By Vivian Welch, Editor in Chief and interim CEO
2022 has been a year full of changes for Campbell. We have updated Campbell’s strategy, which now emphasizes our commitment to addressing emerging global societal challenges by enabling use of rigorous evidence synthesis to inform decisions.
In our journal Campbell Systematic Reviews, we published our largest number of full reviews, evidence and gap maps and methods research papers in one year ever: 32 full reports. With help from our publishing partner, Wiley, Clarivate has confirmed that Campbell will receive a journal impact factor in June 2023. We successfully transitioned to ScholarOne, an editorial management system, that will allow us to – among other things – continuously monitor and improve our processes and adherence to high methodological standards.
We continue to build on our strengths; launching a new group on substance use treatment and recovery and recruiting more best-in-class editors and methods editors to meet the growth in number of submissions for title registrations that Campbell is receiving.
We have continued to build on our partnerships with decisionmakers to produce policy-relevant evidence. This includes partnerships with the Youth Endowment Fund, Public Safety Canada, the US Department of Homeland Security, the Centre for Homelessness Impact in the UK and the World Health Organization, to name a few. We also initiated a partnership with Cochrane US and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focussed on addressing racial inequities. These partnerships are producing evidence which directly informs policy and practice decisions.
Partnerships were the focus of our 2022 Campbell monthly webinar series. Our 2023 Campbell webinar series will look more deeply into cross-cutting methods to produce policy-relevant evidence, including stakeholder engagement, mixed-methods syntheses and innovations in knowledge translation, such as story-telling. Please get in touch if you have suggestions for topics!
We held a successful What Works Global Summit in October (WWGS 2022) with a completely virtual platform. WWGS was attended by over 200 presenters or panelists and 600 participants, from 58 countries. Recordings of all sessions are available here. We are planning our next annual WWGS in Ottawa on 18-20 October 2023. The conference now has a fabulous, global scientific committee. We hope you can join us in Canada next year!
Campbell has just received a commitment from the American Institutes of Research for a three-year grant with the objective to enable us to move to a sustainable financing model. We are seeking a CEO to lead this change and transition to sustainability.
As ever, I remain committed to the mission of Campbell and am excited to continue to work with our partners and with the new Campbell CEO on our continued path to better evidence for a better world.
I wish you all a very happy and festive holiday season. If you visit Chelsea, Quebec, you will find me outside skiing or skating with my family and friends!