Abstract
The first issue of EJSS came out at the beginning of 1999. We have edited the journal together since then and the previous issue, the Special Issue on ‘The Future of Coordination of Social Security in the EU’ was the last for which we were responsible. Some time ago we decided that it was time for us to hang up our boots and to pass the editorial mantle on to a younger pair of editors. It took some time to find them and to make the necessary arrangements for a smooth transfer of responsibilities. However, we are now delighted to introduce and welcome our successors, Catherine Jacqueson and Tim Goedemé. Catherine is a well-known EU lawyer who is Professor in EU law with a special focus on EU welfare law at the University of Copenhagen, based at the Centre for Legal Studies in Welfare and Market (WELMA), while Tim Goedemé is a distinguished social researcher who is Senior Research Officer in the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) at the University of Oxford and Senior research fellow of the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp. Catherine’s current interests are in the free movement of persons within the EU, the impact of rights on citizenship, migration to the EU from third countries, Social Europe and work in the digital age while Tim’s current research focuses on the measurement of poverty, the adequacy and effectiveness of minimum income policies, and the relationships between inequality, climate change and social protection. Both have previously published in EJSS and are very highly regarded academics. We wish them well and think that, under their editorship, the journal will be in excellent hands.
The choice of a lawyer and a social scientist as our successors was not an accidental one. Although we do not intend to become ‘back-seat drivers’, we hope that EJSS will continue as a multi-disciplinary journal, publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed articles from social security lawyers and social policy experts, and the choice of Catherine and Tim as our successors is intended to secure that outcome. We hope also that EJSS will continue to adopt a broad definition of social security and that, in addition to articles on different forms of income maintenance, it will go on publishing articles on demography, inequality, poverty, disability, health and social care, employment, migration, taxation and public expenditure. However, the future direction of the journal is one for the new editors, with the advice of the editorial board, to determine.
EJSS has come a long way since it was launched in 1999. It was the brainchild of Gwen de Vries, the commissioning editor for labour law and social policy at Kluwer Law International. She conceived the idea that a specialist journal, with a focus on EU and comparative social security law and policy, would complement her expanding list of books in this area. She discussed the idea with Frans, whose Introduction to European Social Security Law was already in its second edition and invited him to become one of the editors. Frans accepted and, following up on Gwen’s suggestion that it would be better if the journal had two editors, decided to look for a social policy specialist from the UK. That search quickly led to Mike and the rest is history. We have enjoyed a very fruitful and productive collaboration over the years and hope that Catherine and Tim will have a comparable experience as co-editors.
This arrangement worked very well for us but, after four years, Kluwer decided to rationalise its activities and to concentrate on particular areas of law. At this point, we contacted Intersentia, a publisher based in Belgium specialising in Dutch-language schoolbooks and business studies titles that had started to publish law books in the English-language for the international market. From 2003 EJSS was published by Intersentia for 14 years and we enjoyed a very cordial and supportive relationship with its publisher, Kris Moeremans. One recurrent problem, for which we were unable to find a solution, was the difficulty EJSS experienced, as a ‘stand-alone’ journal, in increasing the number of subscribers. Especially after the financial crisis of 2008, libraries were short of cash and were increasingly only prepared to take out a subscription to a new journal in place of an existing subscription. Many of the larger publishers were, by this stage, marketing large numbers of journals on a single ‘platform’ and libraries that subscribed to this platform could provide electronic access to all the journals on the platform for a single subscription. Unfortunately, Intersentia did not publish enough journals to launch an attractive platform of its own and, in 2017, it sold most of its English-language journals to the multi-national publisher SAGE Publishing. This was very advantageous for EJSS because all the subscribers to the SAGE platform now have access to it. Managerial responsibility for the journal now lies with the publisher’s editorial offices in London.
As of now, the journal attracts a healthy number of interesting and high-quality submissions, the peer review system is working well, and the book review editor has set up a vibrant network of reviewers. The journal publishes original and stimulating articles on a wide range of topics. In addition to that, each issue contains an up-to-date account of CJEU and ECtHR case law and several reviews of recently published books. Of course, there is considerable scope for further developments, but we think we are leaving the journal in pretty good shape. Our hope is that, under our successors, it will grow from strength to strength.