The Nonprofit FAQ

Are there scholarly journals in the field?

On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Jon Van Til wrote about the scholarly journals dealing with nonprofits and related topics. The major one is the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, formerly the Journal of Voluntary Action Research. Now in its 25th year, it is the principal scholarly journal in the area of voluntarism, citizen participation, nonprofit organization, and philanthropy. It is the journal of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). NVSQ was founded by David Horton Smith, and I had the privilege of serving as its editor for 12 years. The editor through 1997 was Carl Milofsky, a distinguished community researcher and sociologist at Bucknell University. In 1998, Steven Rathgeb Smith of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington began a term as editor of NSVQ. Currently (2006) the journal is edited by Wolfgang Bielefeld and Dwight Burlingame of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. (The table of contents of NVSQ is available and subscribers can access articles at the publisher's website: http://nvs.sagepub.com/ -- PB 9/12/06) More recent is Voluntas, which takes a more international focus. It is the journal linked to the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) and its editor is Jeremy Kendall of the London School of Economics. Voluntas is published for ISTR by Plenum Publishing Company (info@plenum.com); for further information about ISTR itself, visit http://www.jhu.edu/~istr A third journal is Nonprofit Management and Leadership, which issues from the Mandel Center at Case Western Reserve University and is edited by Dennis Young. It takes a more applied focus than the other two. See http://www.cwru.edu/mandelcenter/index.html A new scholarly journal has been developed in the fundraising field by the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, and I have not yet seen a copy of it. Nor can I recall its title. I believe it will be edited by Dwight Burlingame, the able Associate Director for Research of the Center. For information about Indiana-Purdue University at Indianapolis' programs, see http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/ NVSQ and Voluntas are refereed journals, which means that all submissions are reviewed blind (without the author's name being known) by a panel of readers. Nothing is published in a refereed journal that has not been through such a peer review process unless it is clearly identified as such (e.g., Editor's notes, book reviews, etc.) Refereed journals are the coin of the realm in academia, and tend to be far more highly valued in assessing candidates for appointment, tenure, and promotion, than non-refereed journals. Boards of editors of such journals are usually composed largely of academics of established reputation. Jon Van Til Professor of Urban Studies, Rutgers University at Camden vantil@crab.rutgers.edu On June 23, 1998, Dr Adrian Sargeant (Adrians@henleymc.ac.uk), its Managing Editor, wrote to ARNOVA-L: The International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing is a highly regarded, peer reviewed journal has rapidly established a reputation for itself as one of the premier nonprofit marketing journals. The international editorial board will be pleased to consider contributions from academics and practitioners working in the fields of charity, arts, education, healthcare and social marketing. Theoretical/Conceptual and empirical contributions are both welcomed, as are case studies illustrating best practice within the nonprofit sector. Articles should emphasize the practical relevance of the issues presented and must be written to appeal to practitioners, academics and policy makers alike. All submissions are subject to a double blind peer review. On August 6, 1998, he added: Just a brief note to let all Arnovians know of a new Internet site that might be of interest. I have just finished creating a site for the Journal Of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing. It contains abstracts of all past articles, a call for papers and (as from September) the most recent editorial feature. http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/nvsm/nvsm.htm Published by Henley Management College Greenlands, Henley-On-Thames Oxon RG9 3AU United Kingdom Tel ++441491 571454 Fax ++441491 571635 Angela Ellis Paine of the Institute for Volunteering Research wrote to ARNOVA-L on September 12, 2006: Voluntary Action, the journal of the Institute for Volunteering Research, has now moved online. Our first web-based issue is available to read online at http://www.ivr.org.uk/voluntaryaction. An annual subscription to Voluntary Action will bring you three issues a year and unlimited access to our archive and will only cost you £20. The journal explores voluntary action in its broadest sense, and its authoritative and informative articles make the essential links between research and policy and practice. Articles include: original pieces of research, case studies of volunteer involving agencies, analyses of policy initiatives that impact on volunteering, reviews of literature and international perspectives on voluntary action. Institute for Volunteering Research http://www.ivr.org.uk Reposted with revisions August 6, 1998 --PB; New web addresses for Mandel Center and Indiana University added Dec 13, 2000 --LBS; Updates and addition of Voluntary Action 9/12/06 -- PB