Editorial

Citation

French, N. (2002), "Editorial", Journal of Property Investment & Finance, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpif.2002.11220aaa.001

Editorial

Over the last year I have been fortunate enough to be invited to tour the length and breadth of the UK presenting a one-hour lecture entitled "Briefing 2001; a valuation update". This lecture forms a part of a whole day of presentations with colleagues from the construction industry; the legal profession and the planning profession providing similar updates on their own subject areas. In total the attendance has been in the region of 5,000 delegates over the last 12-month period and of these some 70 per cent have been chartered surveyors involved in valuation work.

The reason I mention this is that the audiences at these conferences are very different from the delegates that attend the academic conferences to which I referred in my last editorial. Both groups are equally committed to addressing the issues that are pertinent to them, but unfortunately those issues are very different for the two groups.

Understandably, the valuers at the professional conferences are looking for material that is immediate. They want the work and research that is being presented to them to be in a form that they can apply directly to their own experiences. Similarly, the valuer in (say) Macclesfield has a completely different view of the world to the valuer from London, and both these groups have a different view again to the academic valuer (appraiser) from the USA or Australia.

The academics, however, have the luxury of being detached from the pressures of the real world and often concentrate upon subjects which are interesting, but not, in the opinion of many, directly applicable in any way. The practitioner audience often fails to see the importance of research that is more conceptual in nature; unless there is an apparent immediate application the work is often dismissed as being irrelevant. As a result, the academics are often seen to be peripheral to the profession.

I am sure that my observation of the different groupings and their differing requirements is nothing new and that in the past other commentators will have drawn the same conclusion. However, I do feel that the divide today is wider. In the academic world we are "rewarded" for publishing papers in academic journals, indeed, articles in "professional journals" or "trade magazines" are discounted when determining the worthiness of our academic credentials.

Yet, obtusely, we all desire for our academic research to be widely recognised and useful. To do this we need to make our work more accessible to the profession.

Some of the "academic" societies are broadening their member base to include practitioners (this is particularly true of the European Real Estate Society (ERES) and her sister organisations) but ultimately it is down to us as individuals to ensure that our work is disseminated to as wide an audience as possible in the most appropriate manner.

In some small way we hope that the Journal of Property Investment & Finance helps in this process. Our readership is predominantly practitioners and yet the papers that we publish are almost exclusively written by academics. It is only by encouraging debate and the exchange of ideas between the two groups that we will realise that common goals do in fact exist and can be met by working together.

Nick French