I feel that the intent of my email has been misunderstood. The essence of what I wrote is that the themed format (=special issues) should not be abandoned. Of course, that doesn't mean that I am against experimenting with other ideas in parallel with the existing format. So, in other words, it would be more accurate to say that I don't object to what you propose, as long as we find a way to keep the themed format. And as it has already been mentioned in this thread, perhaps we could do that by dividing the website into two content areas: one for policy papers, the other basically for "more conventional" research papers. What do you think? Would that make sense?  

On a related note, I had a chat with Vasilis today about this and we both feel that the main problem with the existing model of JoPP comes down to our lack of accreditation, inclusion in databases, etc. If we could do something about that, the JoPP would become much more attractive to young researchers and we think that this, more than anything else, is the key to its future success. I know we've talked about that in the past and I know that what I propose is easier said than done, but I think we might need to look at it again. What do you all think? Is that something worth re-trying? Needless to say, if others think that this is something that makes sense for us to do, Vasilis and I would be more than happy to "get our hands dirty" with it :-)