Another year

Citation

Walczak, S. (2007), "Another year", The Learning Organization, Vol. 14 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/tlo.2007.11914faa.001

Another year

This issue brings to close my second year as Editor for The Learning Organization (TLO). During this year I have made an effort to include more general organizational knowledge management topics in the mix of articles as I feel that knowledge management is a necessary component of learning organizations. This is reflected in the change of the subtitle from An International Journal to its current form: The International Journal of Knowledge and Organizational Learning Management.

This year over 43 original articles were submitted, which underwent a double-blind review process with a minimum of two external reviewers along with the Editor reading and commenting on each article submitted. Of these: 2 per cent were accepted outright, 24 per cent were conditionally accepted (indicating that changes were required to be made but without undergoing additional review other than by the Editor), 44 per cent were sent back for major revisions, and 29 per cent were rejected outright either due to quality or lack of fit with the scope of the journal.

While last year, Volume 13, only had a single special issue on “Facilitating organizational learning and KM” by our SI editor Peter Smith, this year we have increased that number to three. The special issues have been on “Communities of practice – One size fits all” by Pemberton and Mavin, “On sharing knowledge – Socio-technical approaches” by Ramirez and Coakes, and “The relevance of system thinking and system dynamics” again by Peter Smith, which is the current issue. Next year hopefully we will have at least two special issues for the readership with one planned on “The new learning organization” by Ortenblad and another to be determined. Unfortunately, I have been informed by Peter Smith our SI Editor that he will be leaving the position at the end of this year and a new SI editor will need to be appointed. Let’s all extend to Peter our sincerest thanks for the terrific job he has done while acting as TLO’s SI editor.

As always, the quality of the journal is due to both my fellow members of the Editorial team: Sharon Mavin, the European Area Editor, and Peter Smith; the input and reviews I receive from my Editorial Advisory Board; and the tremendous reviews voluntarily given by our outstanding team of reviewers. I wish I could name you all, but space does not permit. As I started last year and will continue this year, I would like to name a few individuals who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in performing reviews and select a Reviewer of the Year, who will receive a certificate and a small cash award. As before, the award is made based on service to TLO through reviewing which includes both the quality of the reviews received and the quantity of reviews performed. Those individuals who performed multiple reviews during this issue and had very high quality reviews are: Deborah Blackman, David Megginson, Dave Snowden, Maxim Vronov, Dianne Waddell, Kate Walsh, Judith White, and Josephine Lang Chin Ying. Judith White performed the greatest number of reviews during the year and has my personal appreciation for her hard work. Again each of these reviewers provided very high quality reviews that I and the authors felt significantly helped the authors to improve their articles. The choice for a single reviewer of the year was extremely difficult and in fact impossible this year and so I have decided to award a joint Reviewer of the Year Award this year. The TLO Reviewers of the Year for Volume 14 are: Dave Snowden and Kate Walsh. Thanks again to these two exceptional individuals and also to all of my reviewers who really make this job satisfying.

Steven Walczak