Editor's Page

Answers to Three JOE FAQ's

JOE authors often ask me:

• "When will my article be published?"
• "What's the deadline for revising my article?"
• "Will you send me page proofs?"

My short answers are:

• "I don't know."
• "There really isn't one."
• "No."

The longer versions (the ones really I give) all have to do with the fact that JOE is a Web journal.

Because JOE is a Web journal, I can delay planning an issue until close to the "last minute." This enables me to take as much advantage as possible of article "mix."

One of the criteria I use when putting an issue together is how long an article has been in the accepted-for-publication queue, but another is serendipity. In other words, because JOE is a Web journal, I can wait for "lightning to strike." This is one of the advantages of Web publishing (at least from the publisher's perspective). I do notify authors when their articles are being published, but that happens right before the event.

So the sooner you send me your revisions, the better. You'll be in the queue, and the arrival of your article might be the serendipitous spark that causes me to see the next issue in a whole new light.

And page proofs? They're a paper-journal "ghost." Sending them delays and complicates the publishing process, and, besides, JOE is a Web journal. This means that necessary corrections can be made relatively quickly and easily after an article has been published--something you can't say about paper journals.

But realize that JOE is a journal, not a Web site. So we don't update articles or otherwise change their substance ex post facto. But we will correct mistakes that ordinarily would have been caught at a page-proof stage.

And authors do occasionally request corrections, which we make when they're justified. Fewer of them are "quibbles," though, and that's another advantage of Web publishing (at least from the editor's perspective).

June 2003 JOE

What an issue.

There's a Commentary, "On the Reporting of Response Rates in Extension Research," that all Extension researchers should read and take seriously. It was prompted by "Communicating the Handling of Nonresponse Error in Journal of Extension Research in Brief Articles," which appeared in the December 2002 JOE. These articles raise a critical issue for all of us. If you do have something to say on the subject, don't forget the JOE Discussion Forum, which you can reach at the end of the article.

I see the whole world in a blaze of Jungian dialectic, so this I/ENTJ (I'm right on the borderline on the first one) really enjoyed "Decision-Making Styles: An Exploration of Preferences of On- and Off-Campus Faculty." And I've been on enough campus-county teams to believe that the article has quite a salutary take-home message.

The last Feature, "Bibliographies as an Extension Outreach Tool: An Old Method in a New Age," and the first Tools of the Trade, "How to Create a Bibliography," are both by the same author, and both suggest that perhaps we should be working more with our librarian colleagues.

There's lots of good stuff on 4-H, too, and on technology adoption, and I could go on and on. But I won't.

Laura Hoelscher, Editor
joe-ed@joe.org