Celebrating our 20th Anniversary!

Abstract

This past year Advances in Social Work hit its 20th anniversary! We are proud of our legacy of being one of the first, if not the first, open access journals in social work. Looking back over our first 20 years, it is evident that we ramped up our productivity as a scholarly journal over time. In our first decade (2000-2009), we published 142 papers and offered 3 special issues. In our second decade (2010-2019), we more than doubled the number of papers published to 307 and tripled the number of special issues (n=10). Our first decade relied on the efforts of three consecutive editors (Cournoyer, Daley, Barton) and two guest editors (Adamek, Vernon). Our second decade saw the addition of an Assistant Editor (Valerie Decker), an open access technical expert (Ted Polley), a Statistical Consultant (Jieru Bai), and the contributions of 16 guest editors. We grew from 33 reviewers evaluating manuscripts in 2000 to 189 individuals from over 100 universities and institutions in 7 countries, 1 territory, and 43 states serving as reviewers in 2019. The work of Advances in Social Work is ably guided by our Editorial Board. This fall we are pleased to welcome two new editorial board members: Dr. Lauri Goldkind and Dr. Lisa Zerden from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We are looking forward to their contributions as we head into our third decade.

In this issue of Advances in Social Work we are pleased to present 10 empirical papers authored by 35 scholars who are geographically dispersed across 15 states in the U.S., Washington, DC, and Canada. Four papers touch upon various aspects of violence prevention or intervention, two papers address social work management issues, three papers focus on diversity and/or advocacy for particular populations, and the final paper shares an efficacious approach for teaching practice skills to online students.

While celebrating our first 20 years, we continue to look to the future. We are grateful for the ongoing support of Dean Tamara Davis as we endeavor to document and share emerging knowledge in the field of social work in a fully open access format. We are fully indexed in SocINDEX with Fulltext (EBSCO), Social Work Abstracts (EBSCO), and Social Services Abstracts (ProQuest) and were recently accepted into Scopus. As we forge ahead into our third decade, we commit to publishing the latest works from social work scholars around the world, addressing contemporary issues of the utmost importance to the communities we all serve. We look forward to bringing you upcoming issues of Advances in Social Work highlighting interprofessional practice and education (Summer 2020), gender inequity in the workforce (Fall 2020), and anti-racist education (Spring 2021). We welcome your suggestions for special issue topics that will help to advance social work and our causes around the globe.