Policy Journal Trends and Tensions: JPAM and PSJ

Academic journals may especially influence the development of an emerging field; early editors of public policy journals were explicit about that goal. Two leading journalsthe Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and the Policy Studies Journalwere compared for changes between the early 1980s and 2007-2010. Over time, both journals published far fewer research articles by practitioners, and the non-university share of both editorial boards also declined. The journals continued to focus largely on the United States. Both showed a dramatic increase in the proportion of co-authored articles. Over time, JPAM became far more likely to publish studies by economists and far less likely to publish political scientists while PSJ increasingly published political scientists. JPAM authors now primarily reference economics journals. PSJ authors often cite political science, public administration, and other public policy journals. Both journals moved away from broad policy essays, with JPAM heavily trending to multivariate (essentially econometric) secondary analyses of large data sets and PSJ including a broader range of methodologies. Contrary to early predictions of a progressively more interdisciplinary field, the opposite trendstronger alignments with specific disciplinesreflects public policy's ongoing challenge in transcending long-standing academic legacies and boundaries.