EDITOR'S NOTES

• Author: Mark A. Hager
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21147
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015

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N M  L, vol. 26, no. 1, Fall 2015 © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21147

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

EDITOR’S NOTES

BY THE TIME THIS EDITORIAL hits the shelves, we will have had time to heal. However, as I

pull this editorial back from production to pen these words, the news that my friend Woods

Bowman has died in a traffi c accident is less than a day old. Woods was a current editorial

board member for this journal. Indeed, in November of 2012, then-editor Duncan Neu-

hauser allowed me the great pleasure of approaching Woods and several other newly selected

members and inviting them to the editorial board. I remember Woods beaming when I

shared the news. Woods loved this journal. He was the fi rst person to congratulate me when I

became editor. He was one of the fi rst people I invited to conduct a review of a manuscript.

He was part of the future and the lifeblood of Nonprofi t Management & Leadership. We will

be less without him, but we will thrive because of him. Rest in Peace, my dear friend.

As June turned into July, I was precisely six months into the editorship of Nonprofi t Manage-

ment & Leadership (NML). In some ways the work is still new, and I am still learning the

ropes. However, much of the newness has worn off , and I now have enough track to see both

the fruits and the trajectory of my work with the journal. I want to refl ect a bit here on how I

think Nonprofi t Management & Leadership can play a larger role in the development of schol-

ars and scholarship in our fi eld. I believe this involves both the development of our reviewers

and the development of our authors.

Reviewers are certainly necessary to evaluate the work submitted to the journal. However,

the act of review is itself a scholarly and professional development exercise. It gives us an

opportunity to connect to others’ work at a high level and to hone our communication skills.

Reviewing gives us insights into the writing process of others and glimpses into the publica-

tion process. In my mind, the act of review is itself developmental, especially for younger

scholars—many of whom have limited experience in serving as a peer reviewer for the fi eld’s

journals. And, the scholars of the fi eld are indeed young, with new people constantly taking

new jobs that were not available in nonprofi t and philanthropic studies 15 years ago. One of

the joys of searching for reviewers is that I regularly uncover scholars in the fi eld of whom

I have not previously been aware. Most of them have been enthusiastic about conducting

reviews, eager to engage the process and take a glimpse into a machine that has previously

been all too mysterious to them. Part of the developmental potential of the fi eld is in the rite

of passage associated with serving on a peer review panel.

 e developmental potential for the fi eld that comes from peer review has waned at NML

in recent years. We started using the ScholarOne submission and review system in late 2008.

Our records show that 173 unique reviewers invited to review in 2009 completed a given

review for the journal, and that number grew to 195 in 2010. However, the number of

reviewers fell back to 175 in 2011, and then to 146 in 2012, to 93 in 2013, and to 25 in all

of 2014. One of the commitments I made when accepting the editorship of NML was that

I would engage the fi eld in expanded opportunities for participation in the review process. I

have been aided so far in 2015 by a rapid rise in the number of submissions requiring review,

which has resulted in the need to approach an expanding array of reviewers. While NML has

traditionally enjoyed “about 100” new manuscript submissions each year, we have received

84 at the midpoint of 2015. NML may set a new record before the fall semester even gets

underway. With record submissions come record levels of review by the fi eld’s legion of vol-

unteers. At the midpoint of 2015, 191 diff erent volunteers have already completed reviews

this year; another 36 have agreed to review manuscripts in process and will join the list of