History

History of the Journal

The Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) is one of the longest standing professional associations in the field and our journal was one of the first peer-reviewed forums in the world devoted to evaluation scholarship.

The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation (CJPE) was founded in 1986 under the auspices of the CES and has received generous financial support from SSHRC over the years. As a testament to its continuity and coherence the Journal has had a remarkably small number of editors over its history.

The Editorial Board of the Journal is typically composed of university-based academics with a healthy mix of members of evaluation practitioners. Most of the Board members are affiliated with Canadian organizations although members from the US and Europe have joined the Board over the years.

CJPE has always published feature length articles as well as research and practice notes. Articles published in the Journal are almost exclusively peer reviewed, the exception being the occasional interview with luminaries in the field or keynote addresses. Reviews of important books in the field are also published routinely in CJPE.

Since its inception, CJPE has published at least two issues per year but in 1997 under Robert Segsworth a third issue – a theme based special edition – was published. Currently, the journal is published three times a year including a theme based special edition.

Theme issues are often published under guest editorship but sometimes they are edited by the CJPE editorial staff. In 2005 the Editorial Board supported a decision to publish ‘theme segments’ within regular issues of CJPE. Theme segments are collections of theme-based articles, usually 3 to 5, that are either guest-edited or edited by the editorial team. Proposals for special editions and thematic segments are reviewed and approved by members of the Editorial Board. Once approved, guest-edited thematic collections can be either exclusively edited by the guest or they can be supported by managing editorial services of the editorial team. In the latter case, the peer-review process is handled by the CJPE editorial team whereas the role of the guest editor is limited to substantive/content editing and communications with authors concerning peer reviews, expectations for revisions, and so forth.

In 2005 a 20-year anniversary issue of CJPE was published under the guest editorship of Joe Hudson (founding editor). That issue included two independent content analyses of the Journal over its 20 year history (Addison & Amo, 2005; Birch & Jacob, 2005). The articles served to verify the breadth and scope of the Journal by confirming its commitment to interdisciplinarity – with articles published in mental health, government, health, education, criminology/justice and several other areas – and to the application of knowledge and theory within the community of practice. Trends in publishing revealed a recent increase in empirical research being published in the Journal and a minimization of published summaries of evaluation.

References

Addison, E., & Amo, C. (2005). Two decades of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation: A content analysis. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 20(3), 17- 40.

Birch, L. M., & Jacob, S. (2005). Program evaluation in CANADA seen through the articles published in CJPE. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 20(3), 1-6.