Asia-Pacific Population Journal
Second meeting of the Editorial Advisory Board held

Members of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal during its second annual meeting on 1 July.

For the second time since its establishment in March 2004, the Editorial Advisory Board of the Asia-Pacific Population Journal was convened at UNESCAP on 1 July 2005. The meeting brought together a handful of prominent population experts from the region and provided strong backing to the publication.

The Board commended the Journal’s new attractive look launched in April 2005, its growing number of e-subscribers (593 as of 25 August) as well as the proactive distribution of its promotional flyer. It suggested that the Publication be represented at various upcoming regional meetings to ensure further exposure. The Board stressed that there was considerable potential for making further use of the Journal, considering that it is distributed free of charge and available in full-text on the Internet.

A Powerpoint presentation made by Mr. Bhakta Gubhaju at the beginning of the meeting drew enthusiastic responses from the Board, which welcomed the impressive figures diplayed. Among other, the presentation highlighted the Journal’s web traffic statistics (35,000 hits a month in average in 2004) and the encouraging results of the readership survey conducted in 2004 (see Headliners No. 303). The presentation also detailed the type and country of origin of articles submitted to the publication and noted that the acceptance rate of articles submitted voluntarily is of about 30 per cent .

Mr. Giridhar, Director, UNFPA/CST, Bangkok and member of the Board expressed his satisfaction at the recent developments regarding the Journal and highlighted the fact that the publication was undeniably meeting a need in the population sphere.

Welcoming the members of the Board in her opening remarks, Ms. Thelma Kay, Chief, Emerging Social Issues Division, noted that there were many points that were noteworthy as the meeting was convened for the second time. “First, the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Journal is fast approaching and we look forward to marking this event in 2006 with the launch of a user-friendly and feature-rich CD-ROM compiling 20 years of publication of the Journal. Second, the year 2005 marks a turning point in the history of the Journal as numerous changes are being introduced”, she said, mentioning the new look, new column (Viewpoint) and new periodicity(three times a year).

APPJ’s attractive new look The Journal is available at http://www.unescap.org/ esid/psis/population/ journal/index.asp

“The third noteworthy point is that last year’s readership survey demonstrated the very high value of the Journal to its readers…”, she said, adding that the year 2005 was a year of renaissance for the publication as one had lived through a challenging period at the end of 2004 and experienced very serious concern for the Journal’s future.

“Luckily we survived this turmoil. Now we should strive twice as hard to bring out the very best of research articles on population and development issues relevant to the Asian and Pacific region, reaching out to an ever increasing number of readers, decision- and policy makers and gaining more and more credibility and popularity”, she said.