Abstract
In January 2018 we have taken on the responsibility as the editors of JESP. During the decade-long editorship of Jochen Clasen and Traute Meyer, JESP has become the globally leading journal in the field of (comparative) social policy research. As members of the social policy community and as authors of the journal we are immensely grateful for their stewardship during the past decade and their acceptance of becoming Honorary Editorial Board Members of the journal. Following in the footsteps of Jochen and Traute in the coming years will be a great challenge, but we hope that we will be able to build on their success and provide a good service to the community. We also acknowledge the committed contribution by Daniel Clegg for his work as Book Review Editor and Alessio Bertolini for his excellent work as Editorial Assistant.
We thank the Editorial Board for nominating and investing their confidence in us as the new editors of the journal. Also, we want to take this opportunity to welcome the new Editorial Board Members. We will seek the guidance of the Editorial Board on a regular basis and are looking forward to a good and constructive collaboration. The close relationship with ESPAnet has been very fruitful and we intend to continue the collaboration, among others in annually awarding the JESP/ESPAnet Doctoral Researcher Prize. The excellent academic reputation and the outstanding quality of research produced by JESP authors and the meticulous assessment by the peer reviewers have been fundamental for the success of JESP. We are looking forward to continue working with you.
Methodological and theoretical diversity and plurality have been great strengths of the journal over the past decade that need to be preserved. We thus encourage submissions from scholars with different theoretical and methodological approaches within the broad field of comparative social policy research, including rigorous qualitative as well as quantitative research.
We thank SAGE for increasing the number of pages available to JESP per year, allowing us to introduce three new and revamped sections. The Forum provides the opportunity to publish topical interventions and perspectives on social policy issues that are of concern for the academic community and are likely to create a lively debate within the journal of different perspectives on social policy issues. JESP Thematic Reviews will replace the book review section and offer authors the opportunity to publish longer thematic reviews on particular areas of research interest. Contributions to the Forum and JESP Thematic Reviews should normally be no longer than 4000 words. For the JESP European Briefings we invite short papers on important and topical social policy issues including latest European social trends, new legislation, analysis of new and existing European Commission initiatives and important social policy developments in individual European countries. JESP European Briefings should not exceed 2000 words. Contributions to these three sections should be submitted via the specified rubrics of the Manuscript Central platform.
We are extremely happy that we were able to recruit Dr Mikko Kuisma, Research Fellow in Comparative Public Policy at the Institute of Political Science in Tübingen and formerly Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, for the part-time post of Academic Managing Editor starting in January 2018. He will be the primary contact person liaising with authors and the publisher.