Public Administration Review Journal: Scope & Access

What it is

Public Administration Review (PAR) is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed academic journal serving the fields of public administration, public policy, and public sector management. Established in autumn 1940, the journal serves as the flagship official publication of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). It is published and distributed internationally by Wiley (Blackwell Publishing) and hosted electronically on Wiley Online Library under Print ISSN 0033-3352 and Electronic ISSN 1540-6210.

The primary editorial mission of Public Administration Review is bridging scholarly research and practitioner decision-making across all tiers of public governance (what is public administration). While many specialized social science periodicals cater solely to disciplinary theoreticians, PAR explicitly integrates empirical research, administrative commentary, symposia, and analytical book reviews to inform public managers, civil service leaders, policy analysts, and university faculty.

Who runs it and what it covers

Public Administration Review operates under a joint organizational framework combining professional society governance and commercial academic distribution:

• Sponsoring Society: The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), founded in 1939 and headquartered at 1320 19th St NW, Suite 501, Washington, D.C. 20036. ASPA sets the broad organizational charter and appoints the journal’s editorial leadership.
• Publishing Partner: Wiley (Blackwell Publishing), which oversees copyediting, digital composition, worldwide distribution, subscription fulfillment, and electronic hosting on Wiley Online Library.
• Bibliographic Registry: Indexed in the National Library of Medicine (NLM Unique ID 0045715, ISO title abbreviation Public Adm Rev) and Crossref, which catalogs more than 8,835 registered digital object identifiers for the publication.

The substantive scope of the journal encompasses four interconnected pillars of public governance:

• Bureaucratic Theory and Organizational Behavior: Structural design of public agencies, administrative ethics, leadership dynamics, public employee motivation, and institutional reform.
• Public Management and Performance: Strategic planning, public budgeting, financial administration, procurement mechanisms, performance measurement, and contract management.
• Policy Implementation and Intergovernmental Relations: The operational delivery of legislative mandates, federal-state-local coordination, collaborative governance, and network management.
• Democratic Accountability and Equity: Public participation, transparency, administrative law compliance, social equity in public service delivery, and public integrity.

According to catalog data maintained by the OpenAlex scholarly registry (updated 2026), Public Administration Review has published more than 8,860 scholarly works that have garnered over 345,000 career citations, reflecting a journal h-index of 263 and a 2-year mean citedness metric of 5.45. The journal publishes six issues annually alongside periodic themed symposia dedicated to pressing public administrative challenges.

How to search or use it

Readers and contributing researchers navigate Public Administration Review through three distinct access mechanisms depending on their institutional standing and search goals:

1. ASPA Member Direct Access

Individual members of the American Society for Public Administration receive full electronic access to the journal as a primary membership benefit:

1. Navigate to the official ASPA portal at aspanet.org/publications/par.
2. Click the Member Sign-In button in the primary navigation header.
3. Enter your registered ASPA username and password on the member authentication screen.
4. Upon authentication, return to the Publications menu and select Public Administration Review (PAR).
5. Click Visit the PAR Website to transfer to Wiley Online Library with your member authorization token automatically recognized.

2. Institutional Library Authentication

Faculty, researchers, and students affiliated with subscribing universities and government research institutes access PAR content through institutional proxy networks:

1. Open your institution’s university library discovery catalog or electronic journal search engine.
2. Search for Public Administration Review or enter the electronic identifier 1540-6210.
3. Select the provider link routing to Wiley Online Library.
4. Authenticate via your institution’s Single Sign-On (SSO) gateway using Shibboleth or OpenAthens.
5. Confirm that your institution’s subscription access banner appears in the top navigation bar of the Wiley journal homepage.
6. Browse current volume contents, download full-text articles as PDF files, or export citation metadata in BibTeX, EndNote, or RIS formats.

3. Historical Archive Research

For archival research covering volumes published between 1940 and the moving-wall boundary, researchers consult digitized holdings across academic repository databases (JSTOR journals). Retrospective files enable historical analyses of mid-century administrative doctrine, wartime civil service organization, and post-war public policy development.

Strengths and limits

Understanding the operational strengths and structural limitations of Public Administration Review helps researchers position their manuscripts and identify suitable literature:

Strengths

• Unmatched Field Stature: As ASPA’s flagship publication since 1940, PAR possesses foundational prestige and extensive readership across academic departments and public agencies worldwide.
• Practitioner-Scholar Interface: Editorial guidelines encourage authors to articulate clear, actionable implications for administrative practice, preventing research from remaining purely theoretical.
• Rigorous Blind Peer Review: Submissions undergo rigorous double-blind evaluation by international disciplinary peers, maintaining methodological stringency (open peer review vs. traditional blind review).
• Broad Global Indexing: Cataloged across all major bibliographic indexes, ensuring high visibility, persistent Crossref DOIs, and digital preservation.

Limits

• Subscription Barrier: PAR operates primarily as a hybrid journal rather than a fully open-access outlet. Without an active ASPA membership or institutional subscription, full-text access requires paywalled purchase or author payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC).
• High Hybrid APC: Authors wishing to publish gold open access under Wiley’s OnlineOpen program face an APC of $4,250 USD (€3,520 EUR / £2,890 GBP), which requires substantial grant backing or dedicated institutional funding (open access publishing fund).
• Selective Acceptance Rates: High annual submission volumes yield a highly selective acceptance environment, requiring manuscripts to demonstrate exceptional theoretical and empirical rigor.
• Scope Constraints: Purely partisan political commentaries, speculative essays without systematic data, and technical laboratory management studies fall outside the journal’s editorial remit.

Alternatives

Scholars and practitioners investigating governance, public policy, and public sector management often evaluate several alternative peer-reviewed journals alongside Public Administration Review:

Journal	Sponsoring Organization	Publisher	Primary Focus and Orientation	Access Model
Public Administration Review (PAR)	American Society for Public Administration (ASPA)	Wiley	Comprehensive public administration, administrative theory, public management, and practitioner relevance.	Hybrid ($4,250 APC / Member Access)
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART)	Public Management Research Association (PMRA)	Oxford University Press	Rigorous empirical and quantitative administrative theory, organizational modeling, and methodological innovation.	Hybrid / Subscription
The American Review of Public Administration (ARPA)	ASPA Section Affiliates	SAGE Publishing	Public administration reform, public budgeting, organizational behavior, and state/local governance.	Hybrid / Subscription
Governance	IPSA Committee on Structure and Organization of Government	Wiley	Executive politics, comparative administrative systems, institutional reform, and cross-national regulation.	Hybrid / Subscription
Public Management Review (PMR)	Independent Editorial Board	Routledge (Taylor & Francis)	Public management systems, public service co-production, citizen engagement, and international delivery models.	Hybrid / Subscription

When selecting between these platforms, authors should evaluate whether their research focuses on technical quantitative modeling (well-suited to JPART), comparative international statecraft (well-suited to Governance), or bridging empirical discovery with frontline administrative application (the core strength of PAR). Authors must also evaluate their manuscript lifecycle stage (preprint vs postprint vs version of record) and ensure self-archiving compliance with funder open-access mandates.

Frequently asked questions

What is Public Administration Review?

Public Administration Review (PAR) is the flagship bi-monthly peer-reviewed scholarly journal of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), published on its behalf by Wiley. Founded in 1940, it publishes research on public administration, bureaucratic governance, public management, and administrative policy.

Is Public Administration Review a peer-reviewed journal?

Yes. All scholarly research manuscripts and symposia articles submitted to Public Administration Review undergo rigorous double-blind peer review by qualified external subject-matter experts before editorial acceptance.

Is Public Administration Review open access?

Public Administration Review is a hybrid subscription journal. While regular articles are accessible to ASPA members and subscribing institutions, authors may choose to publish open access under Wiley’s OnlineOpen model by paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) of $4,250 USD.

What are the ISSN numbers for Public Administration Review?

The print edition is registered under ISSN 0033-3352, and the electronic edition hosted on Wiley Online Library is registered under ISSN 1540-6210.

How do ASPA members access PAR online?

ASPA members log in to their account at aspanet.org, navigate to the Publications section, and select Public Administration Review. The portal provides authenticated single sign-on access to the Wiley Online Library journal platform without requiring a separate Wiley subscription.

Sources

• American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). (2026). Public Administration Review (PAR) Overview and Access. ASPA Publications. https://www.aspanet.org/publications/par (Read 2026-11-07).
• OpenAlex. (2026). Source Record: Public Administration Review (ISSN: 0033-3352). OurResearch. https://api.openalex.org/sources/issn:0033-3352 (Read 2026-11-07).
• Crossref. (2026). Journal Metadata Record: Public Administration Review (ISSN: 0033-3352, 1540-6210). Crossref Community Infrastructure. https://api.crossref.org/journals/0033-3352 (Read 2026-11-07).
• National Library of Medicine. (2026). NLM Catalog: Public Administration Review (Unique ID: 0045715). National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esummary.fcgi?db=nlmcatalog&id=45715&retmode=json (Read 2026-11-07).