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Editorial

Volume 4, Number 2, Spring 2003

Farewell to JACS and welcome to JAPP
Jonathan Brown

This is the final issue of the Journal of Access and Credit Studies. From the Autumn JACS will be replaced by the Journal of Access Policy and Practice. JAPP will inform and support policy development in access and widening participation. It will engage more closely with practitioner-researcher concerns in the field. It will continue to welcome articles from new authors seeking to publish refereed articles and reports on work and research in progress.

JAPP has appointed Dr Mary Stuart, Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Sussex, to be the editor of the new journal. (Contact her on m.stuart@sussex.ac.uk with contributions and suggestions for contributions.) On appointment Mary said,

At a time when issues of access remain in the headlines, but policy is often made on the hoof and not interrogated, we hope this journal will provide a rigorous forum for debate and evaluation.

NIACE, publisher and joint sponsor of JACS, will publish JAPP and will in addition be responsible for marketing and subscriptions. The new journal will continue in print but will, in addition, have an exclusive online version for subscribers. This will allow not only accessibility to a wider audience of students, practitioners and researchers, but also attract contributions on policy and practice from underrepresented areas of work. The other joint sponsor of JACS (NOCN) will continue to be associated with the new journal and will have an input to the Editorial Board.  The Editorial Board of JAPP will be considerably strengthened while retaining representation from NOCN and NIACE.

Personally I am delighted with this outcome. The new editor is an author published in these pages and is among the many colleagues who have given support to the ‘exiting’ journal over the last four years. At the end of my term of office I reflect on the work of 104 authors who have been published in these pages, and 75 colleagues who have acted as referees. A journal such as JACS survives only with the unseen and unsung work of authors, referees and, of course, members of the Editorial Board (who play a key role in refereeing). Unseen and unsung you may be, but as an editor at the end of my term, you have my sincere thanks.

To give continuity I will be joining the new Board during its first year. I am pleased to give this clear and unequivocal support to JAPP. I have no doubt that such a journal is needed. The issues in access have become more complex over recent years and the papers published in these pages give clear testimony to the need to examine both policy and practice in the broad arena of access and accessibility.

What has given me most pleasure during my editorship has been the articulation of the student voice as it has come through the work of colleagues. It has been recorded in a variety of forms and settings and I will leave by reminding readers of just a few of those many, necessarily anonymous, voices. These appear in issue order making a variety of points.

So in leaving the Editorial Chair I will also express my thanks to the unseen students acknowledged only by pseudonyms whose voice we must never forget. We need to understand our practice and place it firmly in theoretical contexts but we also need to be reminded of how clear and immediate is the student voice.

And finally I wish my successor well in the adjacent chair and look forward to reading many good things in the Journal of Access Policy and Practice for years to come.

NB all references are to JACS