From an uncomfortable conversation to a productive strategic dialogue

I would like to extend my thanks to Étienne Charbonneau and his colleagues and to Eric Zeemering for their articles on the reception accorded to scholarly articles in Canadian Public Administration (CPA) and to Michael Howlett, Susan Phillips, and Al Roberts for their commentaries. In my view, even though one could get lost in further debate on the salience and meaningfulness of impact factors, that is far less important than the implication: we need a forward-looking discussion on the future of Canadian public administration scholarship, where investments need to be made to selectively focus scholarly effort, and how to foster renewal as public administration and governance challenges continue to multiply. In what follows I propose that thought leaders in public-service institutions and partner organizations such as The Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) to work systematically with leading scholars and the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPA) to explore collaborative models which fit with the pace and incentives of their respective work environments. A long line of editors have tried to ensure that CPA is relevant to scholars and practitioners alike in Canada, and to showcase the range of work undertaken by Canadian public administration scholars and to encourage practitioners to contribute to the literature as well, and occasionally to stimulate debate. As editor, my goal has not been to move the impact factor rankings,1 despite being well aware of them; rather the goal has been to showcase the eclectic range of public administration research and thinking in Canada. To do otherwise would make the journal into a different kind of publication, favouring certain kinds of scholarship over others, when an ever-expanding array of journals exist precisely as outlets for specific kinds of scholarship. We have encouraged more comparative articles with Canadian case studies and more articles on Indigenous governance and administration against the backdrop of Canada’s system of multi-level governance, and we have tried to showcase emerging currents in scholarly work with the New Frontiers series. Reflecting how scholarship has evolved in Canada, CPA has not had a succession of heavy-duty quantitative studies like those appearing in Public Administration Review, Journal of Policy Research and Theory, and several other highly ranked international public administration journals, but we have published several more focused quantitative studies. Nor has CPA been a site for sharing new theories of public administration and policy-making, but Canadian scholars do draw on these theories in the pages of this journal to inform qualitative and quantitative empirical studies. However, it is important to point out that, Canadians such as Michael Howlett, Jeremy Rayner, and Adam Wellstead—to name only a few—have been at the forefront of international efforts to push theoretical boundaries either by creating new journals (e.g., Politics & Society) or working through established journals (e.g., Policy Sciences, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Governance in the case of Al Roberts, Nonprofit Quarterly in the case of Susan Phillips) to pursue these lines of inquiry. While Charbonneau et al. (2018) and Zeemering (2018) examine in different ways the international interest in articles published in CPA, neither directly explores the impact of the full corpus of work of Canadian public administration scholars, which would include articles in international journals, books, and chapters in book collections. Nor do they explore the extent to which Canadian scholars have and are either serving as lead editors or on the editorial teams of leading international journals in our field, let alone serving on editorial advisory boards. For this observer, what is most interesting about the Australian experience is the country’s explicit ratings of journals for its Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA) initiative and anticipation of its impact on domestic journals, such as The Australian Journal of Public Administration which works with different incentives, and some protection, and different content.2 In Canada the focus on impact factors has been round-about and bottom-up, with certain departments and universities focusing heavily on impact factors when evaluating the portfolios of junior and mid-career scholars up for promotion, as well as overall international university rankings. We simply operate with different incentive systems and supports. However, for years—and even decades—developing scholars have known that they should diversify their publication portfolios with a mix of articles in domestic and international journals in their field. Over the last thirty years, there has been an extraordinary increase in the number and range of journals in every field reflecting ever-increasing specialization in distinct substantive, epistemological, and methodological approaches. The overlapping fields of public administration and public policy are no different. It is to be expected that aspiring and established scholars submit more of their articles in specialized journals which match their research interests. The implication, of course, is that scholars focusing on studies (qualitative or quantitative) of Canadian national institutions and policies, or comparisons among provinces, territories and municipalities, and increasingly Indigenous governance and administration, would find their way into a domestic journal like Canadian Public Administration. Another implication is that publications in CPA represent only a fraction of most productive scholars’ work. If journals largely reflect the manuscripts which come their way, and if CPA’s mandate is to showcase applied research and thinking on Canadian public administration, this begs the question of the trajectory of Canadian scholarship, and how it has been evolving and the directions it could take. We are seeing the last of an incredibly productive generation of public administration scholars leave our field (the very ones who modernized our field in the 1970s). Most of my generation of now “senior” scholarly colleagues across the country through teaching, consulting and research activities are well aware of the current and emerging challenges for Canadian public administration. We can see that huge domains (e.g., regulation, Crown corporations, financial management and budgeting, the effects of digital tools on all aspects of public administration, to name only a few) have not benefited from systematic research, let alone emerging governance and public administration priorities. And, despite increasing emphasis on publishing in peer-reviewed journals with higher impact factors, my sense is that most Canadian scholars in public administration believe that good research is applied research and this should involve engaging, often collaborating with and influencing practitioners who themselves are busier than ever. This, interestingly, is the direction that the research evaluation framework of the UK and Australia have been moving towards (Gunn and Mintrom 2018; Australian Research Council 2017). Making credible and timely efforts to address contemporary governance challenges in public administration will require larger multi-disciplinary, multi-method, and multi-generational teams (comprised of established scholars and PhD and post-doctoral students from across the country). Furthermore, we will need more creative and time-sensitive means for connecting scholars with public servants (executives, senior managers, and innovators) which address the respective incentive systems and faster-paced environment in which both work.3 Both communities should recognize that important spin-offs will be more fundamental and longer-term research projects from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grants and PhD dissertations which enrich the field for decades to come but also lead to more up-to-date materials for instructors to use in MPA and MPP programs across the country. Such research, even if geared to Canadian challenges, promises to be internationally significant. Making this happen will mean rediscovering and tweaking institutional repertoires, perhaps in a cross-institutional manner. For years, IPAC organized study teams with scholars and practitioners to explore issues, which led to many publications, often engaged new scholars, and lasting relationships with practitioners; and the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) during the late 1990s invested in what were essentially study teams with leading Canadian and international scholars informing roundtables with top officials and in the early 2000s the action-research roundtables, led by ADMs, which also explicitly engaged promising young public servants and graduate students. These important means for addressing emerging issues and gaps in the literature have fallen by the way for several years, but remain salient. Those who have tried to secure SSHRC partnership grants for more comprehensive research initiatives in public administration find that the LOI process and lead times take far too long and the success rates too low in fast-moving areas of inquiry, but SSHRC does have repertoires such as its Imaging Canada’s Future initiative works with federal departments for identifying selected scholars to undertake literature views and discussion papers on priority topics. The drawback here, though, is that the field tends to be pulled in selective ways, when we need to develop a rolling, whole-of-field perspective on what needs to be accomplished across the waterfront of public administration. There is great potential to work across these institutions to sponsor agile high-impact research and interactive processes with practitioners, and that partnerships across CSPS, IPAC, SSHRC, and, Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPPA) can point the way requiring only modest resources. We can take inspiration from countries like Australia and New Zealand which through ANZSOG and partner national and state governments have directly supported building applied research capacity, and the Netherlands, where government seems to regularly support leading-edge research initiatives with teams of scholars, which have greatly raised the profile of Dutch public administration scholars, in addition to their curiosity-driven research. It is my hope that the exchange in this issue about whether articles in CPA have high journal impact factors instead serves to stimulate a broader strategic conversation about the trajectory and strategic support for applied public administration scholarship in Canada. By making time-sensitive investments in multi-institutional and multi-generational collaboration with practitioners, I am confident that the fruits of such investment will affect the trajectory and breadth of scholarship in the field of Canadian public administration, particularly with regard to emerging issues, which will eventually be reflected in the pages and impact factors of this journal. EAL

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