Abstract
IJRM has entered its eighth year of publication. During this period it has established itself as a pioneering international journal of repute globally. It has attracted articles from both the developed and developing world and has made its due contribution towards creating a field of rural management. It has also been recognized as an important journal in the field of management internationally. All this has been made possible by the efforts of contributors, reviewers and the earlier editors Saswata Biswas and Debiprasad Mishra. We also thank the editorial board and the editorial advisory board for making significant contributions towards building quality in and the reputation of this journal. As a result, the journal has enjoyed wider circulation and readership from across the globe. From the next issue, the new editorial team is taking over the responsibility of editing this journal. This is an onerous task but we hope to put our best at it.
The journal would broadly remain the same with its focus on rural issues and its commitment to build knowledge that helps the poor and marginalized sections of society. However, we are adding a few sections to the existing format of the journal. Since the focus of the journal is on rural management it is important to allow voices from the field to be heard. For this we are offering a platform to practitioners/researchers to discuss the problems and issues encountered in the field. This section would be known as ‘Notes from the Field’.
Another part of the journal that already exists but which we are going make a regular part of the journal is ‘Book Reviews’. We plan not only to commission book reviews of relevant and recent books but would also solicit book reviews from uninvited volunteers. We are also planning to come up with special issues more frequently on relevant themes. The editorial board would pro-actively seek proposals from scholars all over the world for special issues. The proposals for special issues would be reviewed by the editorial team and external referees before deciding about commissioning any special issues. We are also going to include, though not so regularly, invited articles on some topical issues which are of current importance and relevant for the field of rural management.
We would like to state that the field of rural management cannot be oblivious to changes in urban society and economy. A whole lot of labour related issues in urban areas of developing countries are of rural origin as the labour class is primarily rural. Rural households in many parts of the world owe their existence to their relationships with the urban economy. Remittances of migrants have substantially contributed to their livelihoods. Seasonality of migration of labour from rural to urban areas makes the job of neat classification of rural and urban an extremely complicated task. Aware of this reality, we would like to extend the scope of rurality a bit and would be open to manuscripts which talk about relationships between urban and rural as well.
At the end, we congratulate the outgoing editor for a wonderful job done and hope that we would be able to strengthen the journal further through our efforts.