JPART

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

A Request for Proposals for Editor of the
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
November 2022

The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART) seeks to advance public administration scholarship by publishing the highest quality theoretical and empirical work in the field. The journal is multidisciplinary and includes within its scope organizational, administrative, managerial, and policy-based research that improves our understanding of the public sector. JPART is committed to developing diverse and rigorous research that extends and builds public administration theory.

JPART is one of the top-ranked journals in the category of Public Administration with a 5-year Impact Factor of 7.701 according to the 2021 Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate Analytics, 2022).

JPART is one of two official journals of the Public Management Research Association. Please visit the PRMA website for more information at www.pmranet.org.

The term of service for the editor typically is five years in duration. The next editor will formally take over in August 2023, with a transition process that will begin several months prior. We welcome proposals from individuals who are interested in the role, and the chairs or deans in the academic units that would sponsor the journal. Proposals for a shorter term of three or four years will be considered, as will proposals that include a team of editors.

The Role of the Editor

The editor of JPART is expected to be an established scholar in the field. Given the wide range of articles included in the journal, the editor should be someone who understands the breadth of the public administration field and is conversant and knowledgeable about the diverse scholars and methodological approaches in the public administration community. In addition, the editor is expected to be responsive to the individuals who submit manuscripts to the journal and able to provide constructive feedback to those individuals. JPART received 573 submissions in 2021, 612 in 2020. The desk reject rate is around 60% and acceptance around 9%. The current team’s average processing times for first decisions are: desk rejects, 2 days; rejections, 62 days; return for revisions, 72 days.

The Editor is responsible for the organization, operation and management of all aspects of the receipt of manuscripts submitted to JPART, which includes the selection of reviewers, the evaluation of reviews, and intermediate and final manuscript selection or rejection. In these duties, the Editor position is autonomous, not supervised by PMRA leadership.

The Editor is supported by a team of Associate Editors or Co-Editors of their choice, appointed solely by the editor, whose primary role is to share the editorial workload by taking editorial duties on a portion of submitted articles as identified by the Editor. In practice, recent JPART Editors have employed 4-6 Associate or Co-Editors to ensure breadth of expertise. The Editor has traditionally worked with co-editors in determining whether manuscripts will be reviewed, the choice of reviewers, the publication decision, and the writing of letters to authors explaining why a manuscript was accepted or rejected.

The Editor is responsible for appointments to the Board of Editors. The editor organizes each issue, including the order of articles, the number of articles included, and all other aspects of issue production. The Editor acts as a liaison between JPART and Oxford University Press. The Editor is the liaison between JPART and PMRA members, and the Director of the PMRA Secretariat who manages the JPART subscription list. The Editor is responsible for managing social media accounts and developing Virtual Issues for JPART.

The Editor reports to the PMRA Board annually about the state of the journal. The Editor is also an ex-officio member of the PMRA Board. The JPART Editor also coordinates as needed with the Editor of PMRA’s other journal, Perspectives on Public Management & Governance (PPMG).

Criteria for Selection

There are a range of criteria that will be used to assess proposals:

Timeline

Proposals

Proposals should be sent electronically to the Chair of the JPART editor selection committee, Stephanie Moulton (moulton.23@osu.edu ) and Leisha DeHart Davis, President of PMRA (ldehart@sog.unc.edu).

Committee members in addition to Stephanie Moulton are: Lotte Bøgh Andersen (Lotte@ps.au.dk); Mary Feeney (mkfeeney@asu.edu); Elizabeth Linos (elizabeth_linos@hks.harvard.edu); Janine O’Flynn (janine.oflynn@unimelb.edu.au); David Suarez (dsuarez@uw.edu); and Bradley Wright (bew@uga.edu).

 

Questions?

The following individuals have volunteered to talk with anyone contemplating applying
for the editor position:

In particular, we recommend talking with Mary Feeney, who has the most current understanding of the editorial tasks and load of the position.

The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART) was established in 1990 to serve as a bridge between public administration and public management scholarship on the one hand, and public policy scholarship on the other. Its multidisciplinary aim is to embrace the organizational, administrative, and policy sciences as they apply to government and governance in the United States and abroad. The journal is committed to diverse and rigorous scholarship and serves as an outlet for the best conceptual and theory-based empirical work in the field. JPART is the top journal in the category of Public Administration with a five-year Impact Factor of 3.574 according to the 2015 Journal Citation Reports. Information for authors can be found here.

What is JPART’s theoretical and methodological orientation? What kinds of topics should I expect to see covered?

The journal is committed to theoretical and empirical scholarship and serves as an outlet for the best theoretical and research work in the field. It works to further the application of vigorous empirical testing of theoretical questions and the theoretical questioning of research findings and seeks to focus theory through research. It seeks the development of relevant theory and aims to be theoretically inclusive.

The journal accepts the full range of rigorous empirical methods practiced in the social sciences – including field-based observation, “thick description,” case analysis, surveys, experimentation, historical analysis, economic analysis, and policy analysis.

JPART also publishes research syntheses, bringing together and summarizing a field or body of research, particularly where this identifies gaps in our knowledge, points out theoretical issues or problems, or provides a framework for future research.

The journal’s scope includes, but is not limited to, the following areas: bureaucracies, decision theory, public choice theory, population ecology, social equity, power, group theory, motivation, garbage can theories, legitimacy, citizenship, contingency theory, action theory, systems theory, productivity, implementation, role theory, communication, management or administration, representation, federalism, legislative-administrative relations, ethics, comparative administration, public administration and culture, elected executive-administrative relations, professionalism, theories of the state, and development administration.

Does your Library subscribe to the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory?

Visit the online library recommendation form at http://www.oxford journals.org/help/library_recommendation.html. Once you have completed the form, it will automatically be forwarded to your librarian.

Advance Access

Advance Access enables you to view and cite papers online soon after they have been accepted for publication and well ahead of their appearance in the printed journal. New papers are put into Advance Access at regular intervals and are then taken off the Advance Access page once they have been copyedited, formatted, and paginated, at which point the issue into which they are incorporated will be posted online. It is therefore possible for the Advance Access page to be empty if all the available papers have just been incorporated into an issue. Current Advance Access articles can be viewed at http://jpart. oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent.

For more information about Advance Access, including information on how to cite papers that appear in Advance Access, visit http://jpart.oxford journals.org/papfaq.

Free Alerting Service

Would you like to receive the table of contents of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory directly to your e-mail box as soon as they are published? Simply visit Oxford University Press and follow the instructions to register for this FREE service.

For more information about JPART (i.e. past and future articles, abstracting and indexing services covered by JPART), please visit Oxford University Press online, or to view the current issue of JPART, click here.