Shh! Editor Confidential: An Interview with Rita Pickler, PhD, RN, FAAN

Cynthia Saver, MS, RN

Writer’s Camp Counselor

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Shh! Editor Confidential, a new Writer’s Camp series, features conversations with editors of nursing journals. The editors will provide a peek inside the editorial process and offer publishing advice, with the intent of helping authors enjoy a positive and productive publishing journey. Peeking into the editorial office can be a fun way to learn, and the counselors of Writer’s Camp invite you to step through the door and enjoy our first conversation.

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For the first Shh! Editor Confidential, I sat down (virtually) with Rita Pickler, PhD, RN, FAAN, who has been the editor of Nursing Research since 2018. Rita’s “day” job is the FloAnn Sours Easton Professor of Child and Adolescent Health at The Ohio State University, where her teaching and research focus on high-risk perinatology, neonatology, and pediatrics. Pickler, who has published widely, previously served as an editor for the Journal of Pediatric Healthcare and the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

In 2018, the International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE) named Nursing Research, founded in 1952, to the Nursing Journal Hall of Fame. The award recognizes scholarly nursing journals with 50 or more years of continuous publication and sustained contributions to nursing knowledge. Nursing Research is also the official journal of the Eastern Nursing Research Society and the Western Institute of Nursing.

Cynthia Saver: How would you describe Nursing Research in a nutshell?

Rita Pickler: We publish original research related to scientific problems that are associated with nursing. The research can be focused on direct nursing care, or it may be foundational science that will develop over time into research associated with improving healthcare outcomes.

CS: Do you accept author queries?

RP: Yes. Authors don’t have to query me, but I encourage them to do so. I can usually tell from the abstract sent with the query if the paper is going to be a good fit for the journal’s mission, and if it isn’t, sometimes I can direct authors to a journal that might be a better fit. Also, if an author has queried me and the paper comes in formatted correctly, it takes me less time to review it before deciding whether to send it for peer review. (Note: Learn more about queries by reading Pickler’s article, “We Get Letters.”)

CS: What’s your best advice for aspiring authors?

RP: It all starts with doing good work: asking the right questions, then doing rigorous scientific work, and then publishing the work that was done. If you do good work, your paper can be published.

When it comes to the publishing part, it’s important to find a journal that will be the right home for the work that you’ve done. For example, we don’t publish papers about nursing education, unless they’re about educating nurse scientists, and we don’t publish quality improvement or evidence-based practice projects. The way to pick the right journal is to read the author guidelines, which will tell you what types of articles the journal publishes.

You also need to follow the author guidelines, so you can submit a clean paper. By clean, I mean that it’s clear you’ve paid attention to the guidelines when it comes to formatting and presentation. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but if the references are in the wrong format, or the paper is too long, is missing an abstract or has too many tables or figures, it’s not going to be sent out for peer review.

Coherency is also important. If the paper isn’t clearly written and doesn’t make sense to me after my initial read, then I’m not going to send it to peer reviewers. The biggest reason papers are rejected is they aren’t clearly written. If you’re an international author, you should have an English language speaker review the paper before submission.

CS: What is the process for becoming a peer reviewer for Nursing Research?

RP: We invite authors who are new to the journal to become peer reviewers, and for those who are interested, to send their CV for consideration. Someone who wishes to become a reviewer can also contact me and send their CV. We screen CVs to verify potential reviewers have published in peer-reviewed journals and have experience in the content areas we need.

I recommend new reviewers obtain training first. There are many good options, including Editage, which is offered by the publisher of Nursing Research, Wolters Kluwer. Elsevier Researcher Academy, and Wiley Author Services also offer peer review training. I also encourage faculty at universities to mentor their pre and postdoctoral trainees in peer review. In addition, upon request and with a few requirements, we will approve this sort of peer review training of mentees by our experienced reviewers.

Unfortunately, there is shortage of peer reviewers. I’m not in favor of paying peer reviewers because I consider peer review a professional obligation; I do peer review for other journals. Everybody’s busy and there is little reward for the effort, but we need to understand that peer review is a professional obligation that makes what’s published better and more trustworthy.

CS: And, I will add that we are having the “Summer of Peer Review” here at Writer’s Camp, with a series of 14 articles. The series launches on June 18^th and should be a great resource for potential and current peer reviewers.

CS: Okay, next question. The editorial process can be mystifying for new authors. Could you share a bit about how your editorial team functions?

RP: I do the initial review of the paper and decide whether to send it for peer review. This is mostly a review of the abstract although I will also review methods. If the paper seems a good fit and is mostly formatted well and written clearly, I will send it out to peer review. If not, I will desk reject the paper.

Wolters Kluwer contracts with a company that provides a managing editor. My current managing editor is fabulous, and we work well together. She sends the papers to peer reviewers under cover of my signature, using our extensive list of reviewers to select those with the best fit for the work. We meet weekly to discuss the current status of papers and decide how to address problems such as late peer reviews.

Once papers are reviewed, I decide if they need to be rejected, revised and resubmitted, or accepted as is. Papers sent for revise and resubmit stand a good chance of being accepted if the authors address all the reviewer comments and mine. Occasionally a paper will go back out for review; more often, I can make a decision based on author responses to the first review.

After a paper is accepted, I edit it for form, references, and some content, such as statistical copy, table format, and word use. I then send it to our contract editor who edits extensively for grammar and format and who checks every reference for accessibility. The contract editor has editing expertise, but I’m the content expert. Both of us check every single reference.

When the paper is fully edited, I send a copy to the authors to address any questions or missing information. I want to make sure we correctly edited it to the intent of their content. Our goal is that the copyedited version will only have queries related to confirmation of authorship and content ownership. Once the author has addressed my questions, the paper is sent to production for copyediting and formatting to fit the print journal. The author is required to review the copyedited version and then I do a final review: I’m the last stop before something gets published. I create the line-up for what’s going to be published in each issue based on the papers we have available in copyedited form at a certain time.

CS: What issues related to publishing are top of mind for you?

RP: Artificial intelligence (AI) tops the list right now because I recently had a few incidents of its inappropriate use. AI detection software found one of the problems after a reviewer raised concerns, and in another case we found that the papers cited in a review article were all fabricated. I think we may need to run the detection software on all submitted papers, even though it’s not foolproof. It’s aggravating because it takes time and energy to deal with these issues.

I never thought when I became editor in 2018 that I would see people having machines write papers for them. I’m surprised at how quickly use of generative AI has spread, but I’m also surprised that I’m surprised because writing is difficult for many of us. People think that they should try anything that makes the task easier. The problem is that we haven’t given enough thought as to how we can judiciously use AI as a tool in such a way that it’s doesn’t lead to false information being published. Generative AI can be used in ethical ways, for instance, to make your writing better. If you’re worried about how a paragraph reads, it’s okay to run it through an AI platform, but you still need to check that your intent wasn’t changed. But you don’t want to write a paper with AI.

Another concern is that journals specifically about nursing and nursing science don’t get the best papers. Those go to journals with higher impact factors and journals with big or famous names because that’s what is rewarded within authors’ institutions. Nursing journals are being hurt by nursing scientists who choose not to publish in journals specific to the discipline.

CS: How do you balance your work as editor and your work at The Ohio State University?

RP: My regular job is more than 40 hours per week, and I try to keep the journal work to under 20 hours per week. I usually do some journal work every day. During the week, I review abstracts because I can quickly read them. I’ll read them first thing in the morning, during lunch, or in the evening and decide which articles are going out for peer review; I handle queries on a daily basis. On weekends, I focus on making decisions as to whether to accept a paper or ask the author to revise and resubmit, and I also edit on weekends. It’s a busy schedule, but you make choices about what you want to do and then find a way to make it happen.

CS: We talked earlier about advice for authors; what would some advice for those who would like to become an editor?

RP: Before seeking an editor role, it’s also important to ask yourself if you like editing, which is a big part of the job. If the answer is yes, I suggest working on gaining experience. You can ask the editor of a journal where you have published or a journal published by an organization you belong to if you can join the editorial board. You also can ask if there are associate editor positions open and if not, express your interest in a future position.

You also can build your experience and editorial connections by offering to edit a special section for an issue or the journal or to write a regular column.

RP: I love reading all the science; we receive about 700 papers a year, and I read all the abstracts and at least parts of many papers. Of course, I read the papers we publish more than once. Reading others’ work is thrilling to me, and because the journal isn’t specialty-specific, I get to read science in a very broad way. I learn so much!

I really enjoy editing. I like moving things around, giving order to the content, and making it better for the reader. When I’m part of a writing team, I’m always the last reviewer because editing is one of my strengths.

CS: I am going to wrap this up—thank you so much, Rita, for your time and sharing your expertise. Your editorial wisdom will certainly benefit authors as they pursue their publication goals.

Author: Cynthia Saver

Reviewed and Edited by: Leslie H. Nicoll

Copyright © 2026 Writer’s Camp and Cynthia Saver. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Saver C. Shh! Editor Confidential: An interview with Rita Pickler, PhD, RN, FAAN. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2(2):9. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.20139222