In order to improve the quality of the journal and its continuity and timely publication, but also to improve communication with our readership, the journal has made a slight departure from its former formula of strictly thematic issues. Themes remain central (with thematic contributions covering some 75% of journal’s space), and this remains an important aspect of the identity of ETNOFOOR. However, 25% of journal’s space will be reserved for a new section ‘in conversation,’ and miscellanea.

The section ‘in conversation’ will be devoted to articles, essays, or comments that explicitly engage with earlier ETNOFOOR publications under a specific theme. Each thematic section thus potentially generates a conversation thread that stretches over several issues. Such conversations will be fuelled through open submission, but to ensure continuity contributions will also be solicited from relevant authors.

The renewed formula allows ETNOFOOR to reinforce the journal’s community of writers and readers (through the ongoing conversations) and to improve both the quality standard and the production process by being simultaneously more flexible and faster.

Author recruitment

To ensure and improve the quality of the articles, we will depart from the old author recruitment method that concentrated on inviting authors for special issues. Apart from specifically inviting authors, we now publish calls for papers (both thematic and general) on our website and circulate them via email networks and mailing lists. We expect this strategy to yield a larger supply of submissions and allow us to set higher quality standards.

Special interest and lay-out

In combination with the revised statement, we want to adjust form to content and diverge from the standardized text formats of most other academic journals. In the world beyond academia, style and appearance are gaining ever more importance. We will seek to bring together academic texts with evocative representation. As such, we invite authors not only to experiment with their text and to offer photographs, drawings, and the like, but also will creatively adjust the text lay-out – letter type and size, text arrangement, page set-up, etc. – to each contribution, in consultation with the author and within the limits of our means. Our website also enables links that extend textual contributions to multi-media as well.

The form arrangements continue to keep hardcopies in mind. To accommodate experiments and creativity, the new ETNOFOOR has a square format, which broadens the page size and enlarges lay-out possibilities. Each issue can be recognized by its unicoloured cover. In addition, contributions to the ‘in conversation’ section will be given a colour token in accord with the colour of thematic issue it refers to. The miscellanea will be recognizable by their uniform textual lay-out.

Public debate/publicity

ETNOFOOR’s new strategy also implies a greater emphasis on public outreach. We envision organising public seminars at the appearance of issues or to prepare issues. These meetings may be organized in cooperation with relevant partners in- or outside the academia in the form of seminars unto itself, but they might as well be workshop panels in larger conference settings. Occasionally we will invite speakers who contributed to the issue to deliver a speech about their article.