DNA Reporter

About DNA Reporter

About DNA Reporter

DNA Reporter is the official publication of the Delaware Nurses Association in the United States — the initials DNA in its title are the association's, not a reference to genetics or molecular biology — and it is the only publication for nurses in Delaware, according to the association itself. It carries the ISSN 0418-5412, appears quarterly, and is published by HealthCom Media for the Delaware Nurses Association, a constituent member association of the American Nurses Association. Since early 2024 it has appeared in a redesigned form, in print for association members and digitally through the American Nurse journal platform, where its issues are archived alongside the other state nurses association publications. Its contents are the working literature of a state nursing profession: a president's message and an executive director's report in each issue, guest-edited collections of clinical and professional articles by Delaware nurses, legal and ethical guidance, workforce and association news, and practical pieces on health, family and finance for nurses themselves. A reader who arrives at this title expecting a genetics journal — an easy mistake from the title alone — will find instead a state professional magazine-journal of real local importance, and this profile exists in part to make that identity unmistakable.

This profile is anchored to the live JournalsWorld record for the title, whose stored identifier is ISSN 0418-5412, and it is built from sources actually consulted during its preparation: the mastheads of recent issues of the magazine itself, the Delaware Nurses Association's own pages and reports, the American Nurse platform's Delaware archive, a periodical-directory description of the title, and the citation-database records held for it. Where a fact could not be confirmed from those sources — an exact current circulation, for example — this profile says so rather than repeating an old figure as if it were current. The magazine's own current masthead and the association's website are the final authority for its present officers, editors and submission contacts.

The title explained

The Delaware Nurses Association is routinely shortened to DNA by its members, and its publication is therefore the DNA Reporter — in full, the Delaware Nurses Association Reporter, as one periodical directory expands the title. The masthead statement printed in recent issues settles the matter in the magazine's own words: DNA Reporter, ISSN 0418-5412, is published quarterly by HealthCom Media for the Delaware Nurses Association, a constituent member association of the American Nurses Association. Any catalogue, database or reading list that files this ISSN under biochemistry or genetics is in error, and the error matters practically: a Delaware nurse searching for her own association's magazine, a nursing student citing a Delaware practice article, or a librarian maintaining a state nursing collection all need the record that this profile gives. Conversely, researchers in genetics who encounter the title in a citation database should understand that the low citation figures attached to it, discussed below, belong to a professional association magazine that citation systems have gathered under a misleading title, not to a failed science journal.

The classification data held for the title illustrates the confusion and its limits. Directory and ranking sources place the title in a nursing category — the SCImago-derived data behind the older JournalsWorld record assigned it to the LPN and LVN category, meaning licensed practical and vocational nursing, with a best quartile of Q4 — which is at least the right profession, even if a state association magazine sits awkwardly in a ranking built for research journals. Its coverage in that underlying source ran from 2006 to 2023. The magazine itself, however, is older and longer-lived than any database window: the association states that the DNA Reporter started in the 1950s and remains the only publication for nurses in Delaware, and an older issue statement shows it appearing in February, May, August and November under a previous publisher. Database coverage dates describe when a database gathered the title, not when the magazine lived, and the association's own history is the better guide to its lifespan.

Publisher history

Recent issues are published by HealthCom Media of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, whose masthead block in the magazine gives its address, its group publisher and publishing-services staff, and its advertising contact, and names HealthCom Media as publisher for the Delaware Nurses Association. The association's own writing about the change is unusually candid and is worth summarising because it shows how a small association magazine survives. Announcing the new look in the first issue of 2024 (volume 49, number 1), the association told members that even as printing and distribution prices rose, it was committed — with a supporting publisher — to keeping the mailed print magazine as a members' benefit, while digital readers would find the magazine in its new home on the American Nurse platform. It described the move, which took effect at the start of 2024 after the association's 2023 membership assembly had been told that the previous arrangement would end on 1 January 2024, as a necessary evolution to keep bringing Delaware nurses the latest work, news and information on Delaware nursing and healthcare.

Before HealthCom Media, the magazine was produced for the association by the Arthur L. Davis Publishing Agency — named in an older issue statement as publisher for the association, and referred to in the association's 2023 report under its later Health eCareers identity — from Cedar Falls, Iowa, in its periodical-directory listing, which also named the magazine's sponsor as the Delaware Nurses Association and described its readership and purpose. That directory description, from the 2013 edition of a standard periodical directory, said the title serves all licensed nurses in Delaware, including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and undergraduate and advanced-degree student nurses, and relays vital information on nursing practice requirements, board actions and other news. The publisher has changed, the months of appearance have shifted — recent mastheads give March, June, September and December — and the design has been renewed, but the function described in 2013 is the function the magazine still performs: it is the Delaware profession's own channel to itself.

The association behind the magazine

The Delaware Nurses Association describes itself, on the American Nurse platform, as the oldest, largest and most inclusive professional association for all of Delaware's nurses, with the mission to strengthen the nursing profession, a vision of shaping the future of healthcare through innovations in nursing, and values of innovation, belonging, advocacy and excellence. Its executive director in recent issues is Christopher E. Otto, and its recent presidents writing in the magazine include Stephanie McClellan, with the association's board, committee chairs and organisational affiliates — among them the Delaware Emergency Nurses Association, the state affiliate of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, the Delaware Coalition of Nurse Practitioners and the Delaware Association of Nurse Anesthetists — listed in its pages. The magazine is one instrument of that association's stated aims: its committee description says the DNA Reporter is published quarterly with the mission of publishing periodicals and communications that support the profession of nursing and the goals of DNA, creating and sustaining a standard of excellence in promoting ongoing nursing education through articles that touch on the diversity and complexity of the profession, and expanding the resource base through subscription promotion and advertising revenue that support the magazine and promote membership.

That mission explains the magazine's editorial mixture better than any table of contents can. A state association magazine must simultaneously educate, advocate, report the association's own business, honour its members and hold a geographically small profession together as a community. Delaware is one of the smallest American states, and its nursing workforce is correspondingly knowable: the magazine's articles are written by named Delaware nurses about Delaware hospitals, Delaware law, Delaware schools of nursing and Delaware patients, for readers who may know the author, the unit or the legislator involved. That local density is the magazine's distinction and its limitation at once — it is indispensable inside its community and of mainly reference interest outside it — and a fair profile should state both halves of that truth.

What an issue contains

A recent issue, as its archive on the American Nurse platform shows, opens with the association's own voices: a president's message or report and an executive director's report, setting out the association's work, its strategic direction and its view of the Delaware healthcare scene. A guest editor's introduction then frames the issue's gathered articles — one recent guest-edited issue took legal and ethical dimensions of nursing work as its theme — and the articles themselves range across the profession's real concerns. Titles visible in the Delaware archive include work on hemiplegic migraines and the importance of awareness, hospital-at-home programmes and innovations in transitions of care, the evolution of rehabilitation nursing, school nurses as advocates for students with disabilities, myths and challenges of private duty nursing, legal considerations for certified registered nurse anesthetists in Delaware, advice for the sandwich generation caring for children and parents at once, nurse wellbeing and the cost of caring, and the experience of becoming a licensed practical nurse. Alongside the clinical and professional pieces sit association reports, leadership-summit accounts, award and nomination news, and practical personal-finance columns written for nurses.

Three qualities of that contents list matter to a prospective contributor or reader. First, the clinical range is the range of Delaware practice itself — hospital, school, home, community and advanced practice — rather than a single specialty, so a well-grounded article from any Delaware practice setting is a plausible contribution. Second, the legal, ethical and workforce material is Delaware-specific where the law is Delaware law, which makes the magazine genuinely useful to its readers in a way a national journal cannot be, and correspondingly dated when the law changes; readers using back issues for legal guidance should verify the current position. Third, the magazine deliberately makes room for nurses' own experience and wellbeing — first-person accounts of shifts, careers and caring costs appear beside the clinical guidance — which reflects the association's stated aim of cocreating holistic approaches to nurse wellbeing and marks the title as a professional community's magazine, not merely a technical bulletin.

How to write for the magazine

The association invites contributions in terms that are encouragingly direct. In its announcement of the new publisher it told readers to consider writing for the DNA Reporter, said that DNA accepts unsolicited manuscripts for consideration, and added that it will work with a writer to develop articles and mentor them as a future guest editor, giving the association's contact address for the purpose. That invitation — unsolicited work welcomed, editorial mentoring offered, guest editorship treated as a role a member can grow into — is the magazine's stated route in, and it is a notably open one for a first-time author. The detailed current mechanics — manuscript length, format, image requirements, deadlines for each quarterly issue and the present contact for submissions — are set by the association and its publisher for each volume and were not fully stated in the sources consulted for this profile, so they are recorded as could not be verified in detail here; the association's website and the magazine's current masthead are where a contributor should confirm them before sending work.

The writing advice that follows from the magazine's own contents is practical. Write for Delaware nurses, in the first instance: name the Delaware setting, law, programme or institution where it is the point, and do not send a generic article that could run unchanged in any state. Keep the piece usable — a clinical article should leave a practising nurse with something to do, check or teach — and keep it honest about evidence and experience, distinguishing what a guideline says from what one unit found. Respect the magazine's blend of registers by writing clearly enough for a student nurse and precisely enough for an advanced practitioner, since the association's own readership statement spans both. Take up the mentoring the association offers: a short enquiry describing the proposed article will usually serve a new writer better than a finished manuscript sent cold, and the guest-editor pathway is a real opportunity for a nurse who wants editorial experience inside her own profession. Finally, remember that the magazine is a members' publication with a community's memory: accuracy about Delaware people, titles and institutions will be noticed, in both directions.

Metrics, indexing and how to read them

The citation record for this title is small, and this profile reports it without dressing it up. The directory data previously held for the title recorded an h-index of 2 and a best quartile of Q4 in its LPN and LVN category, with coverage from 2006 to 2023 in its underlying source, and ranking summaries derived from the same data give a SCImago Journal Rank of 0.101 for the title. OpenAlex's source record, resolved through ISSN 0418-5412 for this profile (source S4393915234), recorded no works and no citations under the source at the time of checking, with summary statistics at zero — a result that says more about how citation databases gather a state association magazine, under a title that invites misclassification, than about whether Delaware nurses read and use it. No impact factor is claimed, and no DOAJ listing is claimed: the magazine is a subscription and membership publication rather than an open access research journal, and the DOAJ search service in any case returned a server error when consulted during preparation, so its listing status is recorded as could not be verified.

The right measures for this magazine are the ones its own association uses: whether members receive it, read it and write for it; whether it carries the profession's Delaware news, practice requirements and board actions to every licensed nurse it aims to serve; and whether it sustains the education and advocacy aims its committee states. An older directory listing gave a circulation figure of 12,000 for the title in its Arthur L. Davis period; that figure is reported here as a historical directory statement, not as a current circulation, which could not be verified during preparation and should not be quoted as present fact. A nursing leader citing this magazine's reach should say that it is the Delaware association's official quarterly, distributed in print to members and digitally on the American Nurse platform — claims the sources support — rather than quoting a decade-old circulation number. Judged on its own terms, as the only publication for nurses in its state, continuously published since the 1950s and renewed with a new publisher and design in 2024, the magazine's standing inside its community is clear and does not need borrowed metrics.

Similar publications

The honest comparison set for DNA Reporter is not the research-journal shelf but the family of American state nurses association publications, a number of which now share the American Nurse platform with it, each serving its own state's profession with the same mixture of association news, practice guidance and member writing. Nationally, American Nurse Journal, the official journal of the American Nurses Association, serves the whole country's nurses at a scale a state magazine does not attempt. Within Delaware, there is by the association's own account no rival: it is the state's only nursing publication. A Delaware nurse choosing where to place a piece should therefore ask a practical question — does this belong in the state conversation, where colleagues and policymakers in Delaware will read it in context, or in a national or specialty journal, where it must compete on evidence and generality — and a piece can sometimes live in both worlds in different forms, provided each editor knows what has appeared where. What no other title offers is this magazine's exact combination: Delaware law and practice, Delaware bylines, and the association's own imprimatur, delivered to the state's nurses every quarter.

Frequently asked questions

What does DNA stand for in DNA Reporter? Delaware Nurses Association. The magazine is that association's official publication, not a genetics journal.

What is its ISSN? 0418-5412, printed in the magazine's own masthead statement and held on the JournalsWorld record.

Who publishes it? HealthCom Media, for the Delaware Nurses Association, since the start of 2024. It was previously produced for the association by the Arthur L. Davis Publishing Agency.

How often does it appear? Quarterly. Recent mastheads give March, June, September and December; an older statement gave February, May, August and November.

How long has it been published? The association states that the DNA Reporter started in the 1950s and remains the only publication for nurses in Delaware. Database coverage windows are shorter and describe indexing, not the magazine's life.

Who reads it? Delaware's licensed nurses — registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and student nurses — as the periodical-directory description of its readership states, with print distribution to association members and digital access through the American Nurse platform.

Can I write for it? The association says it accepts unsolicited manuscripts, will help develop articles, and mentors future guest editors. Confirm current requirements and contacts through the association before submitting; detailed current mechanics could not be verified during preparation.

What are its metrics? Directory data recorded an h-index of 2, a Q4 placement in a practical-nursing category and an SJR of 0.101 from its underlying source; OpenAlex recorded no works under its source at checking time. Those figures measure citation-database gathering of a state association magazine and should not be read as a measure of its value to Delaware nurses.

Is it open access? It is a membership and subscription publication with a digital edition on the American Nurse platform. A DOAJ listing could not be verified during preparation, and no open access claim is made.

Sources and verification note

Sources consulted for this profile: masthead statements in recent issues of the magazine (ISSN, quarterly schedule, HealthCom Media as publisher for the Delaware Nurses Association, association officers and affiliates); the Delaware Nurses Association's own announcement of its 2024 publisher change and its committee and assembly materials (history since the 1950s, only-publication claim, mission, unsolicited-manuscript invitation, previous publisher's departure date); the American Nurse platform's Delaware pages (association mission and values, issue archive and article titles); a standard periodical directory description (title expansion, readership, earlier publisher and historical circulation, reported as historical); ranking summaries derived from SCImago data (category, quartile, SJR); and the OpenAlex source record resolved through ISSN 0418-5412 (source S4393915234, zero recorded works at checking time). The DOAJ search service returned a server error during preparation, so its listing status is recorded as could not be verified. Current circulation and detailed current submission mechanics are recorded as could not be verified where the sources consulted did not confirm them.