Editorial
| Author | John Godard |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12274 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12274
55:4 December 2017 0007–1080 p. 687
Editorial
Dear readers,
This will be the final issue of the journal under my editorship. I am happy
to report that John Heywood, from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,
is my successor. John is no doubt known to many of you. He has published
extensively on an array of IR-related topics, and a number of his papers have
in fact appeared in the BJIR. His work has been of consistently high quality,
making him ideally suited for the editorship of a leading journal. John is
also the Director of the Human Resources and Labor Relations Program at
Milwaukee and has done a significant amount of work in countries other
than the United States, making him particularly suited to the editorship of
the BJIR.
John is taking over at a time when the journal is in surprisingly good shape
given the challenges facing industrial relations journals in this era and the
uncertainties the BJIR in particular has faced over the past number of years.
Our regular submission rate has remained steady and we have five special
issues at various stagesof development. I am never sure how much they should
matter, but our metrics have actually improved in recent years and compare
quite favourably to those of our main competitors. We are always looking for
more high-quality submissions, but our special issues should help to address
this.
The journal’s current health is attributable in considerable measure to our
editorial team. During the course of my tenure, I have had the good fortune
of working with very high-quality scholars, who have not just excelled in
performing their editorial duties (albeit with the occasional prodding), but
also helped to elevate the journal’s status and attractiveness to authors. I
also had the (unintended) good fortune of a lengthy backlog when I began.
This made it possible to be more discriminating than otherwise in the review
process, and to be able to organize each issue thematically, lending some sense
of coherence to what we publish.
Editing an industrial relations journal in today’s environmentis not an easy
job, and the journal is certainly not lacking in ongoing challenges. Broader
developments in the journal publishing business (and, especially, at Wiley)
make for considerable uncertainty over the near as well as distant future, as
do ongoing changes in the academic world and hence in the types of papers
the journal receives. So I am happy to be getting out while the getting is
still good. But after five years of doing this job, the thing that I have been
worrying about most has been ensuring that, whenI leave, the journal will be
in good hands as well as good shape. It will be.
JOHN GODARD
University of Manitoba
C
2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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