Editorial Recommitment

Editorial

Continuing on

eginning with this issue, the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD) will now be published bimonthly throughout the year; each issue will have more pages; and each issue will be perfect bound (i.e., with a flat spine). As Drs. McDonough and Hansen each note in their own words, these changes mark yet another milestone in the evolution of our journal. It is one at which we recommit to a professional journal that speaks to the diversity of our field.

AACD's recommitment to a publication that looks like the journal that it is (rather than like a magazine) is an assertion that we are a profession that works from a scientific base and is accountable. It is important that our association's flagship journal be a serious expression of that purpose.

Another recommitment being made with the changes that begin with this issue is that the journal and its contents will represent the profession in all its diversity. Although the September-June JCD publication schedule that has been followed for decades seemed to suggest that our readers' work settings were only (or primarily) academic, the association has changed. Its members now are employed in a variety of settings and roles. The shift to a bimonthly schedule acknowledges this diversity and the vitality of our field. Moreover, this new schedule counters what seems to have been an implicit (and rather curious) assumption that counselors' professional reading needs stopped during a part of the year.

In recommitting to the diversity of our readers, we would like too to express our own wish to receive more material from the various specialties that compose AACD. We see JCD as a place not only for articles having general interest but also for the very best work of the specialty areas. Yet relatively few such manuscripts are submitted to us. Because JCD is the one journal every AACD member receives, it can play an important role in helping to keep members abreast of developments in specialty

areas other than their own.

Many readers also will be pleased that the journal now stands on end more easily when shelved and that they will be able to locate specific issues by reading the spines. Although the journal was perfect bound from 1965 to 1975, the saddle-stitch binding that has characterized the journal during most of the past 14 years was adopted when the association began to publish the journal in its current size (though perfect binding was used briefly again during 1978 and 1979). Some of us had asked to return to perfect binding but were told the cost to the association would be prohibitive. We therefore would like to

express our appreciation to W. Mark Hamilton, Director of AACD's Professional Publications office, for finding a way to get us past that impasse.

Mahoney (1985) informs us that the first two scientific journals were published in 1665 and that now approximately 40,000 scientific and professional journals are published: "Depending on the estimate used, it would appear that a new article emerges at a rate of about every 30 seconds, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year" (Mahoney, 1985, p. 31). Counseling and counselingrelated journals, too, have proliferated. Among them, though, JCD is unique. Not only is it the largest-circulation counseling journal (approximately 60,000 subscribers), but it is also the oldest. It has been published continuously since 1921 under several names (see Goodyear, 1984, for a brief history). As shifts have occurred in the field during each era, the journal has responded to them through changes in title, content, and tone. These current changes constitute yet another such response.

Finally, we believe it is appropriate that the first issue of the "new JCD" contains the special issue titled "Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues in Counseling." In this way we recommit not only to professional diversity but also to personal diversity. During the past two decades issues of the journal have focused on various special populations (see, e.g., Harmon & Harker, 1989). Until now, however, there has been none devoted to gay, lesbian, and bisexual issues. Our appreciations to Guest Editors Sari Dworkin and Fernando Gutierrez for their hard work in developing an excellent response to that need.

REFERENCES

Goodyear, R.K. (1984). On our journal's evolution: Historical developments, transitions, and future directions. Journal of Counseling and Development, 63, 3-9.

Harmon, L.W., & Harker, H.E. (1989). Special issues of the Journal: Topics of interest over the years. Journal of Counseling and Development,

67, 271-273.

Mahoney, M.J. (1985). Open exchange and epistemic progress. American Psychologist, 40, 29–39.

Rodney K. Goodyear Editor

Charles D. Claiborn Associate Editor Editor-elect

s the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD) takes on a new form and depth with this issue, it also signals the evolution of the American Association for Counseling and Development as a mature and confident society of uniquely talented professionals. In my view, we have been moving toward this moment since 1921-traversing a prolonged adolescence that has shifted from conceptualization and theory to pure and applied research-to something approaching the best combination of these thrusts.

In every sense, the journal has served as the Association's barometer and historian. But it has been more than these things. More often, we've seen the profession's visions articulated on its pages in advance of their actual realization. Many of our leaders have been created here, yet others have been lost to us because we were not ready for their message. I firmly believe that the "new JCD" will achieve that ideal fusion of scholarship and professional usefulness so necessary to our members. It will do this, I am convinced, because each of its editors has suc-

ceeded in bringing us closer to the creation of the world-class publication that this journal can become.

We owe a considerable debt to those editors, from those who guided the journal's predecessor, the National Vocational Guidance Bulletin, to the stewards of The Personnel and Guidance Journal, and currently to Rodney Goodyear and Charles Claiborn. Each of these individuals took on the awesome task of balancing his own perceptions of the profession's needs during his tenure with often conflicting representations by the Association's increasingly diverse membership. The fact that our journal is now ready for this substantial transformation is testimony to their faith in its basic purpose. To that end, let me extend Descartes' dictum, "I think, therefore I am," with a more timely benediction for the new journal: "I teach, therefore I continue."

Patrick J. McDonough Executive Director

JOURNAL OF COUNSELING & DEVELOPMENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1989 VOL. 68