The Editor-in Chief is Gone: Long Live the Editor-in-Chief

My time as editor-in-chief (EIC) of Simulation in Healthcare has come to an end. I succeeded David Gaba, the Founding EIC, in July 2016. After serving for 8 years, I felt it was time for new leadership and for me to pursue other opportunities. Last summer, a call went out for interested applicants and by January of this year, the SSH Board had selected Nicole Harder, RN, PhD, CHSE, CCSNE, as the third EIC for the journal. Dr. Harder officially began her term on February 15, 2025, but she and I have been sharing the responsibilities. I will serve as EIC for all manuscripts submitted before February 15, and she is responsible for all manuscripts that have come in after that date as well as the day-to-day management of the journal. In addition to selecting a new EIC, the SSH Board approved some changes to the leadership structure of the Editorial Board. There will be an additional Associate EIC along with a new position, EIC Emeritus (EICE). The new EICE position gives the prior EIC the option to stay on and assist the new EIC during the transition period and handle some of the workload tied to new initiatives. So, although I am leaving the journal in the capable hands of Dr. Harder, I look forward to working with her and the rest of the editorial team in my new role as EICE. Looking back, I was a bit uncertain how the journal would build upon the foundation and record of success set by David Gaba. However, opportunities and challenges presented themselves quickly. I was struck by how much changed during my time at the helm in the simulation world, in publishing, and in the world itself. First, submissions to the journal steadily increased from 290 in 2016 to a record 436 in 2020. They have remained high with 381 submissions last year—underscoring the continued strong interest among authors to publish in the journal. Consequently, the size of the editorial team needed to change as well to handle the increased volume in submissions. In 2016, we had 9 associate editors and 15 editorial board members, but that increased to the 12 associate editors and 38 editorial board members we have now. As the journal matured, we took several steps to ensure the publication of high-quality, accurate, and ethical research. First, we formally adopted the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and are now listed on their Web site as one of many journals that follow their recommendations. Second, in 2016, Simulation in Healthcare and other simulation journals published modifications to 2 research reporting guidelines: the Consolidating Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines that address randomized control trials and the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines intended for observational studies. These guidelines provide a standardized framework for the essential elements that should be included in reports of specific research designs. The modifications prepared by Cheng and colleagues1 are aimed specifically at simulation-based research in healthcare and became a formal requirement for submissions in 2021. Since then, we have added requirements for literature reviews, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), and qualitative studies, Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). Most recently, you undoubtedly noticed that articles in this issue of the journal look different. The article title page has been reformatted to remove previously unused space along the left margin. In addition, the editorial staff page has been reformatted and reduced to fit on a single page. These changes were implemented to free up page space for article content. THE 2021 JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR During my time as EIC, the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for Simulation in Healthcare reached 2.69, the highest in the journal's history. The most recent JIF has receded to 1.7. In fact, many journals saw a decline in their JIF in 2023 attributable in part to a decline in research output in 2022 compared to previous years. In addition, the Journal Citation Report began awarding JIFs to journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index. As a result, the number of journals in the Healthcare Sciences & Services category alone (where our journal is included) increased from 106 journals in 2022 to 175 in 2023. Our current 5-year JIF remains a respectable 2.5 and our rank within the Healthcare Sciences & Services category increased from the 38th percentile the previous year to the 50th percentile this past year. These are impressive numbers given the diversity of clinical, educational, and engineering communities the journal serves. DIGITAL REACH The JIF is an index based on citations, but that does not capture interest in a journal's content among those who do not cite it. Thus, digital reach is becoming another important index of a journal's impact. Readership of the journal extends far beyond the membership and online-only subscriptions (approximately 5000 annually). Access to the journal via the Web site or through Ovid databases has become the more common way for readers to reach us. In recent years, we've typically had more than 200,000 annual Web site page views, and institutional usage via Ovid reached 100,000 article views in 2024. Moreover, nearly 60% of individual and online access comes from outside the United States. In an effort to build and maintain a greater digital presence, many medical journals have added social media editors. In 2023, Jennifer Arnold, MD, MSc, FAAP, was added as our social media editor to engage readers, enhance article visibility, and promote authors' work to a broader audience. She now helps promote journal content via LinkedIn and Instagram. SPECIAL ISSUES/ARTICLES The Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) has held 3 Research Summits since its inception to capture the state of the science as healthcare simulation evolves. Content from each Summit has been published in special issues of the journal in 2011, 2017, and 2024, respectively. The most recent Research Summit was convened to conduct a review of the simulation-based training and methodology literature and generate a set of evidence-based guidelines for simulation training in healthcare This was a significant milestone for the journal, publishing the first set of formal guidelines in a special issue complemented by 11 literature reviews offering more detailed analyses of the literature that were the foundation for the guideline effort.2 Interest in this special issue has been intense. In fact, the article, Debriefing Methods for Simulation in Healthcare: A Systematic Review, by Duff and his colleagues3 received 2445 full-article views on our Web site in 2024, the second highest of any article published in the last 10 years. This year, we published a first-of-its-kind special issue: Simulation-based Mastery Learning Curriculum Development Workbook (and Appendix).4 This is a hands-on guide for educators interested in developing their own mastery learning curricula, made freely available to anyone as an open access special issue of the journal. We also published 3 important high-visibility articles with other journals: Raemer et al. Simulation safety first: an imperative5 was published along with Advances in Simulation, and Journal of Surgical Simulation. Diaz-Navarro et al., Global consensus statement on simulation-based practice in healthcare,6 was published with Clinical Simulation in Nursing, Advances in Simulation, and International Journal of Healthcare Simulation. Lu, Pian-Smith, et al., Call to action: quality and simulation professionals should collaborate,7 a joint publication with Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Last, we introduced a new article type in 2020, Reflections on Simulation,8 to offer authors a forum for sharing their personal stories or perspectives on healthcare simulation. Elaine Meyer has served as the editor of this narrative feature since its inception and has helped bring more than a dozen unique and poignant stories to our readers. COVID-19 CONTENT Without question, the most significant impact on the journal during my tenure was the COVID-19 pandemic. Essential emergency medicine personnel worked long hours under the most trying conditions while almost everyone else sheltered in place. Three years before the pandemic took hold, the journal had published a collection of articles on the potential benefits of simulation for dealing with highly communicable disease in response to the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak.9 The pandemic reignited the need for that kind of material. We received our first manuscript related to COVID-19 in March 2020 and decided to open up the pages of the journal to publish simulation-based research and solutions aimed at patient and provider safety, alternative uses of simulation equipment, and virtual solutions for training and assessment. In July 2020, we introduced the COVID-19 Brief Reports, established to expedite the publication of pandemic-related content, and made freely available to the public for 2 months after publication. The pandemic created unprecedented demand for simulation centers and staff to help train healthcare providers to treat COVID-19 patients while maintaining their own safety. I often look back on this time as the point at which simulation became a necessary component of healthcare training and education. GENERATIVE AI Perhaps the biggest challenge or opportunity facing this journal and scholarly publication in general is the proliferation of generative AI (eg, ChatGPT, Bard, etc.). It is a disruptive technology that is already having profound effects on how people prepare and disseminate written, visual, and auditory information. It is being used to emulate the writing style of authors, the vocal style of singers, and the likeness of celebrities in videos. It is also being used in a variety of ways in simulation. This journal entertains manuscripts describing research and applications of AI in healthcare simulation and we regularly receive submissions on topics such as scripting simulation scenarios, generating simulated patient responses, or analyzing student notes or learner responses. In 2023, I published an editorial describing many of the merits and concerns surrounding the use of generative AI in scholarly publications.10 It can quickly generate well-articulated, grammatically correct written text, but the accuracy of what it generates is still suspect. At present, this journal does not permit the assignment of authorship to AI. Authors of a manuscript are fully responsible for its content, even portions produced by AI; thus, as a nonlegal entity, AI cannot be an author because it cannot take responsibility for its output.