Researching outside the box: Welcoming innovative qualitative inquiry to nurse education today

I would like to begin by thanking Billy Lauder for inviting me to write this editorial, following my recent appointment to the NET International Advisory Board. My first aim in what follows is to make some critical comments about trends I have seen in published qualitative research articles over the years of my involvement with NET and other mainstream international nursing journals. In this regard, I speak as a qualitative research teacher, supervisor, article and book writer, and peer reviewer and past editorial board member of journals in and beyond the discipline of nursing. On the basis of these critical comments, my second aim is to argue the need for an increase in innovative qualitative articles in NET. This will bring our journal more into line with the developing state of the art global picture of qualitative inquiry, evident in recent years in journals informing wider interdisciplinary fields in the social and human sciences and the humanities. I believe that such a broadening of scope can only enhance the status of NET as a world leader in creative nurse educational research and scholarship. In the light of these two aims, again responding to a request from Billy, I will end my editorial by describing related amendments to the journal’s article guidelines for authors on structuring innovative qualitative articles, and a corresponding increase in peer reviewers, appropriate for the task ahead.