Opportunity to Contribute to Public Administration Review

Post written in collaboration with Ron Sanders, Associate Editor for Practically Speaking

The IBM Center for the Business of Government focuses on improving the effectiveness of the public sector and public service, and to that end, we are pleased to announce a new partnership with the American Society for Public Administration’s prestigious peer-reviewed journal, Public Administration Review (PAR).   

Published bi-monthly, PAR was established in 1940 and is one of the top-rated journals in the field. PAR’s new co-editors-in-chief (Dr. Jos Raadschelders from the Ohio State University and Dr. Katherine Willoughby from the University of Georgia) have established a new section of the journal entitled “Practically Speaking,” to be coordinated by Associate Editor Ron Sanders, a long-time government leader and academic expert.

Practically Speaking (PS) intends to attract more practitioners and “pracademics” (i.e., scholars with practical as well as academic experience) to PAR’s readership.  PAR is especially interested in peer-reviewed reports, policy papers, and other grant-funded works by or for practitioners. Accordingly, as a cornerstone of the IBM Center-PAR collaboration, we will disseminate and publicize each other’s written products—so look for excerpts from PAR issues in this space, with PAR in turn informing its subscribers about relevant IBM Center content. 

In addition, PAR has provided two other ways for IBM contributors to participate in its scholarly endeavors and make a difference in public administration.

First, practitioners can serve as peer reviewers of PS articles. To date, such reviews (all anonymous) have concentrated on the scholarly aspects of a particular piece of research—for example, the efficacy of its research hypothesis, survey sample size, or statistical tests—but less so on more practical implications. PAR authors would benefit from more perspectives that offer a more practical point of view.  Anyone interested in becoming a reviewer can follow the step-by-step sign-up instructions attached to this blog post and sign up.

Second, look for opportunities to collaborate on an article for PS with one or more fellow academics and/or practitioners. Practitioner-academic collaborations, in the form of co-authored articles, represent a key requirement for PAR PS publication, along with an Executive Summary of the article of no more than 1200 words that tells practitioners why they should read the article. Many (if not most) Center publications would qualify since we now offer a peer review element of our publication process.

Interested in learning more? Sign up now!