Abstract
We want all of you – our readers and potential contributors – to define what you mean by innovation in research methods and their uses and to have your views considered by an informed academic audience. As an open access journal, we are able to ensure rapid publication of papers once they are accepted. We look forward to receiving your contributions to the great debate on methodological innovation. Our readers will have rapid access to the very best in innovative research methods.
Methodological Innovations was originally launched in 2006 with unique commitment to new methods of social research (audio, visual and digital), the novel use of more established methods in empirical applications and the use of mixed-methods approaches that transcend the conventional and unhelpful distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods.
What does it mean to be ‘innovative’? Innovation in methods of research design, data collection and data analysis is often expected – and sometimes required – by research funders, especially the key government funding agencies and university research managers who aim to justify their expenditure under the banner of ‘innovation’. Methodological innovation is simply presented as a ‘good’ in itself. By implication, robust or otherwise demonstrably appropriate methods are seen as defunct or, at the very least, insufficient. This failure to specify what is meant by innovation leaves it open to researchers to claim innovation for their work even when they are actually repackaging older methods with merely a marginal spin: true cases of old wine in new bottles.
However, there is a great deal of genuinely innovative research underway. Indeed, rarely has there been such a period of methodological innovation in the social sciences. The possibilities of new technologies, including powerful computing and the evolution of the internet, combined with a growing interdisciplinary enthusiasm from researchers have been key factors driving this innovation. Additionally, advances in statistical techniques, survey interfaces and sophisticated qualitative data analyses have been facilitated by technological advance, but other imaginative non-traditional methods, such as auto-ethnography, visual methods and neural networks have opened up new ways of accessing the social world.
Methodological Innovations was founded with the intention of acknowledging this growth in innovation and keeping alive a discussion about the meaning of an innovation in research methods that points beyond the boundaries of conventional ‘scientific’ research. Now re-launched under the SAGE banner, the journal aims to engage with a larger and more diverse audience across the social sciences and across the globe. Indeed, its original name – Methodological Innovations Online – has now been shortened to Methodological Innovations, in recognition of the fact that the word ‘online’ no longer carries the same sense of innovation as it did in 2006. Today’s innovative methods are truly tomorrow’s conventional methods!
With this in mind, we encourage, in addition to standard articles, reflective pieces that consider the uses of particular methods or offer critical considerations of them. We also encourage comment and debate on articles already published, including comments on the comments! Please consult the archive, as well as the current issues to identify fruitful areas of debate.
We offer publication to researchers at all career stages but have established a particular submission pathway for doctoral students and early career researchers, on whom the pressure to innovate is often the greatest. We offer such researchers, if they request it, a pre-submission review by the editors, allowing the submission of draft papers with the intention of improving and enhancing the paper for eventual publication, but without prejudging the outcome of full peer review.