Some thoughts about the balance of research published in AJPOR
Most scientific journals (including AJPOR) attempt to balance their responsibilities not only to the authors but also to the journal readers. Scientific journals attempt to have interesting and useful articles in every issue but not all articles are equally interesting to all readers. When I look at a journal issue, I tend to read most abstracts, but I always hope that one article will be useful for me for my teaching and/or research. If I find one, I read it more carefully. We hope that AJPOR is publishing enough articles in your area of professional interest.
AJPOR publishes articles with various types of research methods. These methods include case studies, many forms of qualitative research, big data studies, and small- and large-scale surveys. However, AJPOR has published few multi-country comparisons or survey experiments – either methods or substantive experiments. I’m currently teaching a survey design class where students have access to a small-scale nonprobability sample to collect data. The students can choose a topic or an experiment for their projects. All students are conducting either methods or substantive experiments. In the US, substantive experiments are regularly conducted and published in sociology and political science journals.
In the past two years, AJPOR has published many articles related to COVID-19 and to fake news. Many researchers around the world turned their research sights to these topics, so this trend is not unique to AJPOR. However, I sometimes wonder if AJPOR has published too many articles on too few topics and that we are not providing useful articles to all readers.
I encourage AJPOR readers to consider where AJPOR could provide more useful research to more researchers. Does AJPOR have a good balance of articles (both methods and topics) that meet the needs of both researchers and readers? Please send your thoughts to kennedyj@indiana.edu.