Starting the 13th year of foresight

Citation

(2011), "Starting the 13th year of foresight", Foresight, Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2011.27313aaa.002

Starting the 13th year of foresight

Article Type: Editorial From: foresight, Volume 13, Issue 1

With this issue, we are starting the 13th year of the foresight journal. Having completed a dozen of years, foresight journal has improved since its launch in 1999. Recent years have witnessed that the journal has increased its performance continuously in terms of the number of users and downloads. The download rates have increased two fold over the past few years from 21,000 in 2005 to about 40,000 in 2010.

Closing the 12th year of the journal, I have conducted a network analysis of the topics and issues covered by the foresight journal starting from its first issue, and have reached a number of fascinating results, which have been visualised with the networks of topics and authors. It was interesting to see how some topics, such as innovation, moved into the centre of the networks in the late 1990s and have stayed there as a core topic ever since. The emergence of governance as a topic began as a peripheral issue in 2004 and then moved gradually towards the centre in 2005 and 2006 and became a core topic for foresight in 2008 and has stayed there since then. This is not surprising as we observe that the shift from “government” to “governance” has accelerated as the better organised society, enabled by information technologies, is more involved in more transparent and inclusive policy making processes. This trend seems be well captured by the journal. Other top topics and issues covered by the journal are Technology, Sustainable development, Globalisation and related issues, Public policy, Corporate strategy, a wide variety of foresight tools and techniques, new technology areas like Biotechnologies and Nanotechnologies, and Nuclear power at an increasing rate. I will share more detailed results of my work in a separate paper later in 2011.

2010 has been a particularly good year for foresight too due to the increased visibility of the journal across the world. As the editor of foresight, my attempts to promote the journal in new geographies have continued this year. I had an opportunity to introduce the journal in the PROSPECTA PERÚ 2010 and PROSPECTA AMÉRICA LATINA 2010 Congresses on Foresight and Future Studies on September 16-17, 2010. The events brought together Latin American Foresight experts and practitioners accompanied by international speakers. It was a great opportunity to become acquainted with the Latin American Foresight practice. I would like to thank Mr Fernando Ortega (Secretary General, CONCYTEC) for organising such an excellent forum for the dissemination of the foresight knowledge and experience, and for inviting me to the events as a keynote speaker.

With this first issue of 2011, I would like to take the opportunity to wish all the readers and contributors of foresight a very happy and productive new year. I am looking forward to editing new exciting issues of foresight on the way to designing scientifically possible, economically feasible and socially desirable futures for all.