Bridging the Divide: When Research Speaks—And Listens—To Practice

• Author: R. Paul Battaglio,Jeremy L. Hall
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13087
• Date: 01 July 2019

Bridging the Divide: When Research Speaks—And Listens—To Practice 461

When we assumed our post as editors- in-

chief, one of the challenges we considered

at length was how to bridge the gap

between the glacial pace of academic research and

the pressing needs of practitioners who confront

the realities of daily problem solving. PAR is unique

among journals in its appeal to both stakeholder

groups, which provides the opportunity to confront

our challenge head on. The pressures of academic

publishing are intense; the focus on citations, two-

and five-year impact factors, and even new indicators

like Altmetric (a measure of media and social media

impact) influence the bottom line. As a result,

published research is judged primarily on the extent

to which it speaks to the research community. Good

research draws on established studies, orients itself

around gaps in the record, and expands theory; the

model neither regards nor rewards a concern for

practice. The slow pace of research does not align well

with the short-term focus of public and nonprofit

managers. Its production makes it less useful for day-

to- day decisions. However, if the practical focus was

on topics that have already been studied, on strategic

decisions, and on instrumental (“how?”) questions,

then research suddenly has more to offer.

Emergent challenges are reshaping the traditional

academic publishing model. Movements in Europe

have already manifested in national requirements

for academic publication to be open access—a

movement that will broaden considerably before it

begins to contract. Many publications that pioneered,

or persevered, the initial demand for open access

publication suffer in quality and lack the constraints

of page budgets and production costs. This process

implies that there is no mandate to choose stronger

pieces or those that might have greater long-term

impact. Nonetheless, PAR provides open access

publication options to authors, and we frequently

make material available in gratis virtual issues or in

conjunction with current events. In light of these

challenges, we are increasingly aware that quality

matters if we are to ensure our journal’s survival into

the far distant future. PAR’s 79-year history has been

built on quality, rigor, and impact; its future will be

no different.

Speaking of making research more accessible, this

issue features two open access research articles. The

first, by Zhu, Huang, and Zhang (2019), provides a

text analysis of comments in response to a national

campaign-style anticorruption effort in China to

evaluate citizen perceptions of officials referred to

as “big tigers.” Next, Ingrams and Schachter (2019)

explore the use of electronic participation as it relates

to municipal corruption. We hope that the open

access format makes their work more accessible to you

for use in research and teaching.

In March 2019, we participated in a dialogue hosted

by the National Academy of Public Administration

in conjunction with the Volker Alliance. One of the

themes of that conversation—in which prominent

academics and practitioners participated—was the

perception that research is too slow to be useful to

practitioners. This suggests that stakeholders on

both sides are likely not speaking to the same type of

research or the time at which it might be consulted.

One telling comment intimated an age-old concern

that practitioners do not have the time or patience to

be concerned with p-values—they just need to know

what works. Many ideas have been promulgated over

time, including changing to a publication model that

caters to practitioners. We think the latest chapter of

this timeless conversation is capable of deeper and

more sophisticated understanding and should produce

more than a superficial acknowledgment of the

concern for practice in our work.

While we are unable to offer a lock-step model

to solve this problem, or even concrete steps, our

conversations thus far have suggested a range of

possible actions that will advance this cause. We

explore them below. We think the first consideration

in reaching practitioners is rigor and quality. Readers

of the evidence source—in this case, an academic

Bridging the Divide:

When Research Speaks—And Listens—To Practice

Jeremy L. Hall

R. Paul Battaglio

University of Central Florida

The University of Texas at Dallas

Editorial

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 4, pp. 461–464. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13087.