Editorial: 40 years of the Journal of Property Investment & Finance

Citation

French, N. (2022), "Editorial: 40 years of the Journal of Property Investment & Finance", Journal of Property Investment & Finance, Vol. 40 No. 3, p. 277. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPIF-04-2022-194

Introduction

A period of 40 years is a long time. This year, we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the “Journal of Property Investment & Finance (JPIF)” albeit it started its existence as the “Journal of Valuation” and, latterly, the “Journal of Valuation and Investment”. The change of titles being testimony of the evolution of both the academic discipline of real estate and the expansion of the journal as it established itself as one of the premier journals in its subject area.

The journal has, quite simply, been with me my entire professional career. Issue No 1 was exclusively produced and published under the editorship of Andrew Baum (who has contributed one of the articles in this issue), but, thereafter, I have been involved as the Assistant Editor and, from Volume 6 Number 1, the Editor. It has been a privilege, and it has defined my career. Not only have I read every article ever published in the journal but I have also read thousands of papers that did not make the cut. I have become a jack of all trades, and my breadth of knowledge and understanding stretches from the detailed quantitative papers to the near market qualitative analysis and everything in-between.

And at the risk of this editorial becoming an apocryphal Oscar acceptance speech, there are so many people to thank along the way. I have been encouraged and supported by all the teams at Henry Stewart Publications, MCB Publishing and, latterly, Emerald. I have been blessed with the insights and knowledge of my Editorial Board members in helping me publish only the best research and practical papers. I have had the joy of working with numerous authors, some of whom were initially rejected but with support and determination were able to hone their work to an acceptable publishable standard. I am happy to say that in 40 years, I have only received one letter from a disgruntled author so I hope that indicates that I am doing something right in my role as gatekeeper for the journal.

Whilst, even with the best will in the world, it will not be me at the helm for the next 40 years, I sincerely hope that the Journal will celebrate numerous landmark anniversaries in the future […] maybe, god willing, I will get to the 50th anniversary!!

So my last thank you is to you the readers. Whether you simply cherry-pick the papers that are useful to you or read a breadth of different papers to gain a broader insight into the world of real estate, I hope that the Journal of Property Investment & Finance has proved to be a good bedfellow to you in your own careers.

Happy Anniversary JPIF and thank you.