Response to "Improving the Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research"

in his March 2010 editorial for Social Work Research, Matthew O. Howard reflected on his experiences as Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) conference chair in 2007 and offered recommendations for planning SSWR's 2011 conference. Change is vital to any healthy organization, and visionary ideas energize well-run, complex, and growing organizations like SSWR. This response addresses the suggestions that Howard advanced concerning abstract reviewer selection, the conference abstract rating process, absence of reliability and validity data for the abstract rating process, and other conference-related issues. These and other issues not identified specifically by Howard are certainly pivotal to ongoing efforts to improve the quality of the annual conference. In fact, in the past several years, the SSWR Board of Directors has addressed some of the very issues Howard raised. To strengthen the conference abstract reviewer process, SSWR has established cluster chairs who not only assign abstracts to reviewers with substantial expertise, but also recruit reviewers when necessary. In addition, beyond the annual conference, SSWR now has its own electronic journal, spearheaded by Mark Fraser at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, which provides another outlet for high-quality research. In September 2009, SSWR also began post-Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research (IASWR) initiatives to continue to offer summer institutes annually and to establish a Washington, DC, presence in order to advocate for social work research, continue to build collaborations at the federal level, and inform social workers about innovative research opportunities. ABSTRACT REVIEWER SELECTION Howard's editorial took issue with the current abstract review process, particularly the number of reviewers, their status, and the lack of recognition and remuneration for their work. Many experienced researchers opt out of the process, Howard said, because the work is not sufficiently rewarding. He proposed engaging 160 to 170 full and associate professors for the task and paying them modestly for their Work in lieu of SSWR's current use of full and associate professors (60%) and assistant professors (40%) as abstract reviewers. Presumably, experienced researchers would provide a more rigorous, valid, and reliable selection of abstracts, and senior faculty members would more readily participate if they were sufficiently well paid and recognized. Although an alternative selection process could involve paid, top-ranked people, also at issue is a discussion of the peer review process in general, whether undertaken for conference abstracts or journal articles. Peer review is largely a voluntary activity and occurs within the larger context of American academia, in which service is a component of evaluations for promotion and tenure and a vehicle for recognition for the individual and his or her university. Nationally, reviews of conference abstracts and journal manuscripts are undertaken within this framework of service. Not inconsequentially, paying members for abstract reviewing would entail significant fiscal obligation, an unwelcome burden to any organization and one that would likely result in higher conference registration fees. The question of whether assistant professors are experienced enough to review abstracts for a research conference or journal might be worthy of broader philosophical discussion. Nevertheless, the profession has widely adopted the practice, as evidenced by Social Work Research itself. Of the journal's 39 consulting editors, 10 (25.6%) are assistant professors, 16 (41.0%) are associate professors, and 12 (30.8%) are full professors. Only one is a director of research (0.02%). Finally, for SSWR, the abstract reviewer selection process has at least one other implication. SSWR was founded to "support social workers interested in research" (Williams et al. …