Journal of Research Practice LO30979

From: dpdash@ximb.ac.in
Date: 02/25/04


Dear Friends,

I have become part of an initiative to launch a new journal. This is
the latest draft of the editorial focus we have defined:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Research_Practice/message/45 Any
observations or comments are welcome.

DP

Journal of Research Practice: Innovations and Challenges in Multiple
Domains

JRP: EDITORIAL FOCUS & CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS [Draft]

1. Changing Contexts of Research

>From interpreting text to observing nature, from designing systems to
guiding actions, there is a long history of the human undertaking in
quest of results that are novel, independent, and liberating in some
way. This quest has attracted resources and talents of societies,
commanding their respect in general. Institutions have flourished
across the globe to nurture this kind of activity that has come to be
known as research. Experience suggests that it has been difficult to
regulate or contain this kind of activity within any specific logical
or institutional form. Research has always remained partly
unmanageable, partly deviant, despite historic tendencies to co-opt it
into the so-called disciplines, professions, research centres, etc.
That propensity of research, to maintain a degree of autonomy, despite
various forms of restraint on it, is worth remembering for all of us
who are inclined towards it and inspired by it.

Despite the success research has demonstrated over time, it has been
under intense scrutiny, not only from its practitioners but also from
the general public. As a consequence, new demands are being imposed on
its practice and over its results, for example, the need to include
users of the results in the process of doing research. Attempting to
respond to such demands has not been easy.

Looking at the contemporary realities of research, we find it divided
not only among disciplines and specialisms beyond recognition, but
also ironically among research perspectives upheld by notions of
method. While such plurality can add strength to the overall
repertoire of research, it can also make researchers impervious to the
generic virtues of their task, and thus forget their common roots.
This can weaken their capacity to respond to new challenges in a
satisfactory way.

This danger seems more real today, with researchers branching out into
ever new contexts and accepting ever new challenges--even those for
which their tools and methods are not well adapted. As a result, there
is a pressure to change, to adapt the tools and methods, ensuring that
the activity will still be regarded as research.

Researchers and a variety of research-oriented workers (including
action researchers, creative problem solvers, flexible specialists,
thinking therapists, organic intellectuals, etc., or generally
speaking, reflective practitioners), who recognise that pressure to
adapt and wish to respond to it in ways that still retain the generic
virtues of research, can connect with each other and learn from their
multiple innovations.

The Journal of Research Practice is expected to facilitate such
connections.

2. Editorial Focus

The Journal would seek to develop our understanding of research as a
type of social practice, evolving in contact with other practices
within a complex and changing environment. Therefore, the journal
would seek to sustain a healthy engagement with the generic issues of
research practice as they arise in multiple domains of research. A
broad aim is to learn about research from the experience of
researchers in multiple fields, focusing especially on how they have
been adapting to respond to new demands and challenges.

The journal should develop appreciation of the practice of research as
it keeps unfolding in various domains. It would explore why and how
different activities, criteria, methods, and languages become part of
research in any domain. The aim would be to enrich research practice
as a whole by considering the challenges facing researchers in
different areas and the interesting innovations developed by them to
respond to those challenges. Learning from the successful and
unsuccessful innovations may guide us in meeting new challenges and
resolving new puzzles in the future. More specifically, the journal's
focus and preferences can be stated in the following terms:

(a) Research as a Social Practice: In presenting research as an
evolving social practice, the journal should call attention to the
evolution of the generic principles and conventions guiding research
practice. The responsibility of the research community to itself and
to the public must also be considered, especially in cases where a
research process (or product) leads to negative externalities for any
group of stakeholders.

(b) Open Inquiry: A sense of open inquiry should characterise the
journal. This will involve engagement with multiple areas of research,
building awareness of the changing nature of problem contexts,
acknowledgement of the researchers' involvement and risk, openness to
encountering the unexpected, re-conceptualisation of existing ideas,
and commitment to reach beyond existing institutional or traditional
blinkers. This should draw upon the interdependence and synergies
among individual and collective accomplishments in science, art,
design, intervention, etc.

(c) Connecting Researchers: The journal should help create reflective
conversations across disciplinary boundaries, thus linking research
communities. Because the journal spans a number of different research
fields, the writings should be accessible to readers from different
disciplines. Authors need to be careful with the jargon and the
embedded assumptions peculiar to a discipline. The journal should
promote work that combines or compares multiple knowledge systems,
bridges disciplines, stretches existing paradigms and methodological
frameworks, and asks new questions about research.

(d) Contexts of Research: The contents of the journal should not be
discipline oriented, but focus on the variety of contexts in which
researchers find themselves. The journal should focus on the
challenges and opportunities these different contexts present before
researchers and the kinds of innovation developed in research
practice. The problems and prospects of these innovations for future
research practice should also be assessed.

(e) Evaluation and Support: The journal should be a source of support
for researchers and reflective practitioners in different domains. It
should generate evaluations of the practical methods followed in
different disciplines and practices. It should aim to develop
alternative perspectives for researchers and reflective practitioners
to explore in their own domains.

(f) Contemporary Relevance: The journal should connect with the human
and social conditions of our times, help bridge multiple global
divides, address institutional malfunctioning, explore the power of
connective (and cooperative) technologies, and advance lifelong
learning. The journal should seek contemporary relevance by striving
to specify, contest, and extend the perspectives involved in the
multiple practices that define our world. The focus should be on
enhancing our capacity to observe and act more effectively in that
world, using results characteristic of research.

In short, the Journal of Research Practice aspires to become a common
window to the world of research, thus contributing to a culture of
open learning and mutual support among researchers, reflective
practitioners, and users of their service.

3. Call for Manuscripts

Manuscripts in English, clearly related to the journal's editorial
focus, are sought in the following three categories: (i) main article
(about 6000 words), (ii) research design (about 3000 words), and (iii)
book review (about 1500 words).

Main articles may relate to a general topic concerning research
practice (e.g., research contexts, research methods, etc.) or focus on
a specific research domain. If it is the latter, then special care
needs to be exercised to tailor the article to focus on the generic
challenges of doing research in that domain and the specific
innovations developed. The language of the articles should be
sensitive towards a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, and
multi-cultural readership. Each main paper should make a contribution
to our understanding of research practice per se, so as to keep open
the possibility of extending and enhancing that practice in the
future.

The research design section will carry research proposals, making
explicit the context, available choices, and the actual research
design being proposed. This should include some assessment of the
risks and challenges involved and suggestions for dealing with those.
This section can also carry unfinished research, or research that ran
into unexpected hurdles and could not progress. Among others, research
students are also encouraged to contribute to this section.

The journal welcomes reviews of books that address some aspect of
research practice. Reviewers should make an attempt to connect with
the journal's editorial focus. Authors should submit two hardcopies of
their manuscript, plus a softcopy (as file attachment), to any one of
the two Editors, depending upon their convenience:

D. P. Dash
Xavier Institute of Management
Xavier Square
Bhubaneswar 751013India
E-mail1: <dpdash@ximb.ac.in>
E-mail2: <professor_dash@yahoo.co.uk>

Hctor R. Ponce
Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Facultad de Administracin y Economa
Av. L. B. O'Higgins 3363 Estacin Central
Santiago, Chile
E-mail1: <hponce@pegaso.usach.cl>
E-mail2: <hponce4@hotmail.com>

All manuscripts submitted to the journal (except invited contributions
and book reviews) will be subjected to a process of double-blind
review. Please consult the detailed Guidelines to Contributors before
submitting your manuscript.

Editors, Journal of Research Practice
Sage Publications
New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London

-- 

dpdash@ximb.ac.in

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