Scholarly contribution between science and art

Abstract

A distinctive feature of Socio-Economic Review (SER) is the diversity of its readers, who span multiple disciplines, countries and intellectual traditions. In my interactions with co-editors, authors and reviewers of SER, I have come to more deeply appreciate this as a valuable asset, but also a responsibility. Consistent with this mission, SER seeks scholarly articles that make excellent contributions to their home disciplines, but also speak in varying degrees to our broader audience who come from different disciplines, sub-fields and areas of empirical expertise. In this sense, SER may be considered a generalist journal in that it aims to highlight the very best work coming from diverse areas of inquiry, but also present this work in a way that is interesting for our unique multi-disciplinary readership. Academic work generates interest across scholarly boundaries when it makes a clear and decisive contribution to knowledge, showing something that we did not know before. Interesting scholarship can thus grow from many different sources: theoretical contributions that problematize or extend existing concepts, or that contextualize and historicize these concepts in ways that improve their application; empirical contributions that help resolve conflicting findings or chart the contours of new and interesting phenomena, particularly ones that have high salience for socio-economic welfare of individuals, organizations and societies; methodological contributions that pioneer new forms of data collection, measurement or ways of assessing relationships among empirical phenomena; reflexive contributions that challenge simplistic normative assumptions or ideologically-driven arguments in the academic, public policy or business fields in ways that improve understanding or practical application to solving social problems.