New Grant, Community Support & Journal Comeback (HEN Editorial 346)

The latest Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter high­lights new fun­ding for a doc­to­ral pro­gram, strong com­mu­nity enga­ge­ment, and the exci­ting revi­val of a key jour­nal. Enjoy the posi­tive developments!

In a world at the brink of dark­ness, the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter is a bea­con of hope – or at least that is what I tell mys­elf to get me going wri­ting edi­to­ri­als on weekends 😁. Howe­ver, in my impres­sion this issue truly lives up to this spi­rit as it is full of good news – so lis­ten out and enjoy rea­ding what follows:

For one, I am super-happy to announce that we mana­ged to acquire funds for ano­ther round of our doc­to­ral school in poli­ti­cal eco­nomy and hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics at the Insti­tute for Socio-Eco­no­mics at Uni­ver­sity of Duis­burg-Essen, one of the insti­tu­tio­nal homes of the News­let­ter. While our first cohort in this doc­to­ral school focu­sed on the „The Poli­ti­cal Eco­nomy of Ine­qua­lity“, the second cohort will now be devo­ted to the „Poli­ti­cal Eco­nomy of Socio-Eco­lo­gi­cal Trans­for­ma­tion“. Many thanks go out to my dear col­le­agues, who hel­ped win this grant (spe­ci­fi­cally: Miriam Rehm, Till van Tre­eck, Achim Tru­ger, Ute Klam­mer and Paul Marx 🎉) as well as to Hans Böck­ler Foun­da­tion for pro­vi­ding such kind of fun­ding in the first place.

For ano­ther, I am equally ‑happy to report that we got much response to the call for sup­port rela­ted to Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter its­elf that was published in our last issue’s edi­to­rial. We recei­ved many decla­ra­ti­ons of inte­rest for both, beco­ming mem­bers in our newly crea­ted asso­cia­tion (that is dedi­ca­ted to sup­port HEN’s acti­vi­ties – write us, if you want to jump in) as well as for vol­un­tee­ring to con­tri­bute to the Newsletter’s pro­duc­tion and editing pro­cess. While we will need some time to pro­cess all this input, the see­mingly uncon­di­tio­nal wave of sup­port (+ many kind words) that rea­ched our edi­to­rial office is likely to give our efforts ano­ther push 😎.

Moreo­ver, I am indeed enthu­si­a­stic to report about a great come­back: as you might remem­ber, a little more than a year ago I repor­ted about the sad case of the Jour­nal of Eco­no­mic Sur­veys that fell to the prey of its once repu­ta­ble publisher Wiley, which impo­sed edi­to­rial chan­ges that threa­tened to dete­rio­rate the journal’s over­all qua­lity (see here). Back then this led to the resi­gna­tion of the main edi­tors, who were skep­ti­cal about the publisher’s push to increase publi­shing char­ges by rai­sing the num­ber of published papers. Howe­ver, one of those prin­ci­pled edi­tors, Roberto Vene­ziani from Queen Mary Uni­ver­sity, recently infor­med me that there will be a „come­back in spi­rit“ with the launch of the jour­nal Reviews of Eco­no­mic Lite­ra­ture, which is dedi­ca­ted to pro­vide reviews and sur­veys on eco­no­mic issues inclu­ding those writ­ten from a hete­ro­dox per­spec­tive or con­side­ring hete­ro­dox con­tri­bu­ti­ons. Moreo­ver, Reviews of Eco­no­mic Lite­ra­ture is a Dia­mond Open Access jour­nal (aka it comes wit­hout fees for aut­hors or rea­ders) published by Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, which is really, really neat. Con­grats on all peo­ple invol­ved mana­ging this incre­di­ble turn of events 🚀.

Com­pa­ra­tively less important, but still neat is the fact that we have an update for the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics Direc­tory sche­du­led – if you have any addi­ti­ons or cor­rec­tions you want us to imple­ment, please let us know so by August 10 via this email.

Finally, after more than decade of editing I found that our fan­ta­stic back-end sys­tem even mana­ges to pro­cess emo­jis 🤩. I am very enthu­si­a­stic about this fact per­so­nally and this will be, offi­ci­ally, the first HEN-edi­to­rial that includes emo­jis. At this point I am not sure, whe­ther this is really an impro­ve­ment, but for today I am glad to have dis­co­vered this essen­tial feature 😂😬.

With 💖 and all the best,