Upcoming Special Issue – Oct-Dec 2025!

Advances in Nursing Science is pleased to announce an upcoming special issue that invites a conversation between the past and future of nursing science. Issue 48(4) will bring together contributions from members of the ANS advisory board, offering fresh perspectives on seminal articles and influential ideas that have shaped the field over the past five decades.

This issue is anchored by two themes, “What is Nursing Science?” and “Social Justice and Nursing Science,” and will revisit articles that examine social, political, ontological and epistemological questions at the heart of the discipline. These articles ask how nurses understand their roles in a changing world, and how our core commitments, knowledge and capacity to effect change continue to evolve.

Even as the political, social and scientific landscapes continue to shift, the questions that shaped the field’s early development remain deeply relevant, calling for renewed reflection.

While reviewing the journal’s archives in preparation for this issue, we came across an unpublished editorial by founding Editor (now Emerita) Dr. Peggy Chinn. Written more than a decade ago, it reads as if it could have been written today:

“As a discipline, we stand in a particularly key place and time to focus on scholarship that is both high in scientific merit and creative – worldwide there are major changes underway in healthcare systems, and the boundaries of science are expanding like never before. Nurses have a long and valuable tradition of challenging the status quo in our quest for better care for those we serve, and in our quest for a more inclusive and wholistic approach to human health and illness.”

Times change, but the heart of nursing science endures. We look forward to sharing this special issue with you.