Dear Research_Practice Members,

It is about time to discuss the status of JRP. Before doing that, I
would like to thank Ken (Professor Ken Friedman) for giving us five
excellent articles on the topic of reviewing journal submissions. I
personally benefited from reading all the articles, especially
Holbrook (1986) and Lee (1995). Reviewing is a task we (researchers)
undertake quite frequently. There are many simple ways for making
this task enjoyable and mutually enriching for everyone involved in
it. Besides, the review process is also a test of whether a group of
researchers can work together in the roles of author, editor, and
reviewer, to produce a meaningful outcome, without destroying each
other. This calls for sensitivity. The articles also had a number of
useful tips for editors to facilitate the desired type of cooperation
in the review process. [Ken's mail can be found on the Web at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Research_Practice/message/62 ]

Coming back to JRP: It seems, Sage will not make any public
announcments until we have the tentative contents ready for the first
two/three issues. Let me present the status of the inaugural issue
contents:

JRP Inaugural Issue (likely contents)

** Invited papers

* Invited papers (not submitted, but on schedule)
On the experience of being a social scientist
On the relevance of science
On the problems of research

* Invited papers (not submitted, no information yet)
On the emergence of new fields of research

** Other papers:

On technology adoption (under review)
On innovative data collection (not submitted, but on schedule)
On research education (not submitted, but on schedule)
On the research process (not submitted, but on schedule)
On reflective practice in education (not submitted, but on schedule)

** Research Design
On action research (not submitted, but on schedule)
[Need more proposals under this category. As per our original
thinking, we expect doctoral students in their thesis stage, to
contribute to this column. Others are also welcome.]

** Provocative Ideas
On ancient traditions (under review)
On governance thinking (not submitted)
[Need more proposals under this category too.]

** Book Reviews
One book review available (on leadership research)
One promised (on action learning)
[Need several more reviews of books related to doing research in
different domains; I seek everyone's help in this.]

Possible Special Issue

Interestingly, there was a request from Dr Gabriele Bammer (homepage:
http://nceph.anu.edu.au/Staff_Students/staff_pages/bammer.php ) to
publish in a special issue of JRP, a selected set of papers from a
symposium. The symposium dealt with various research issues in
dealing with the problems of natural resource management. The papers
she has selected are:

1. Historical perspectives on integrating social science in natural
resource management agencies (Roughley and Salt)
2. Solving problems in Australia's premier research organisation:
recent alternatives to disciplinary approaches (Syme)
3. Strategic integration: interdisciplinary research in context (van
Kerkhoff)
4. Lessons from interdisciplinary and policy-oriented research, and
post-graduate training at Australia's national university (Wasson and
Dovers)
5. Alternative knowledge systems: what natural resource management
can learn from Indigenous Australians (Fisher and Watts)
6. Integration across disciplines in the Living Murray: the past and
the future (White and Ryan)
7. Interdisciplinary research: ecosystem services (Cork and Proctor)
8. Integrative interdisciplinary research for novel (but real)
landscape futures (Brunckhorst)
9. Integrated assessment and modelling (Jakeman and Letcher)

Dr Bammer is currently working out the modalities concerning time
frame, review process, etc. We should hear from her soon.

Finally...

The outlook is good, but a lot needs to be done to make JRP the
researcher's companion worldwide. I expect everyone on this list to
play an active role in it. Currently, the most important thing,
however, is to generate high-quality manuscripts by spreading the
word about JRP around.

Please feel free to forward this mail to anyone who might be
interested in JRP.

Yours sincerely,

DP

DP Dash, Editor
--
Journal of Research Practice (Sage Publications)
http://home.ximb.ac.in/~dpdash/JRP.htm
Editors: DP Dash; HR Ponce