited our table was relatively small in comparison to the total number of participants at both conferences, making new connections with potential authors and subscribers, especially those from outside of Canada, is certainly worthwhile. Second, it is also striking that many of the people who spoke to me at our table knew very little or nothing about the CJA or the CAG. This second issue makes me wonder what the CJA and the CAG need to do to promote themselves at a time when the competition for authors, subscribers, members, and funds is increasingly heated. Within the context of CJA's mandate to publish the highest quality peer-reviewed research in gerontology, I would certainly welcome your suggestions. Third, I believe all members of the CAG need to become ambassadors for the CJA and CAG and encourage their peers to submit their best work to the CJA and participate in the other activities of the CAG. This is to suggest not that we should stop being constructively critical of the CJA and CAG, but that we should encourage the growth of the CJA and the CAG through positive support of what we do. Fourth, my experiences at these two conferences raise the issue of multiple audiences. Especially at FICCDAT, many of the participants I met were practitioners and advocates. These are also important groups among those who receive the CJA and participate in the CAG. Again within the context of CJA's mandate, the question I ask myself and I ask you is what can I do as editor-in-chief to reach the multiple audiences of the journal and the CAG more effectively?

With this issue of the CJA, we launch a new section, "Policy and Practice Notes". Like the long-established "Research Notes" section of the CJA, the new "Policy and Practice Notes" is intended to encourage authors-those who have designed assessment and evaluation tools, carried out preliminary assessments of innovative practices, are focused on policy issues, and so on, and who can place their work within the broader context of recent, scholarly research-to submit their work to the CJA. "Policy and Practice Notes" submissions will be peer-reviewed and must meet the scholarly criteria of excellence we seek to achieve in every paper published in the CJA, whether it is an article, a research note, or now, a policy and practice note. Whether your primary interest is policy and practice or any of the other areas of gerontology, I encourage you to read the first "Policy and Practice Note", "Seniors Falls Investigative Methodology (SFIM)-A Systems Approach to the Study of Fall in Seniors" in this issue and to let me know whether you agree with this new direction in the CJA, as we continue to try to reach all of our audiences.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any thoughts you would like to share with me on this new initiative or any other aspect of...