Celebrating Human Resource Development Review’s 20 Years of Growth

The mission of Human Resource Development Review (HRDR) is “to be the catalyst for creating more robust theory in HRD and related fields” (Holton, 2002, p. 6) and aims to accomplish its mission by publishing four basic types of articles: theory and conceptual articles, theory building research method articles, foundations of HRD articles, and integrative literature reviews (Cho, 2021a). Over the past two decades,HRDR has had seven editors (see Table 1). Although the founding editor Elwood F. Holton III and the second editor Richard J. Torraco are not around due to their retirement, we deeply appreciate their genuine efforts to establish HRDR in 2002, at a time when theory building in HRD was unheard of and untried. When they see HRDR’s current state of becoming the premier journal for theory building in HRD, they must be happy to see our two decades of growth. In celebrating HRDR’s 20 years of publication, as Editor-in-Chief (EIC), I have asked four active, former Editors to speak to what they have been most proud of regarding HRDR and the wishes they might have for HRDR’s future. Based on four former editors’ reflections on HRDR’s achievements and their wishes for the future, I am going to discuss some of the challenges we face and provide suggestions we are working on to open the door for the next decade of publication.