Editorial Policy
Mission
Future Directions in Socio-economics Research is dedicated to bringing attention to the work of young, early-career scholars. We aim to showcase emerging topics in socio-economics, provide a forum for academic job market candidates, review recent books on the cutting edge of socio-economic research, and profile some of the leading figures in the socio-economics community through in-depth interviews.
Contributors
We publish 9-12 entries a year, around once a month. The current and past blog editors are the primary contributors. Members of the editorial team rotate each year, primarily recruiting from the SASE Early Career Workshop participants. Occasionally we also publish unsolicited contributions from early career scholars, approximately 5 per year. As the blog’s central aim is to showcase the work of early-career researchers, external contributors should also be early-career scholars, with preference for doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers.
Style and audience
The members and supporters of SASE are the blog’s primary audience, representing an interdisciplinary scholarly community. Contributors should therefore aim to write for a broad, generalist scholarly readership. Broadly speaking, blog entries are analytical longreads, around 1,000-3,000 words long. The typical blog contributions are a) interviews, b) essays on recent developments in socio-economic scholarship, c) scholarly essays on current events, and d) book reviews. The blog does not publish academic journal articles, direct summaries of published papers, or dissertation excerpts.
We prefer clear and concise style, with short and readable sentences. Contributions should not use in-text citations; if necessary, we suggest using links or endnotes to refer to other works. When submitting your article, please include a brief, one sentence lead. We also suggest highlighting the most important sentences, 1-3 sentences per page, these will be pulled out as text quotes to facilitate easy reading.
Interviews
We publish interviews with leading or rising scholars in the field of social-economics. The purpose of these interviews can either be to promote fresh work in the field (preferably by early-career researchers), commemorating and celebrating relevant events, as well as elaborating on the work agenda of new SASE officers or SER editors, to name a few. The interviews are primarily conducted by the blog editors, but outside contributors are also welcome. We prefer the interviews to be written in a less mechanical, more colloquial style.
Essays on developments in socio-economic scholarship
We publish pieces that address the main issues raised by the literature in the study of socio-economics. These short articles set out new research questions based on classical theories and their adaptation to the new challenges present in socio-economics. These contributions have an analytical approach from an academic point of view and should be both formal and accessible to a wide audience.
Essays on current events
We publish pieces that are on recent or ongoing events and public debates that could generate new socio-economic research and be attractive to the broader socio-economic community. These pieces can use public information (such as publicly available data, newspaper articles, even twitter posts) to inform the audience of the event or debate, while also discussing their connections with existing socio-economic scholarship through references to academic works. Therefore, these pieces should both inform and start an academic conversation.
Book reviews
We are primarily interested in reviews of recently published books dealing with socio-economic topics. Book reviews should not only summarize the book’s highlights, but also evaluate the book’s contributions, strengths, and weaknesses. Ideally, reviews should also contextualize the book in the relevant academic and public debates, with a special view to the relevant socio-economic scholarship.