Editor's Page

You may be surprised to learn that there's absolutely nothing wrong with using active voice and first person in JOE articles. In fact, it's recommended.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition (JOE's style manual) says this on page 41:

"Verbs are vigorous, direct communicators. Use the active rather than the passive voice . . .

Poor: The survey was conducted in a controlled setting. Better: We conducted the survey in a controlled setting."

And, on pages 37 - 38:

"Third person: Writing 'The experimenters instructed the participants' when 'the experimenters' refers to yourself is ambiguous and may give the impression that you did not take part in your own study. Instead, use a personal pronoun: 'We instructed the participants.'"

The habit of using third person, passive voice is so ingrained and ubiquitous (under the illusion that it conveys "objectivity," I think) that I do not change it in JOE articles. And I do not suggest that you change the habit of a scholarly lifetime if that would prove too difficult.

But you might want to try it the next time you are preparing an article for submission to JOE. For those of you who have trouble with JOE's notoriously tight word-count restrictions--think about it--it takes fewer words to use active voice, first person. If you can't bring yourself to use first person, you might at least try active voice.

October 2004 JOE

This is another very good issue, with more noteworthy articles than I have time or space to note. So I will focus on two things.

First, there's the way the first Commentary, "Scholarship: Shout About it," by Keith Smith, and the first two Tools of the Trade articles, "What Cooperative Extension Professionals Need to Know About Institutional Review Boards," by Dan Weigel, Randy Brown, and Sally Martin, and "Communicating Impacts," by Karen Zotz, resonate with each other. Read them, and you'll see what I mean.

Second, there's the tremendous contribution made by JOE reviewers. The many of you who have used their insightful reviews to improve your articles know what I'm talking about. So do those of you who have read and learned from all of the Feature, Research in Brief, and Ideas at Work articles in JOE over the years.

But there's more. Besides Karen Zotz, four other JOE reviewers have authored or coauthored articles on a variety of topics in the October issue: Viviane Simon-Brown, Kim Greder, Carolyn Dunn, and Joseph Donaldson.

I didn't plan it this way, and, of course, others of our reviewers have written articles published in JOE in the past and will continue to do so in the future. But the coincidence of five articles in a single issue has given me the opportunity to publicly thank our reviewers for the work they do on all our behalves.

You can find the names of all of our near the bottom of each issue Contents page and at the JOE Peer Reviewers link on the About JOE page. They all deserve our thanks.

Laura Hoelscher, Editor
joe-ed@joe.org