Editor's Notes

• Date: 01 June 2016
• Author: Mark A. Hager
• Published date: 01 June 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21228

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Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21228

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

EDITOR ’ S NOTES

WITH THE PUBLICATION of AbouAssi, Makhlouf, and Whalen ’ s article on “NGO ’ s Resource

Capacity,” Wiley tiptoes into social media. Over the past decade, publishers have struggled

to find the best marriage between the academic research they publish and the burgeoning,

fast-moving superhighway of the internet. I have heard anecdotal claims from several sources

that blogs and podcasts lead to greater citation of articles. “It gets the content in front of more

people,” they say. “Not everybody in the world has access to journals,” they say. It ’ s true that

I have blogged and podcasted my own work over the last several years, but I have done so

without too many illusions about who and how many people are ever going to be exposed

to our thinking. Academics are behind the curve on engaging the electronic marketplace of

ideas. I am writing this editorial in the week that Facebook announced advances in its search

capabilities—it ’ s precisely those kinds of advances in search that will ultimately pull academic

journals into the 21st century. We just have to have the content ready, and be ready to be

found.

So, AbouAssi, Makhlouf, and Whalen. At least for a while on the Wiley Nonprofit Manage-

ment & Leadership homepage, you will find a link to a video capture of slides with AbouAssi ’ s

voiceover at YouTube that highlights the research and findings for the article published in

this volume. These authors were proactive in approaching me about featuring their podcast,

and Wiley quickly facilitated their request. I love getting our content out this way. I will con-

tinue to work with Wiley to find additional ways of packaging authors’ work for distribution

on social media—because, that ’ s the future.

The Empirical Research Note

In this issue, you will also see a “new” manuscript category that will become a regular tool

under my editorship. It isn ’ t wholly new to Nonprofit Management & Leadership , but the

empirical “research note” is new for me. A year ago, in my early days, I wrote about my

intended emphasis on the regular research monograph, and I still stand by the value of this

emphasis. More recently, I relented on the category of “case study,” so long as authors meet the

scholarly expectations of the journal. Now, I introduce the empirical research note—a category

I have been shepherding with a number of authors over the past six months.

Maybe the most obvious feature of the empirical research note is that they are short. Whereas

regular research monographs and case studies have a limit of 8,000 words (or so; includ-

ing all text), the empirical research note is limited to 4,500 words. That ’ s pretty short. This

means that authors have to sometimes make hard choices about how to convey their most

critical ideas as succinctly as possible. It also means, hopefully, that readers do not have to cut

through any fog to get to essential content.

I tend to use the modifier “empirical” in front of “research note” because many will focus

on specific empirical findings. The expectations for advancing our conceptual or theoretical

understandings that accompany a regular research monograph or case study will be lessened

for the research note. Part of the reason is space, and part is the emphasis on specific, niche,

or exploratory empirical findings. Empirical replications are also prime for the research note

category. However, despite this general orientation to empirics, some research notes will