Labor History Editor's Statement
On behalf of myself and the emerging editorial board, I'd like to welcome you to the new Labor History. As many of you are aware, when the old editorial board departed last spring, a diverse and eminent team of labor scholars quickly joined hands to take control of this prestigious journal's destiny. Many of the former editorial board members are our friends and colleagues. All of them are scholars whose work we use and respect. We look forward to reinforcing one another's efforts to revitalize a scholarly field we all believe to have unacknowledged importance and unrealized potential.
Labor History has been the pre-eminent journal in its field for the past forty-four years, and unlike many journals it is ISI-ranked, but only by continuous improvement will the journal maintain its vaunted status and keep pace with an ever-changing field. Those of us who have assumed responsibility for the journal represent a wide array of disciplines and interests, yet all of us were drawn together by a new and expansive vision of what the journal, and thus the field it serves, might become. We want you to know about the exciting changes taking place at Labor History in the hope that you will be as enthusiastic about our new direction as we are. We want you to join us as readers and contributors.
Fully aware of the journal's rich tradition of scholarship, we nevertheless believe the time has arrived for a bold shift toward a more ecumenical, inclusive approach to the journal and the discipline. Toward that end I am gathering around me a stellar editorial board representing all disciplines in which labor is studied historically. All of us are committed to establishing a journal that embraces history, economics, industrial relations, labor law, business studies, historical sociology, political science, comparative studies, social movement theory, and other fields. We at Labor History believe that labor historians need and want to be informed about the latest scholarship in disciplines like labor economics and industrial relations to broaden their own teaching and writing. We are also committed to expanding the geographical scope of the journal to include articles on labor from around the world in an effort to combat the parochial tendencies of American labor scholarship. And we have launched this new Labor History with the conviction that our journal can serve as the forum in which all scholarship on labor, hitherto fragmented in various journals and disciplines can be shared in a way that will reinvigorate the entire field of historical labor studies.
We have embarked on an exciting and important adventure, and we'd like you to share our enthusiasm and become part of the new Labor History circle. We need your support as readers, but we also need you to spread the word about our project so that we can attract and publish higher quality articles from as many perspectives as possible. For years, those in the humanities and social sciences have complained about the narrow parameters of their subfields, the absence of truly stimulating debate, or the impossibility of keeping abreast of developments in related disciplines. The new Labor History is a bold endeavor to challenge these dispiriting trends and serve as the flagship of historical labor studies, broadly defined. Please join us and play a role in revitalizing the study of labor.
We are presently seeking high quality article submissions in labor history regardless of discipline or geographical focus. Submissions may be sent electronically to my email address.
Thank you,
Craig Phelan
Editor
University of Wales Swansea, UK
c.l.phelan@swansea.ac.uk