Practicing What We Preach! Public Administration Review Promotes Transparency and Openness

• Author: James L. Perry
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12705
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

Practicing What We Preach! Public Administration Review Promotes Transparency and Openness 5

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 5–6. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12705.

Practicing What We Preach! Public Administration Review

Promotes Transparency and Openness

Editorial

O ne of the subjects to which this journal has

devoted significant attention since I became

Editor in Chief is transparency. My quick

online search of www.wiley.com/par indicates that

we have published at least 20 articles since 2012 in

which “transparency” and “openness” were key words

in the title or abstract.

1 In addition to articles, many

Perspectives and Book Reviews have also touched

on the subject. Despite the attention PAR has given

to transparency and openness, do we as authors and

editors model these values in our own behavior?

What Drives PAR ’s Attention to

Transparency in Government?

Although many factors account for the attention

PAR has accorded transparency in recent years, a

major driver is that our content largely mirrors

developments in government, public institutions,

and the technological, social, and political

environments in which public organizations are

situated. Reflective of these developments are U.S.

federal, state, and international initiatives. On his

first day in office, President Obama, for instance,

signed an executive order on transparency and open

government ( https://www.whitehouse.gov/open/

about ). In late 2009, the White House issued an

open government directive requiring federal agencies

to take immediate steps to achieve key milestones

in transparency. A related White House initiative in

2013 directed heads of all federal granting agencies

to make the outputs of their funded research more

widely available.

2 Since 2009, a total of 36 U.S.

states have initiated searchable websites to increase

citizens’ access to government expenditures (National

Conference of State Legislatures 2016 ).

In 2011, the United Nations launched the Open

Government Partnership (OGP) with support from

President Obama and seven other heads of state. The

OGP now has more than 70 participating countries

in which government and civil society are working

together to develop and implement open government

reforms.

Applying Transparency and Openness

to PAR ’s Operations

Transparency and openness are normatively

relevant not only for governments, but also for

the quality and integrity of the science we use to

build knowledge in public administration. PAR ’s

standing is predicated on publishing quality research

that is relevant both to scholars and practitioners.

In increasingly skeptical societies, public officials

have to be more transparent about how they do

their work and how they arrive at their decisions.

Applied science is not immune from this broader

societal skepticism. If we want to retain credibility,

we too have to be more transparent about our work,

whenever doing so is practical and ethical.

We are not without peer guidance about how

to facilitate PAR ’s transparency and openness.

Nosek et al. ( 2015 ) published transparency and

openness guidelines (TOP) that cover eight

standards: citation standards; data transparency;

analytic methods transparency; research materials

transparency; design and analysis transparency;

preregistration of studies; preregistration of analysis

plans; and replication.

3

On behalf of PAR , I recently signed the transparency

and openness standards promoted by the Center for

Open Science (COS). Becoming a TOP signatory is

a statement of support for the principles of rewarding

more transparent research. During the next year, we are

committed to appropriately implementing the guidelines

for PAR . This will include determining which standards

are appropriate for which types of public administration

research. PAR publishes many different types of research.

The guidelines are not meant to be universally applied

to all research, and do not place value judgments on

anything besides the level of transparency that a given

article facilitates. We will implement the guidelines with

a high level of participation and transparency from our

stakeholders, particularly contributors and readers. Our

goal is not to impose arduous mandates for authors to

follow and for editors to enforce, but rather to increase

James L. Perry

Indiana University, Bloomington