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Call for Rural Development Special Issue

Issue Editors

Theresa Selfa
Dr. Selfa is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Kansas State University. She has expertise in rural development, and environmental, agricultural and development sociology, with research experience in Brazil, Philippines, Europe and the US. She was a post-doctoral associate in Washington State on a project examining alternative agriculture and food systems. Recently she has conducted survey, focus group and in-depth interview research examining farmers’ environmental attitudes and behaviors toward land management in Devon, England and in Kansas. She is currently working as the lead social scientist on an interdisciplinary water quality project, funded by CSREES/USDA Conservation Effects Assessment Program, assessing impacts of farmers’ management behavior on water quality in an agricultural watershed in Central Kansas. Her work has been published in Society and Natural Resources, Environment and Planning A, and Agriculture and Human Values. She is principle investigator on a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study the social, cultural and economic impacts of the "biofuels revolution" on rural communities in Kansas and Iowa. <tselfa@ksu.edu>

Laszlo J. Kulcsár
Dr. Kulcsár is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of the Kansas Population Center. His field of expertise is social demography and regional development, with a particular emphasis on migration and spatial inequalities. He does research on population dynamics and social change in rural areas, including aging and the impact of natural resource extraction on rural demography. Dr. Kulcsár participates in the NSF EPSCOR eco-forecasting research program which ties population projections to system-level ecological and land use change and the transforming rural landscape in the Great Plains. He also studies the social and demographic transformation of Eastern Europe from a historical perspective, but with a particular emphasis on the post-socialist period. Dr. Kulcsár teaches courses on social and spatial inequalities, population dynamics, immigration and sociological methodology. <kulcsar@ksu.edu>

The Call
The Online Journal of Rural Research and Policy, a peer-reviewed web journal focused on the issues and policies of the Great Plains, is
calling for research articles addressing rural development and community sustainability. Suggested possible topics could include rural economic growth, role of natural amenities and tourism in rural areas, rural landscape and cultural heritage, natural resource extraction, community development, rural population change, bio-energy production, transmigrational integration and ethnic change, technology and rural community social structure, and the role of agriculture in rural development. These topics are examples, and acknowledging the complexity of rural development, the journal is open to papers in any area dealing with rural issues.

Empirical research articles are especially welcome, however, the journal is also interested in social capital and other traditional qualitative approaches.

Deadline for submission is October 1, 2008. Authors will be notified by November 15 of acceptance. Publication will be January 1, 2009.

Submissions policy:
We accept a manuscript for publication with the understanding that we have sole publication rights and that the work has not been published elsewhere. We support the access of research in Open Access and, as such, support the publication of all author works through electronic archives within their university, agency, or corporation.

Submissions should be sent electronically in Microsoft Word, preferably in a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file. Authors unfamiliar with RTF may contact OJRRP Editor Thomas Gould at thpgould@gmail.com for specifics.

Manuscript preparation/organization:

OJRRP encourages electronic submissions. Authors should provide

• a title, followed by
• keywords
• an abstract
• the body of the work (with notations for insertion of graphs and charts)
• en notes (Chicago Style, 15th edition, is preferred, but we do not require conversions until the work is accepted).
• associated tables and graphs (please provide these either as GIFs, JPEGs or PDFs. Again, authors unfamiliar with these formats, should contact OJRRP Editor Thomas Gould at thpgould@gmail.com for specifics).

Special Acknowledgements

The author should provide material for an identifying note. This note may include acknowledgments for financial assistance, advice, access to special materials, etc., and indicate whether the article is based on a dissertation or thesis or has been presented orally.

 Note style

Please use endnotes, rather than footnotes, and follow the Chicago Manual of Style for citation format.

Hyperlinks

OJRRP wants to provide readers with any pertinent hyperlinks to other material/information throughout the text of articles. Authors should recommend hyperlinks and indicate precisely where they are to be placed in the text. The editors will make suggestions, from time to time, of where hyperlinks might be used to extend the value of the work to readers. Authors will be consulted on the propriety of these hyperlinks. Hyperlinks should be placed after the word or phrase the author wishes to have used as the hyperlink, thusly:

The quick red fox <open> jumped <http://www.redfox.org> over the lazy brown dog.

Keywords

Authors should provide keywords to describe the research. These will be used to help researchers find the work online. At least 12 keywords are encouraged, but authors may include as many as they feel are appropriate.