Developing and Maintaining an Audience

Chapter 6 examines the audience of the journal. Here I explore steps that the editor can take to grow the audience of a journal, in both academic and non-academic spheres. For instance, while the audience might almost be taken for granted, journals often serve particular niches and so it may be valuable to target niches, both in terms of the willingness of these people to submit their research, but also to read and cite articles published in the journal. An audience that is not always associated with the academic journal is made up of practitioners or other nonacademics. Reaching this audience is harder if the articles published are not seen as useful, which thus constitutes a challenge for the editor: is the journal open to the publication of articles that will appeal more to a practitioner audience?