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Rezaeian M. A new year, a new hope. JSP 2023; 5 (1) :1-2
URL: http://isssp.ir/article-1-49-en.html
Keywords: COVID-19, platform
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JSP
                     Journal of Suicide Prevention
https://isssp.ir                                                                                               Vol. 5. 2023. Article ID: e2023001

Editorial  

A new year, a new hope

Mohsen Rezaeian1

1. Prof., Dept. of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Occupational Environmental Research Center, School of Medicine, Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences, Rafsanjan, Iran


2023 has finally arrived, a new year which I do hope brings peace to people all over the world. At the Journal of Suicide Prevention (JSP) we celebrate our fifth anniversary. With a renowned editorial board, we started our journey in 2019 (1) when the COVID-19 pandemic had just started to ravage the blue planet. We witnessed how this pandemic substantially changed our life and how scientists from different disciplines tried to study its diverse consequences on human behavior, including suicide (2-5).
In terms of suicide prevention, in 2021 the International Association of Suicide Prevention (IASP) launched the Regional Suicide Prevention Networks Programme (RSPNP), with the aim of promoting the sharing of expert knowledge, skills and experience, across all borders, thereby contributing to the effective planning, implementation and evaluation of national suicide prevention strategies (6). The RSPNP, now known as the Partnerships for Life (P4L) programme, is now making substantial progress across all regions of the world, having completed scoping and planning stages and moving into full implementation from this year.  I firmly believe that this initiative has the potential to make a significant contribution to the development and delivery of a more effective and strategic approach to suicide prevention on a global scale.
Last year, as the editor in chief of the JSP, I became aware of a new phenomenon which I would like to share with readers. I received two separate submissions from two different countries which I sent to reviewers after initial (positive) assessment. Subsequently, I sent reviewers’ comments to the authors and passed the authors’ revised versions back to the reviewers. This standard cycle continued until the reviewers were satisfied with the final version of the manuscripts and I issued the acceptance letters. Unexpectedly, however, the corresponding authors of both manuscripts asked to withdraw their submissions, with the excuse of “needing to conduct more analyses”!
I do not have a firm explanation of this behaviour. I can only assume that the authors wanted to test our journal as it is a relative newcomer in the field and were not really committing to publishing their papers with us. I refer to this phenomenon as a “testing” submission which, of course, is of concern because we have limited human and financial resources. Having mentioned this experience, I would like to encourage authors to send us more “real”, rather than “testing”, submissions. The JSP is a platform dedicated to suicide prevention and we especially welcome submissions from colleagues in low- and middle-income countries (LaMICs).

References:
1. Rezaeian M. The Birth of a New Suicidology Journal: the Journal of Suicide Prevention (JSP). JSP 2019; 1 (1): 1-2.
2. Gunnell D, Appleby L, Arensman E, Hawton K, John A, Kapur N, et al. Suicide risk and prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lancet Psychiatry 2020; 7: 468–71. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(20)30171-1.
3. Niederkrotenthaler T, Gunnell D, Arensman E, Pirkis J, Appleby L, Hawton K, et al. Suicide research, prevention, and COVID-19. Crisis 2020; 14: 321–30. doi: 10.1027/0227-5910/a000731.
4. Rezaeian M. Covid-19 Pandemic, Suicidal Behavior and the International COVID-19 Suicide Prevention Research Collaboration (ICSPRC). JSP 2020; 2 (1): 1-2.
5. Pirkis J, Gunnell D, Shin S, Del Pozo-Banos M, Arya V, Aguilar PA, et al. Suicide numbers during the first 9-15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with pre-existing trends: An interrupted time series analysis in 33 countries. EClinicalMedicine. 2022 Aug 2; 51:101573. doi: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101573. eCollection 2022 Sep.
6. Rezaeian M. Introducing the Regional Suicide Prevention Networks Programme (RSPNP) to Support the Development, Implementation and Evaluation of National Suicide Prevention Strategies. JSP 2022; 4 (1): 1-3.

 
Type of Study: Research | Subject: Special
Received: 2023/02/21 | Accepted: 2023/03/1 | Published: 2023/03/1

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