Abstract
Five years ago, I began my journey as editor of this journal; this issue will be my last. I have loved every enlightening, intriguing, challenging, demanding, and totally rewarding hour. During these years, I learned much about and from our authors and potential authors, reviewers, contributors, and readers. Editing has given me new perspectives on evaluation and insights into evaluators. I have been honored to work with a diverse set of authors whose voices have reached wide audiences—scholars and practitioners, emerging evaluators and experienced, all from varying backgrounds, as well as consumers, policy makers, and professors. By all measures, American Journal of Evaluation (AJE) is well received in the field. Submissions are high (286 last year) and come from throughout the world. Our 5-year impact factor has risen to 1.774. Our readership reaches beyond membership (over 12,000 in 2017), with more than half outside the United States.
The high quality of a journal that reaches such a broad audience requires ideas and effort from a wise and skilled support team. Rachael Lawrence, AJE’s managing editor, has been my right arm; without her attention to detail, her knowledge of the publishing systems, and her care for authors and reviewers, as well as her practical evaluation experience, I simply could not have produced the issues. Authors and reviewers benefited from her wizardry in fixing problems. My associate editors, Jori Hall, Tina Christie, and Keith Zvoch, helped carry the editorial load; I am grateful for their wisdom and collegiality. My section editors played crucial roles across the volumes, bringing you information on and facilitating dialogues about important evaluation topics: Rebecca Campbell (Methods Notes), Marc Braverman (Book Reviews), Anne Vo (Teaching Evaluation), Peter Dahler-Larsen (Exemplars), and George Julnes and Maria Bustelo (Professional Values and Ethics). I also extend thanks to the editorial advisory board on whom I called for reviews and advice. These hardworking individuals are listed in the inside front cover of each issue. The people at SAGE Publishing have been a true pleasure to work with, especially Leah Fargostein and Patrick McGinty, our editorial links, and Glenn Bachman and Alan Carabes, our production editors. Alan and Glenn were always responsive, flexible, patient, and effective in easing our worries. Finally, my thanks to the hundreds of reviewers who are essential both to maintaining our status as a peer-review journal and for their invaluable detailed suggestions to our authors.
I leave the journal in capable and committed hands. George Julnes, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Baltimore, will assume the editorship in January 2019. His scholarship as an evaluation theorist has been recognized with American Evaluation Association’s highest honor, the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award. As a senior scholar of international renown, George brings deep knowledge and appreciation of diverse aspects of evaluation’s theory, methods, and practice to the role of editor. I am confident that under his leadership, AJE will continue to be an increasingly influential voice in the field of evaluation.