Editor's Page

JOE Is Here to Stay: A Citation Corollary

In my August-issue "Editor's Page," I quoted our policy statement on the permanence and continued availability of JOE:

The Journal of Extension is a professional, refereed journal, and, as such, its back issues are preserved in their entirety. The intent of Extension Journal, Inc. is to maintain all issues of the Journal of Extension in a readily available form. Multiple archives are maintained to ensure content security, information integrity, and long-term access.

As I said in August, this is information many of you will need to include with your P&T materials. It's also information that influences JOE style for JOE citations. What do I mean?

First, JOE has made a commitment to permanence. Again as I said in August, JOE is a "'real' journal, as real as it was when it was published on paper and as real as any other peer-reviewed, refereed journal." It isn't a Web site, and it differs from the sometimes fugitive material found on the Web.

Thus, JOE citation style for JOE articles is not the common "Retrieved (date) from (URL)" style. Instead, this is how JOE articles should be cited in JOE:

Gorham, E. E., DeVaney, S. A., & Bechman, J. C. (1998). Adoption of financial management practices: A program assessment. Journal of Extension [On-line], 36(2). Available at: http://www.joe.org/joe/1998april/a5.html

Second, every article published in JOE from 1978 to the present has a specific URL. This means that citing an article as being available at www.joe.org is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Please cite the specific URL for the specific article. You can find it by using the JOE search site <http://www.joe.org/search.html> or the JOE archive site <http://www.joe.org/archive.html>.

October 2003 JOE

There are many good Features, Research in Brief articles, and Ideas at Work articles in the October issue. Reading them will prove my point.

But I want to call your attention to the Tools of the Trade section of this JOE issue. It's full of a wide range of interesting--and useful—articles.

I work with many Extension specialists on their Extension publications in my role as senior editor in Purdue's Department of Agricultural Communication, so I found "Transformative Explanations: Writing to Overcome Counterintuitive Ideas" particularly relevant.

However, that article is only the beginning. Interested in:

• A tool to assess how local citizens perceive their communities?
• A tool for developing questionnaire content?
• A method to determine consumer preference or estimate attendance?
• An example to follow to train golf course personnel on managing phosphorus inputs?
• A computer simulation game to teach agri-business management?
• The benefits of starting a networking group?

The Tools of the Trade section of this issue is a good place to start.

Laura Hoelscher, Editor
joe-ed@joe.org