Editorial.

As of 2010, International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being (QHW) has made a move forward and will be published under the Open Access model. This means that all articles published in the journal will be freely accessible online immediately after they have been accepted for publication and can thereafter be linked, read, downloaded, stored, printed, used, and data-mined by anybody with a computer and access to the internet.

Open Access serves the interests of all: authors, readers, teachers, students, libraries, universities, funding agencies, and ultimately policy-makers and citizens. It drastically increases the visibility of individual authors' work; key resources are equally accessible to rich and poor, thus closing the digital divide; the mission of universities to disseminate and share knowledge is facilitated, and funders—public as well as private—are given return on investment. With a journal engaged in disseminating information on such an important global issue as people's health and well-being, can we afford not to offer Open Access?

In the process of transitioning QHW to Open Access we have also changed publisher. Co-Action Publishing is a relatively new but growing publisher based in Scandinavia and one of only a handful of publishing houses worldwide offering a true Open Access publishing model for scholarly journals. The content of a journal such as QHW begs for Open Access, and it was therefore only natural that we should team up with Co-Action Publishing to ensure a great impact for the journal in years to come.

In making this change, we also want to strengthen the quality of research efforts. From the very beginning, the aim of QHW was to contribute to the body of knowledge within the area of health research. We are interested in new knowledge that illuminates the still dark aspects of health and well-being, and at the same time we want to further develop the methodological underpinnings, with the goal of stronger and more valid results. Consequently, for the new beginning of the journal we ask for more methodological awareness and invite authors to submit papers that mirror this interest for publication.

The personal and the essential in qualitative research

One kind of well-written research paper in this journal has a certain sensibility: moral concern for the person; awareness of the intrinsic correspondence of the person and their lived world (which is precisely their world); a focus, then, on the meaning of the situation for the person. For example, it is meaningful and informative for professional carers to be touched by descriptions of how it can be for a person to strive for health and well-being in the midst of illness and in daily life. As readers, we will be helped to come to an empathic understanding of the kind of person-in-situation which the paper presents. We will be enriched in the range of our human grasp—for, having read that paper, we can now to some extent enter the different world which has been opened up for us. Let us call this valuable characteristic of a good paper an “idiographic sensibility”—opening up the situation of the individual person for readers.

However, another sort of well-written research paper in this journal has another specific sensibility: a concern for the phenomenon, e.g., health and well-being. As an example: in phenomenological research the aim can be to describe a phenomenon at a more abstract and general level. Beyond describing a certain phenomenon “in its appearing,” the German philosopher Edmund Husserl wished to give an account of its essential features. In brief, if we are to describe a phenomenon such as health, the paper must reveal the meaning structure that is essential for this very phenomenon and distinguishes it from other phenomena such as happiness and joy. Let us call this valuable characteristic of a good paper a “meaning structure sensibility”—opening up an opportunity for generalizability and a both deepened and widened understanding of a phenomenon. We can see the same effort in hermeneutic research that describes a “main interpretation” or in Grounded Theory that describes a “core category.”

In studies of health and well-being, then, we could very well prefer researchers to be phenomenon oriented (i.e., focused on the essence, etc. of the phenomenon) rather than person oriented (i.e., focused on the idiographic). There is a big risk if we are captivated by the various individual experiences which are reported, especially the hard or otherwise extreme ones; that is, if we are too subject oriented. A key thing then is to move from the nuances of personal experiences to the essential features of the phenomenon—to be phenomenon oriented. However, such a move does not mean that we leave the personal and contextual meanings behind. The opposite is the case: the moral concern for the person is still valid. Even in inquiry aimed at essences it is the obligation of the researcher to illuminate the variations that are the foundation of the meaning structure.

We need to note that, when another great German philosopher, Martin Heidegger drew together, with almost inconceivable creativity, Husserl and the Scandinavian philosopher Sören Kierkegaard, he was attempting to ally two writers at almost opposite intellectual poles. Husserl is the seeker after rigor and conceptual foundations; Kierkegaard is the early advocate of an anti-foundational (almost postmodern) position, a thoroughgoing existentialist. And, we argue, this tension in phenomenology can be seen in most good qualitative research. Researchers must balance the temptation to be too subjective (too involved in the particularities to see patterns of meaning, and thus fail to get to grips with the phenomenon) with the temptation to be too abstract and general in their descriptions, arriving at accounts of the phenomena which certainly fit all—but at the same time nobody in particular: they are missing the personal and contextual nuances.

How is human being and its phenomena of health and well-being to be investigated? As we see it, it is best done by being focused upon the embedded meanings, the characteristics of being that are not easily seen and grasped, that are lived by the persons and, consequently, must be conveyed by them. It means taking due account of the importance of language, and the collective, historical, cultural position of the individual person as well as of the phenomenon is to be regarded as of great weight.

The focus of qualitative research in the human sciences, whether the mode of access is phenomenological, hermeneutical, Grounded Theory or some other approach, is on lived experience, and the attempt to describe some particular features of it to the scientific community in a clear way that will inform understanding. It describes a certain lifeworld or some phenomenon as it is found within the lifeworld. Methodologically, the concern with experience in the sense of the description of things, in their manner of appearing to the persons, remains central to qualitative research. Readers of QHW will look for both illuminating insight into the lived experience of human beings and—based on such examples—the unfolding of the essential features or theoretical abstractions of phenomena and their embedded meanings, which are of importance in our professional and research concern with health and well-being.

We encourage researchers to submit papers that meet these criteria. We welcome papers that pay due respect to the ambiguity of the lifeworld, as well as describe phenomena on an enough abstract level for the results to be applicated to other people and contexts than the original. We are looking forward to receiving papers that are mirroring a high level of methodological awareness. We are especially looking forward to receiving papers that reveal something new about health and well-being.

For the new beginning

We welcome submissions of well-written and well-supported studies. Good qualitative studies based on empirical data have great meaning to our readers because they fit the action scene and are practically applicable. However, a good paper does not contribute to the field at large by being published, only. The most recognition is rather achieved by being subsequently referred to, used and footnoted. This fact is worth considering—the noted take the cake. Accordingly, do not forget always refer to good papers published (online) in the QHW and other journals. Open Access publishing gives research results a rapid global visibility and “impact.” Thereby the possibility increases for QHW—authors “to take the cake” by frequently being referred to.