INFORMS Open Forum

50th Anniversary Special Issue of Technological Forecasting & Social Change

  • 1.  50th Anniversary Special Issue of Technological Forecasting & Social Change

    Posted 02-09-2019 15:52

    50th Anniversary Special Issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change (TF&SC)

    Call for Papers


    Posted by U. N. Umesh


    The year 1969 was prominent for mankind's landing on the moon, and the technological advances that allowed that momentous event to happen. These advances gave the impetus for the launching of the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change. The first few volumes had articles from prominent individuals not only from Academia but also Science and Industry. The Nobel Laureate Denis Gabor of United Kingdom wrote on normative forecasting in the first issue. Other prominent contributors in the early years hailed from many countries, providing an International flavor to this journal.

     

    The year 2019 marks the 50th Anniversary of Technological Forecasting & Social Change. A 50th Anniversary issue will highlight the progress in the field in the last 50 years and what we can expect going forward. Our publisher, Elsevier, has agreed to make this particular issue Open Access. Authors of accepted articles will benefit from the extensive citations generated by Open Access issues of prominent journals.

     

    One emphasis will be on all the prominent work of the last 50 years in many dimensions of Technology, Forecasting and Social Change. There will also be emphasis on what we can forecast for the future, particularly based on the forecasting expertise gained in the last 50 years. Submissions are expected to have a broader impact and focus than research that focusses on one study forecasting one product or one social change. Review papers and meta-analyses are particularly welcome. Authors are encouraged to provide guidelines for future research at the end of each submission, justified by the value to society of progress in the last 50 years in this area. Both forecasts and challenges in the future are further areas of interest particularly in the areas of new and evolving methodologies.

     

    A suggested but non-exhaustive list of topics for the Special Issue:

     

    Analyses of Outstanding Papers of the Year – some common threads and their impacts. 


    What are the most important topics and methods in the last 50 years and why? 


    Meta-analysis of papers published in the journal in the last 50 years. 


    Review article of a key area in Technological Forecasting and Social Change including ideas for future research. 


    Major technologies of the future, and their impact on society (justification needed). 


    Techniques for forecasting that will work well in future due to changes in technology that assist these methods. 


    How has the journal, and the field in which the journal is based, evolved over the last 50 years? 


    A comparison of alternative methods of forecasting. 


    Short comments by the original authors of historical papers, particularly by authors of articles in the early issues. 


    Perspective pieces or interviews with prominent persons who are not in the population of customary TF&SC authors. 


    Profiles of pioneers and highly prominent thought leaders in our field.


    Authors must justify their contribution based on multiple factors – Importance of the problem, Quality of the approach, and Progress towards solution of the problem. Why is the area important and how will it impact social change in future? Multiple methods of evaluation are important, as they will demonstrate convergent validity: for example, recommendations of experts and peer review, traditional Scientometrics to track the number of citations, and Altmetrics.

     

    Submission deadline: March 1st, 2019 (extended by two weeks). Manuscripts should be submitted via the standard TF&SC electronic submission process, at https://www.evise.com/profile/#/TFS/login. A covering letter should be included that indicates that the paper is to be considered for inclusion in the 50th Anniversary Special Issue, and authors should be sure to tick the box in Evise that indicates the same. The editors are happy to give pre-submission guidance by e-mail as to whether a paper's content is, in principle, appropriate for the special issue.

     

    The Special Issue will be released in 2019 as it will be 50 years from the inception of the journal. So please keep the submission deadline in mind and attempt to submit your research as early as possible, preferably well before the deadline, to allow enough time for the review steps.

     

    https://www.journals.elsevier.com/technological-forecasting-and-social-change/announcements/tfsc-announcement-of-50th-anniversary-issue

    CiteScore: 3.42 ℹ CiteScore: 2017: 3.420 CiteScore measures the average citations received per document published in this title. CiteScore values are based on citation counts in a given year (e.g. 2015) to documents published in three previous calendar years (e.g. 2012 – 14), divided by the number of documents in these three previous years (e.g. 2012 – 14).

     

    Co-editors for the special issue

     

    Fred Phillips

    Professor, University of New Mexico

    Visiting Professor, Stony Brook University – State University of New York

    Visiting Scientist, Chinese Academy of Sciences

    Editor-in-Chief, Technological Forecasting & Social Change

     

    U. N. Umesh

    Professor of Marketing

    Carson College of Business

    Washington State University

    E-mail address: umesh@wsu.edu