Preface

i preface The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) is pleased to announce the launching of Asia Policy, a peer-reviewed journal that is the newest initiative to fulfill NBR’s purpose of “bridging the gap” between academic research and policymaking. For seventeen years NBR has conducted advanced, independent research on a variety of strategic, political, economic (and globalization), energy, demographic, and health issues through its various programs and centers: Center for Asian Security Studies, Energy Security Program, Center for Health and Aging, and four regional programs—Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Eurasia, and South Asia. Asia Policy will publish scholarship on these same policy-relevant topics. Specialists on these topics from throughout the world are cordially invited to submit original research to the journal. By choosing only the best articles from these submissions, Asia Policy will be extending NBR’s networking strategy a step further. As many readers know, NBR is an “institution without walls,” maintaining a finite in-house staff of specialists while drawing mostly upon a global network of the best and the brightest people to carry out its research on critical, policy-relevant issues. One hallmark of our approach is the AccessAsia database, which tracks the expertise and current research of thousands of experts on contemporary Asian affairs. With the new journal, we are reaching out again beyond the scope of our ongoing research projects— and as objectively and rigorously as we can. Asia Policy will continue NBR’s tradition of promoting the highestcaliber , professional, and non-partisan research. Each journal submission will be judged solely upon the quality of its scholarship, determined by a “tripleblind ” review process: not only are author and reviewer unaware of the each other’s identity, but the Editor and Editorial Board members also do not know the authorship of manuscripts under review. Moreover, as part of the journal’s effort to bridge the gap, the review process will include feedback from both the academic and policy realms. By providing academic credit to authors whose work appears in the journal, this peer review process will encourage scholars—especially the younger academics whose publications must meet the requirements of their social science disciplines—to write on policy-relevant issues. This dovetails with NBR’s tradition of promoting young Asia scholars with great potential to ii contributetotheimprovementofpolicy,whichbeganwiththeestablishmentin 1989 of the (thriving) Henry M. Jackson Internship Program at NBR. Another example is our new Next Generation Fellowship program, recently created with support from The Henry Luce Foundation, that matches established Asia specialists in a mentorship program designed to train promising young scholars. Asia Policy is an ambitious and exciting project that will provide a unique venue for exchanges between the academic and the policymaking communities. Under the collective effort of the journal’s extraordinary Editorial Board members, editor and editorial staff, authors, reviewers, and readers, the journal will help to inform and strengthen policy on issues related to the most important region in the world—the Asia-Pacific. This venture, as well as the aforementioned Jackson Internship Program, would not be possible without the generous support of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation. Richard J. Ellings President The National Bureau of Asian Research ...