Report on Additional Society Journals (August 2007)
Report on Additional Society Journals
Richard Blundell, Lars Peter Hansen and Torsten Persson
1. The 2005 Report and Executive Committee Meeting
Following a discussion of the earlier report prepared by Lars Peter Hansen, Matthew Jackson, David Levine and Robert Porter and entitled a ‘Proposed Plan for Additional Society Journals’1, the 2005 World Congress meeting of the Executive Committee discussed the matter of New Journals. This matter was also discussed at the Fellows meeting also held at the congress. The Executive Committee noted that there was a case
for the introduction of new journals but that there were also a number of important reservations raised by some Fellows and among the membership more widely. These reservations were especially among those with research interests in econometric theory.
The Executive Committee noted the enthusiasm among many theorists about having the Econometric Society take over the new electronic journal Theoretical Economics, and expressed openness to this option. There was further discussion about the scope of a prospective second journal, with the focus being on theoretical or applied econometrics or both. However, the Executive Committee expressed its sympathy for the 2nd (or nth)
journal being from some other field than econometrics – e.g., “Quantitative Economics” broadly defined to include computational methods, quantitative assessment and substantive economic applications with a quantitative focus.
It was agreed that if new journals were to be introduced there would have to be at least two. These journals would have their own editors appointed by the Executive Committee. They would be published electronically and they would be open access. It was also agreed to solicit opinions of members about the wisdom of starting new journals to be published by the Econometric Society in specialized subfields.