From the Editor: 60 Years of Scholarship

With this issue (November–December 2019), I am pleased to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of The Journal of College Student Development. Since its inception in 1959 as The Journal of College Student Personnel with Charles Lewis as its first Editor, the Journal has reflected the increasingly deep, broad, and complex scholarly work of researchers and practitioners who study and work with college students. The change to its current name in 1988 reflected a professional ethos of honoring the development of the whole person over personnel functions (American College Personnel Association [ACPA], 2019); likewise, the practice of student affairs work has enveloped a commitment to assisting students in reaching their full capacity and all of their complexity.

THE EVOLUTION OF JCSD WITH THE FIELD

Like many graduate programs, the one in which I have spent my own career (University of Iowa) has undergone shifts reflecting changes in the field. It was founded in 1960 as a counselingoriented program, led by counseling psychologist Albert Hood, JCSD's third Editor, and situated in the Department of Counselor Education. The Student Development in Postsecondary Education (SDP) distinguished itself from the Higher Education program, located in a different department, by its focus on theoretical advances and measurement concerning individual development. It flourished in this configuration until the SDP program eventually merged with the Higher Education program in 2010 to reflect a commitment to understanding students, their environments, and the institutions in which they study—thus, the Higher Education and Student Affairs program emerged. Again, as a profession, we have seen these kinds of shifts in foci reflected in the scholarship that is produced, the innovative work that is done, and the graduate curricula that are delivered.

The Journal, once in a paper-only format, increasingly used available technologies both to manage manuscripts and their reviews, and to make available issues (past and current) to subscribers. Where we once allowed subscriber/members to opt out of paper subscriptions, now members opt in and pay an additional fee for paper subscriptions. Using available technologies allows for democratization of knowledge, but may conflict with more traditional metrics of a journal's value—the journal impact factor. The impact factor is a traditional proxy of a journal's reputation, as measured by the number of citations it has by other scholarly works. While measured in a variety of ways, impact factors "have become self-reinforcing measures of journal quality, the papers therein, and their authors. Researchers now consider IFs when choosing their publication outlets; journal editors formulate policies explicitly designed to improve their IFs; and publishers advertise their IFs on their websites" (Lozano, Larivière, & Gingras, 2012, p. 2140–2141). Given the time to publication and other limits to the publication process, are there alternative measures of impact that help us assess the influence of a journal or an individual career? Perhaps download frequency data from the publisher could tell tenure and promotion committees something about how an article is used in teaching or practice. Surely viable alternatives to the impact factor exist and offer a more accurate picture about influence.

In my past four years as Editor, I have had many opportunities to consider what the role of an association journal should be and what it should stand for. I have concluded, at least for the work we've advanced with The Journal of College Student Development, the following practices and commitments.

First, our journal is a powerful venue where new knowledge is scrutinized and disseminated to improve practice and future scholarship. This is evident by the inclusion of JCSD in several national and international studies of higher education literature (Bray & Major, 2011; Harper, 2012; Harris & Patton, 2019). This is also evident by the way that we work with reviewers. Each article that passes an initial evaluation by an action editor is sent for review by at least two members of the Editorial Board, who are matched to the manuscript based on their content and methodological expertise. When necessary, we tap external reviewers to secure the expertise needed for a thorough review.

Second, the Journal is a space where diversity in persons, perspectives, and epistemological...