Today I got an e-mail from DP Dash of the Xavier Institute of Management in India. He is editor, together with Héctor Ponce of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, of the new Journal for Research Practice. The journal has all the usual trappings such as peer review and an international editorial advisory board (including, I notice, action research guru Bob Dick). It is also strongly transdisciplinary and committed to free, open access. Articles are published online (no sign-in required) in html as well as pdf (but unfortunately no rss feed as yet), and there is a discussion forum.
There are of course scores of “methodology” and “philosophy of science” journals out there - the one more insular and naval-gazing than the next. But this one seems more open-ended to me, more willing to explore a variety of angles on research and its connections to other knowledge-making practices. The first issue includes, amongst others, articles on “the acquisition of high quality experience”, “digital video as research practice” and “playful collaborative exploration”.
I particularly enjoyed the introductory editorial, Journey of Research Practice, which nicely sets out three different threads in the ongoing discussion about research and researchers: a philosophical thread, a sociological thread, and an institutional or political-economic thread - together with various other ways of thinking about research, such as as a space of struggle and resistance, and as a practice of freedom and self-transcendence.
It would have been nice, though, if they had included a bit more of the “back story” of how the journal came into being. I really like it that this is an initiative coming from India and South America, with strong participation from just about everywhere else (except, unfortunately, Africa), and wonder how the idea came about and how they managed to turn it into reality.
