This issue of the JHET is the first since March 2009 to be assembled by a new editor. My first published words in that role should acknowledge the excellent work of those whose shoes I would fill. Marcel Boumans and Evelyn Forget received hundreds of submissions during their five-year tenure as co-editors of the journal. By wise encouragement, judicious selection, and diligent correspondence with authors, referees, and our production team at Cambridge University Press, they assembled five volumes with too many highlights to list here. If the present editorship were to cultivate such fine contributions from varied voices I would consider it successful.
The JHET, of course, is the organ not of its editor but of a scholarly community. The History of Economics Society comprises scholars investigating myriad subjects by diverse methods. As the society’s journal, the JHET will continue to reflect that breadth. While serving as a means of scholarly communication among its members, the JHET is also a showcase of some of the best work in our field for scholars whose training and interests are largely outside of it; and, conversely, a forum for airing the ideas of scholars in adjacent fields in order to enrich ours – including science studies, policy history, economic history, and also economics. I will welcome gratefully the submission of work that may push against the boundaries of the history of economic thought, whether or not such work ultimately finds a place in the journal.
Another of the editor’s roles is to help authors, especially but not only those whose articles are accepted for publication, to improve the quality of their work for the journal’s benefit and for their own. In this role I have the invaluable assistance of the JHET’s editorial board and referees; our talented copyeditor, Patricia Sanders; my editorial assistant at Bowdoin College, Noah Finberg; and our production team at Cambridge University Press. Several of them are carrying over their work from the previous editorship. More than a few of them have been indispensable in showing me the ropes. With their assistance, I hope that the JHET’s readers will feel a good deal of continuity under the journal’s new editorship. I am sure that the continuing excellent work of our book review editor, Maria Pia Paganelli, will contribute to the same feeling.
It is a privilege to work with all of them to edit a journal which, by their efforts and those of notable others, not least Marcel Boumans and Evelyn Forget, has become one of the finest in our field.
