Legacy and Stewardship

• Author: James L. Perry
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12874
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017

Legacy and Stewardship 811

T he themes of my first editorial, “Continuity

and Change” (Perry 2012a ), involved Public

Administration Review ’ s ( PAR ) extraordinary

seven-decade legacy and my stewardship role as the

journal ’ s new Editor in Chief. This issue represents

the end of my stewardship and I would like to focus

in my last editorial on the same themes as I close out

my term.

As I implied in that first editorial, the task before me

was considerably easier because PA R ’ s constituencies

prize, appreciate, and value the journal. Serving as

PA R ’ s Editor in Chief has been real work, but it has

also been a joy to be associated with a resource highly

valued by generations around the globe.

During my stewardship, I tried to steer a course

consistent with the medical analogy I drew in my first

editorial, an analogy Dwight Waldo introduced more

than 40 years earlier. I wrote in the editorial (Perry

2012a ):

Public administration, like medicine, is a

practical enterprise that seeks to better the public

sphere by making appropriate use of physical,

social, and behavioral sciences…. I want PA R ,

like NEJM [ New England Journal of Medicine ],

to carry the best science about administration

and policy. At the same time, the contents

of PA R should help public administration

professionals understand and navigate the extra-

cognitive aspects of public administration—

judgment, skill, and values—that are central to

our modern understanding of profession (4).

I hope PAR met the standards of science and

professionalism about which I wrote hopefully when

I became the journal ’ s steward.

A highlight of my six years as chief steward for PAR

was celebration of the journal ’ s 75th anniversary,

which included assembling volume 75 and a new

website ( www.publicadministrationreview.org ),

selecting PA R ’ s 75 most influential articles, and hosting

a celebratory reception at the American Society for

Public Administration’s (ASPA) 2015 conference in

Chicago. Serving as Editor in Chief during the 75th

anniversary gave me special opportunities to share

what I understood as the PA R legacy.

PAR ’ s metrics reflect both the journal ’ s health and

its status as the premier public administration

professional journal globally. As the annual

reports from PAR ’ s editors have noted, manuscript

submissions have steadily increased for the last five

years. Submissions rose from 387 in 2012 to 552 in

2016. We are now on track to receive 575 submissions

for 2017. Equally noteworthy is that about half of

the submissions we now receive—and the articles

we publish—come from international contributors,

making PA R truly a global journal (Ni, Sugimoto, and

Robbin 2017 ).

Not only is PA R receiving record numbers of

submissions, but our processing of manuscripts is

timely despite increasing submissions. Authors can

typically expect to get a first decision from us within

60 days. Our ability to keep up has been facilitated by

our implementation of Editorial Manager, an online

manuscript management system, in late 2011, as

the new editorial team was beginning its first term.

The PA R Editorial Manager system could not have

functioned effectively, however, without the thousands

of peer reviewers upon whom we have called in the

last six years.

Another part of our infrastructure development

that emerged in the last six years is our substantial

and growing presence on Facebook, Twitter, blogs,

YouTube, www.publicadministrationreview.org , and

other social media. We welcomed new “likes” and

“followers” daily during the course of the three years

in which we have been engaged on social media.

PAR is now ranked #2 by Web of Science and #1 by

Google Scholar, affirming its status as the premier

James L. Perry

Indiana University, Bloomington

Editorial

Legacy and Stewardship

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 6, pp. 811–812. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12874.