Welcome to the Inaugural Issue

September 1, 2021

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Diplomacy and Policy Research, a publication to provide content that reaches beyond academic circles in order to offer direct value to practitioners in their given fields of work. The Journal of Diplomacy and Policy Research is pluralist in outlook and intends to address a variety of subject-matter and methodology, at a time when academic journals are increasingly becoming too siloed in scope and sectarian in approach. The purpose of this journal is to welcome articles, analysis of case studies, best practices, and lessons learned from the practitioner’s perspective pertaining to international relations and to offer useful advice and commentary to current events by drawing upon experiences from the past. For example, practitioners in the field often and work on and manage large intergovernmental projects, such as development projects to benefit a specific country situation. A situation that comes to mind is the current effort to deliver and distribute COVID-19 vaccines to the countries that need them through the United Nations COVAX project. Experiences from such collaborations would have utility to those working in other country situations and to other collaborators in general. Yet this information often remains with the original work group because there is no outlet in the public domain to expand knowledge, offer lessons learned and best practices, and to refine the processes. Academic journals address a specific audience that demands rigor and requires stringent formatting and structure to contributions that inhibit non-academic contributors from approach. Many non-academic contributors have extremely useful work experiences in the field that would benefit other practitioners wanting to reach similar outcomes, but are excluded from academic journal contributions because of their lack of educational credentials, inexperience with citation formatting, article length, and so on. Simply put, practitioner’s knowledge, while of great practical utility, often is not a good fit with the requirements for academic journals. The use cases then often become institutional knowledge housed in specific individuals, inhibiting the spread of practical information that would be better served if in the public domain.

The Journal of Diplomacy and Policy Research provides practitioners with a forum to share research and experience that expands the field’s body of knowledge. It is specifically formulated to provide an outlet for original analysis and commentary arising from situations in the field and experience gained therefrom. In many cases, foreign ministry officials, military personnel, and international civil servants are sent to executive education programs. Their contributions at such programs will be most welcome at the Journal given the expertise these officials hold. Each volume will normally contain peer-reviewed research articles (peer review being other practitioners), and a mixture of review essays, interviews, debates and forums. Special issues will be published.

Therefore, we welcome articles and proposals on all topics of interest to international relations and world politics practitioners. Be well.