If promises filled column inches, you would have seen this issue four months ago, when it was originally scheduled
| Author | Doug Fraser |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X0100100201 |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Evaluation Journal of Australasia, Vol. 1 (new series), No. 2, December 2001
2
EDITORIAL
Sadly, precious few of those promises turned into copy. It has taken us this long to get enough
together to fill an issue which I hope most of you will consider worth reading.
No one knows better than I just how hard it is to get down to actually writing that article you
have in the back of your mind. All the same, unless you, our readers, supply us with material,
this journal will die before it is even properly born. We know there are plenty of you out there
who have good ideas, and can write well; but so far, it seems that too many of you are still
saving your efforts for overseas publications. Please, support your local product – your own
membership fees go into supporting it, after all!
On the other hand, when it comes to refereed publication, we do ask you to remember that
there is a difference between writing for a panel of thesis examiners and writing for a non-
academic audience who are not being paid to read your work. What satisfies one purpose
will not necessarily come anywhere near satisfying the other. The latter purpose is ours.
It is an occupational hazard of running refereed articles that one often finds oneself the object
of journal-shopping by purveyors of utterly unmeritorious work who imagine they can run
up academic brownie points without actually earning them. There are many legitimate uses
for refereed publication, but this is not one of them. Both of us are trying to edit this journal
as a sideline to very full-time jobs; so, for the most part, are our reviewers. So with the best
will in the world, we have only so much time that we can spend on articles which are pedestrian,
unreadable, or just plain bad scholarship.
The kind of submissions that have provoked this reflection will, God willing, never see the
light of day in any respectable publication. Anything we have run as a refereed article so far,
we have run as such because it is good. But perhaps it is time to let it be known publicly that
we are indeed choosy about what we accept for refereed publication, and will become more
so in future. From now on, we would like refereed publication in EJA to be seen as a mark of
real distinction – not just evidence of really good scholarship, but acknowledgment that the
author has made genuinely new contributions to the field, and has expressed them in a way
that will actively engage the interest of our diverse range of readers.
Naturally, this has a converse – if your submission is turned down for refereed publication,
that should not be seen as a slight, since the decision may very well reflect the subject matter,
not the quality. There is nothing to be ashamed of in publishing unrefereed in this journal. On
the whole, indeed, we have so far found that the unrefereed submissions have been far more
in the vein of what we believe our readers are looking for.
Moral (or plea): unless you feel your article is a real landmark, you should consider unrefereed
publication as your first option. We are genuinely anxious to help first-time authors get into
print, and will take great pains to help you get your material into a suitable form for publication;
but authors of refereed articles ought, by definition, to be past needing that kind of help.
Enough grizzles for one issue. Meanwhile, what have we got for you this time?
Perhaps as a reflection on the relatively limited number of submissions from Australia and
New Zealand, this issue has a distinctly international flavour to it. Well, let’s be honest –
American, though one of our articles comes from Germany, and one of our ‘American’ articles
is actually from an international organisation based there. This is not necessarily in conflict
with our editorial philosophy. In the long run, AES members who publish here will gain more
If promises filled column inches,
you would have seen this issue
four months ago, when it was
originally scheduled.
EDITORIAL
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