A proudly niche journal

Abstract

A proudly niche journal"Social', 'research', 'data' and 'analysis': if we had wanted to choose our own words to describe what the BMS is about, we would probably not have done otherwise. For that is what we aim to publish in this journal, which Karl van Meter entrusted to us five years ago: articles in which our colleagues report on the way they construct and analyse data in order to better question what is at stake in the social world. And to do this, as this word cloud indicates, all methods are good: qualitative, quantitative, mixed, through observation, questionnaires -standardised or not -or by collecting data that are already there, which have become increasingly digitalised. Whatever the methods, all paths lead to a renewed questioning of the world around us, as long as reflexivity lights the way and, one might add, that the road is paved with a minimal form of comparison, primary or secondary.To take stock of our five years of commitment to the BMS, we have gone through the 18 editorials published since 2018. As these short texts underline, our editorial Figure 1. Word cloud based on keywords from BMS articles 2018-2022.

Mission: go-between

“…For BMS to continue to fulfil its vocation as a go-between between different scientific traditions, it is essential the journal continues to receive and publish articles in English from different parts of the world. However, the number of submissions corresponding to the journal’s scientific criteria (which we detailed a year ago in another editorial: “A proudly niche journal”, Duchesne et al, 2023) sometimes slows down, and we find it difficult to ensure parity of French and English texts in the next issue. In fact, this is what led us to this double issue: three months ago, we did not have enough English-language articles ready for publication to bring out issue 161.…”