Peter Weingart, of the Institute of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Bielefeld and one of the world’s leading science policy scholars, has taken over the editorship of the journal Minerva. He writes in an editorial essay:

Like my predecessors I see Minerva’s terms of reference broadly concerned with science, technology, higher education and the policies addressing them. The specialization that has afflicted this area of study has two facets. One is that scholarship has become more professional. The other, however, is that many writings in science studies have become inward looking to the point of being trivial. It is particularly evident that both science policy and economic perspectives have been neglected. The obvious task is to maintain and even strengthen the professional quality of the work while at the same time (re-)opening the perspective of science studies. This means explicitly linking historical, sociological, economic, political and philosophical reflection of scientific knowledge production, empirical analysis of the interaction between political and legal institutions that shape knowledge production and are constantly shaped by it. Every author should ask her/himself when submitting an article to whom is it interesting and why. If the answer is: ‘to the few colleagues working on the same or similar topic’, one of the more specialized journals may be better suited than Minerva. Minerva should be the forum where, based on professional scholarship, broader issues of science and higher education should be raised and debated, whether they be theoretical or political. The framing of these issues should not be dictated by the borderlines of disciplines but by the question regarding which kind of knowledge is needed in order to promote the discussion.

Science and technology policy scholars should consider Minerva as an outlet for their research publications.