Challenges and opportunities for Qualitative Social Work: An inaugural perspective

Abstract

Making a decision to take on the co-editorship of QSW has required some serious consideration. Although the founding editors and more recently Karen Staller have established an excellent international journal with a resoundingly positive reputation, there are challenges ahead for academic publishing that are yet to be fully realised. As Stanley Witkin (2013) described in a recent issue of QSW (and putting difficult conversations aside), academic scholarship and publishing are characterised by an ‘ever accelerating pace of change’ (p.730). The combination of changes and rapidity with which they are occurring do indeed create uncertain times for the new editorial team. The most obvious challenge stems from an increasingly competitive global academic market that undoubtedly consolidates the position of mainstream, high-impact journals, but threatens those that are smaller and more specialist. As universities and their scholars are measured and ranked in line with competitive corporate agendas, academic identities and priorities are accordingly shaped. By way of inaugural confession, I should disclose that following my recent appointment to a post within the Faculty of Medicine and Human Sciences at the University of Manchester, a first priority was to send a short article to the British Medical Journal! Thus, we all succumb in different ways to altered conditions that appear to shape our publishing choices. Linked to global competitiveness is the shift towards Open Access publishing. Many academics have been firm supporters of the principle that peer-reviewed work should be made freely available, but this shift has a dark side where article-processing fees are required. At present, a mixed economy of Green (e.g. author self-archives in university repositories) and Gold Open Access options enables something of a level playing field. QSW’s current position includes inter alia, that authors can post the final version of an article accepted for publication on any non-commercial repository or website, 12 months after publication. Qualitative Social Work 2014, Vol. 13(3) 329–334 ! The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1473325014530939 qsw.sagepub.com