Editor's Page

June 2004 JOE

There are 28 good articles in the June issue--count 'em--28. And they cover a multitude of subjects, from information technology, to diabetes education (two articles on that subject), to horse shows and horse judging, with many stops in between.

But it's the Commentaries that I want to focus on here.

In case you hadn't realized it, this issue marks the "official" 10th anniversary of JOE as an electronic journal. It was "disruptive" to some when JOE "went electronic" with its June 1994 issue after 30 years as a conventional, on-paper refereed journal, although that's turned out to be an incredibly successful move. It's still refereed, and it's more accessible and more popular than ever.

It's only fitting that the first Commentary is "Weblogs as a Disruptive Technology for Extension." Is the author, Deborah Coates, right about Weblogs? I don't know, but her article certainly presents a challenge (and I like to see that in a Commentary).

And then there's "The Steps for Futuring," the second of Patricia Sobrero's two Commentaries on a subject that should occupy us all. The future will happen with us or without us, and it only makes sense to engage it.

And finally, there's "From Humble Beginning." Michael Lambur was the editor who presided over JOE's transition from paper to the ether and over the first several electronic issues. So I am very--very--glad to have a Commentary from him. In his article, Lambur takes us back 10 years. He reflects on how he learned to become the editor of a completely electronic journal (something that didn't exist at the time), on reactions to the "great transition"--and most important and most fitting--on some of the visionary and dedicated people who led the way.

And We've Come a Long Way

We've definitely come a long way in 10 years. The first electronic issues of JOE came out in ascii, with virtually no formatting--and no graphics at all. I can remember what seemed like acres and acres of instructions about using Gopher to access articles before getting to any word about the articles, themselves.

It's different now, and it's different because we have the World Wide Web and gifted people like Jim Lemon and now Robyn Ness who have continued to enhance both JOE and the JOE site.

That's right, the JOE site. If you haven't explored it, you should. From www.joe.org you can reach the current issue of the journal and back issues from 1970 on up. (By the way, if you check out the June 1994 issue, you won't find the ascii version and all those acres and acres of instructions. The early electronic issues have been reformatted in html for better readability.)

You can use our search engine to search all of those issues and all of those articles. You can find a link to the National Job Bank. You can find submission instructions, information about the review process, and other help for JOE authors.

And you can find all kinds of useful and interesting stuff if you visit About JOE. That's where you'll find JOE FAQs and Promotional Material you can download and use if you have the opportunity to promote JOE at a conference or workshop and much more.

JOE Usage Statistics is a case in point. There you'll find a list of the universities that accessed JOE most frequently from January 1 to May 27, 2004. That's interesting.

But two other features are both interesting and useful. You'll find yearly statistics for hits, page views, and estimated visitors from 1998 through May 27, 2004, and you'll find lists of the top fifty most read articles (in 6-month intervals) from January 2002 to May 2004.

I swear there's a dissertation topic or two in there--and I know the information will be useful to those JOE authors who are up for promotion and tenure.

Laura Hoelscher, Editor
joe-ed@joe.org