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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission fits the scope of FQS.
  • Pls. make sure you used our template and the text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Manuscript Guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published nor is planned for publishing elsewhere. Otherwise please contact the Editor before submitting.
  • In the case of submissions resulting e.g., from PhD studies, we usually only accept single authorship. Supervisors might be acknowledged in the article after a submission has been accepted for publishing.
  • Please avoid self-plagiarism by correctly quoting and citing your own work published elsewhere.
  • It is the responsibility of the author, not of FQS, to obtain permission to use any previously published and/or copyrighted material, and to acknowledge the respective source in the article accordingly.
  • Avoid gender bias, see the APA recommendations for Bias-Free Language.
  • Please rely systematically on discussions, already published in FQS.
  • Pls. make sure to avoid anthropomorphisms for clarity (APA 6, sec. 3.09 "Precision and Clarity," p. 69); not articles or studies, but researchers/authors describe, analyze, discuss, etc.
  • Please use the past tense when discussing other authors' work (APA 6, 3.18 "Verbs," p.78).
  • Texts from non-native speakers should be thoroughly proof-read by a native speaker before submitting.
  • In the case of multiple authorship, pls. make sure to provide full metadata for each author while submitting.

Author Guidelines

Before submitting, please ensure that you used the template provided below and followed the FQS guidelines. This is absolutely necessary as it minimizes the workload and increases the turnaround period. The guidelines partly follow the conventions of the American Psychological Association; please take a look at previous contributions.

Anonymization

To open peer review, please make sure to fully anonymize the manuscript before submitting. This concerns author names as well as other information that might allow reviewers to identify you.

If a manuscript has been accepted for publishing, we will ask to de-anonymize the file by providing author names and references as well as acknowledgments if you wish.

Templates

Please use one of the following templates while writing your text:

 

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Article

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Review

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Review Essay

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Conference Report

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Conference Essay

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Download the template to your computer and use the locally saved version while writing.

Please format the text by exclusively using FQS styles: Chose "Styles and Formatting" to see the FQS styles, displayed in the list on the right side and starting with "FQS." To assign a format e.g., to a paragraph, click the respective paragraph and "FQSText" in the right menu afterwards.

Save the file in Word ".docx" format.

Please send us an e-mail if you have any questions.

Single Contributions

Single contributions can be submitted at any point in time. We are interested in reports from empirical studies and in contributions, dealing with the theory, methodology and application of qualitative research. Innovative ways of thinking, writing, researching and presenting are especially welcome.

For reports from empirical research, design and methods must be introduced in a way readers are able to understand how the results had been generated, i.e., authors should describe why they decided on the respective sampling, data collection, and data analysis method, and how the methods had been used in the research process. Authors are additionally encouraged to provide data as well as more detailed information about the research process; e.g., field notes or details of coding procedures in the case of grounded theory methodology. If data, lengthy transcript excerpts, etc. are provided, then it is necessary to assure the editors that data protection/privacy standards have been adhered to

Before submitting, please visit the Submission Preparation Checklist.

FQS Interviews

With FQS 5(3), published in September 2004 we opened the rubric FQS Interviews. In this rubric we publish interviews with individuals engaged in qualitative research, as FQS aims to contribute to a vivid and transparent exchange beyond disciplinary/national frontiers.

You are cordially invited to recommend possible interviewees or to realize an interview after consulting the Section Editors: Günter Mey, Robert Faux.

Before submitting, please visit the Submission Preparation Checklist.

FQS Reviews

In FQS Reviews we publish reviews of books, book series, films, CD-ROMS and on-line journals that contribute  areas neglected by today's journal market. FQS is an international and interdisciplinary forum that supports the ideal of lively, enthusiastic, and discursive social sciences, fueled by discussion and debate. Therefore, the goal of FQS Reviews is not only to inform about new publications, but also to ignite dialog among researchers in the wider field of qualitative social research.

Before submitting, please visit the Submission Preparation Checklist.

Section Editors: Günter Mey, Robert Faux

FQS Conferences

In the section FQS Conferences we provide important space for reports on conferences, workshops, symposia, and meetings of working groups. The goals of FQS Conferences closely adhere to the concept of FQS. Our hope is that the conference reports will provide current information and contribute to a lively, discussion-driven social science. In regard to this, it is necessary to go beyond merely providing the dates during which a conference was held, and to meaningfully discuss the content of presentations, and the issues that may have emerged, thus allowing for the initiation of new dialogs between researchers in qualitative social research.

Before submitting, please visit the Submission Preparation Checklist.

Section Editors: Günter Mey, Robert Faux

FQS Debate: Quality of Qualitative Research

FQS Debate "Quality of Qualitative Research"

What is "good" science? What are "good" social sciences? What is "good" qualitative social research? What are the criteria and standards for such evaluations?

As far as the official discourses are concerned, the discussions about the foregoing questions have traditionally occurred in the context of theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science. In the early 20th century the idea of a "unitary science" was popular in Europe. Common methodological principles and goodness criteria for all empirical sciences had been postulated and tried to work out. But no such common basis for the specific requirements of the different disciplines was found. The traces of this tradition had a great impact on the social sciences in the "Western hemisphere"—especially since World War II. In contrast to the methods and methodologies for knowledge production in the natural sciences, hermeneutic and "qualitative" approaches were (and still are) considered less "scientific" and acceptable in the social sciences making use of statistical apparatus (with certain differences across disciplines and nations).

With the decreasing importance of the concepts of the philosophy of science (prototypically: critical rationalism) and with a stronger focus on "social relations" in science and scientific communities (e.g., in the KUHNian tradition), a new trend in the philosophy of science could be observed. Apart from goodness criteria grounded in logic and epistemology, the cognitive, social, economic, cultural, medial and historical characteristics of scientific research came into focus to ensure certainty of knowledge. It is not that these aspects did not play a role before. The prospects of practical application of knowledge in business and warfare have always strongly stimulated science, including the social sciences. Now these aspects have become part of the official discourse and object of detailed and realistic description and analysis. This has consequences for the politics of science.

In the 1970s, getting research funded by private industries was frowned upon in the West-German social sciences. Nowadays such funds are a widely accepted as proof of the quality of scientific work (projects, scientists). What scientific arguments justify this change in attitude?

The social standards for evaluating scientific knowledge production have changed considerably. Apart from a closer tie between research and "business," the publishing industry plays an important role in this context. The salient issues range from inner-scientific aspects of publishing (ranking of journals, frequency of citation, etc.) or outer-scientific resonance (in the mass media: press, television, etc.). Are these instances of and criteria for selection grounded in a scientifically justified rationality? How can one legitimize them from a scientific point of view?

The traditional methodological quality criteria of the 20th century have come under pressure from at least two different sides in the recent past:

  • The inner-scientific claims for (principally) attainable certainty of knowledge have weakened. Many received "rock-solid" ideas about the quality of scientific research have been put in perspective by recent work in the sociology of science, work that concerned the role and meaning of instruments for knowledge production, language, social contexts, discourses, epistemological subjects, etc., for our scientific knowledge. The sciences no longer aim for the "one truth," but attempt to determine the (legitimate) number of truths—or have even given up all claims for truth.
  • Scientific work is to a greater extent guided and controlled by economic and administrative interests, evaluations and corresponding institutional procedures.

Obviously, there have been major changes over the past few decades. What principles underlie the actually practiced guidelines for the evaluation and assessment of the (qualitative) social sciences? What principles should be followed? Can social scientists contribute to this question? Why is there such a (strange) widespread silence concerning these essential and basic questions? Are there no science-internal standpoints regarding the justification of standards? Or do the protagonists—competing for the allocation of resources—prefer to follow dubious (and unofficially ridiculed) administrative criteria in order not to risk their chances to "win"?

In textbooks, the positions on the quality of qualitative research in the social sciences are spread across a broad spectrum. They range from an in-principal adoption of classical canonical standards of "quantitative" research (with certain modifications and adjustments) to demands for entirely new standards. So far, however, no agreement has been reached about a new, "alternative" catalogue of criteria. New and creative ideas about scientific knowledge production have emerged following the weakening of claims about the certainty of scientific knowledge (the recent self-reflexive debate in anthropology is a good example). At the same time, this critical approach to the certainty of knowledge weakens the "political" position of qualitative research against the ("quantitative") mainstream, and disadvantages the former in the competition for material resources to do research.

This charged field about the quality of research—constituted by diverse arguments from the theory of knowledge, scientific methodology, the sociology of science and the politics of science—define the topics for our FQS debate on "Quality of Qualitative Research." Currently, the discussions about these topics seem to have become unfashionable. But this situation itself seems to be part of the problem. There exists considerable uncertainty, which arises from a sense of epistemological arbitrariness and politically charged claims about the validity of knowledge production and practical, useful and accountable solutions to existing problems.

We hope that many authors and readers will be willing to deal with these questions in a scholarly way that is characterized by self-consciousness, autonomy and reflexivity.

For questions, please contact the Section Editors: Franz Breuer, Paul Eisewicht, Margarethe Kusenbach, Jo Reichertz, Dirk vom Lehn.

Articles Published

FQS Debate: Qualitative Research and Ethics

This FQS Debate deals with ethics, which is understood, depending on the situation, as resource for action, contested field, practice, politics, and so on used to plan and enact qualitative research in a variety of settings. Of interest is a reflexive investigation of anything and everything concerning research ethics, pertaining to researchers and participants alike. Potential contributors might ask themselves, "What are the ethical dimensions of doing qualitative research with vulnerable populations?" Here, vulnerable refers to any adjective/concept used to demarcate differences along the lines of which inequity and injustice have been, and continue to be, enacted in society, including sex/gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual preference, socioeconomic status, and so on.

Other topics that may be addressed in this Debate pertain to the way in which ethics reviews are used to mediate, moderate, control etc. qualitative research in its planning, review, and execution phases. For example, one might ask, "How is ethical review employed to curtail practitioner-research?" Or: "How is ethical review employed to curtail action research that brings out injustices in the workplace?" Sometimes the ethics of intersecting activity systems overlap or collide. Thus, one might also ask questions such as, "How do professional ethics of the workplace (school, company) interact with research ethics governed by regulations of another workplace (college, university, professional governing board)?"

In this FQS Debate, the emphasis is on ethics in all its dimensions, concerning not only the relation between researchers and participants, but also the relation between researchers and their institutions, researchers and the institutions of their participants, institutions and national policies, researchers and national policies, and so on. The focus, however, should not only be the problematic areas, the malpractices so to speak, but also the attempts to enact good or best practices, such as in the training of future researchers. How does one include research ethics into the training of future researchers? How does an individual become an ethical researcher? How do practitioner-researchers resolve or integrate conflicting ethical principles?"

Authors who want to contribute to this Debate may use any genre appropriate for expressing the opinions, analyses, descriptions, etc. dealt with in the text. Of course, texts are especially strong and compelling when the genre corresponds to, reflexively elaborates, or highlights the contents—for as the Canadian communications guru Marshall McLUHAN pointed out, the medium is the message. The message of the medium and the content expressed by the medium therefore interact, and authors should feel free to choose the most appropriate genre for the message that they want to convey.

The perspectives of any stakeholder in research are welcome—including researchers, participants, research ethics board members, policy makers, lawyers, and philosophers. All of these are welcome as authors! What we want is to achieve as much elucidation of research ethics in qualitative research as possible, from as many perspectives as possible, by as many different stakeholders as possible.

For questions, please contact the Section Editor: Hella von Unger.

Articles Published

FQS Debate: Teaching and Learning Qualitative Methods

How do students in the social sciences learn (about) qualitative research methods and methodology—and how can such methods be taught? Under what conditions, in what ways, and by what means? How do students experience classes on this topic, and what do instructors think? What is the role of textbooks in this process, and how and where does a more personalized form of instruction enter the picture? What role does context play? ... It is questions of this kind that we intend to be addressed in the Debate on Teaching and Learning Qualitative Methods.

Of course there is no such thing as a or the qualitative method. Instead, we are faced with a wide range of rather heterogeneous methods and approaches that have been summarized under the heading of "qualitative." Quite plausibly there is also some heterogeneity concerning the ease with which these methods and approaches can be taught or learnt. Some methods have been standardized to a greater extent, and there exist rules for how and when they are to be applied—while others demand a greater degree of intuition and personal "artistry." And there may be variation in the extent to which the person of the researcher shapes methodical procedure and process. Taking this variation into account may in turn require specific methods of instruction, socialization procedures, and the like.

These considerations may be of special importance when it comes to teaching and learning (about) qualitative compared to quantitative methods. Do qualitative methods require a more personalized kind of instruction, a closer relationship between student and instructor (or should we say "mentor")? Is this an area where qualitative and quantitative methods differ? At least this has frequently been assumed to be the case and has in fact (from an outside perspective) been held against qualitative methods and methodology—in the sense of reproaching qualitative methods with a lack of objectivity  or reliability, and of questioning their scientific credibility and reputation.

On the other hand, empirical studies of the processes and steps involved in scientific research (in recent traditions of the sociology and ethnology of science) have shown that the practice of quantitative, natural science types of method and methodology also varies considerably with locale and lab group. Even elementary research methods may be applied in very different ways across labs. Here, too, learning about methods is clearly not achieved by reading a textbook, but (in addition) by watching an instructor and by participating in the practice of lab work. Under special circumstances, even mature researchers have shown to visit labs in other countries to learn about how to make an experiment work.

In other words, is the difference in teaching and learning (about) qualitative and quantitative research methods a difference in prejudice more than in practice? Is the difference between qualitative and quantitative "schools" in the humanities and social sciences a question not of the role and importance of personal characteristics of the researcher, but of the attention that is accorded to these personal elements in the research process and the extent to which they are reflected upon?

Learning (about) qualitative methods should not be a rite performed in secret in the close community between mentor and student! In this debate, we are concerned with laying open, bringing to attention, and discussing such procedures, concepts, and personal experience, relating them back to the various methods and approaches (qualitative "schools"), academic disciplines, institutional and curricular environments and conditions, and the like. What are the conditions under which qualitative methods are taught and studied—both inside universities and outside, in lectures, seminars, or lab projects, in mandatory or in optional classes? What are the disciplines and programs where the demand for instruction in qualitative methods can be met? How is this achieved? And where is this not the case? What do students do if no guided instruction is available in their own institutional context? How do the conditions compare across academic disciplines and internationally? Does the so-called Bologna process (i.e., the attempt to streamline institutional structures by creating comparable BA and MA programs across Europe) have an effect on the conditions under which qualitative methods are taught in the social sciences? In this, we are naming only a few of the pertinent issues.

Thus, we would herewith like to present and moderate a forum that is open to perspectives, reports, and suggestions from a variety of areas and actors—for all questions related to the area of teaching and learning (about) qualitative research methods.

For questions, please contact the Section Editors: Franz Breuer, Margrit Schreier, Nicole Weydmann.

Articles Published

FQS Debate: We Are Talking About Ourselves!

FQS Debate "We Are Talking About Ourselves! Exploring How Social Scientists Work"

Social scientists have made it their business to study the (social) lives of people and (sub-) cultures. In so doing, they do not merely investigate surface features of social representation, but instead attempt to identify deeper motivations and purposes behind those representations. To many social scientists, this uncovering of underlying patterns appears to be the pinnacle of their practice. Does this mean that society as a whole has become transparent? No! Social scientists' own practices tend to have remained in the dark. In the past, they have investigated everyone and everything, whilst the inner workings of their own practices have remained invisible. Most social scientists have stayed true to Francis BACON's dictum: "We keep silent about ourselves!" Following the previous debate on Ethnography of the Career Politics, the purpose of this debate is to reverse BACON's dictum: Of ourselves we speak!

The purpose of this debate is to examine the inner workings of social scientific practices, which are inextricably intertwined with their scientific objects (people and cultures) in the processes of knowledge production. With the emergence of the field of social studies of social sciences arising from a reflexive turn in sociology, qualitative social research as a field has begun to deliberately take a step back to bring into focus its own scientific culture, see also FQS 3(3) and FQS 4(2). This has established a line of research committed to an empirically supported reflexivity toward qualitative research activities. Some of the dynamics inherent in the social sciences have thus already been the subject of investigation, while many more remain unexplored.

In this FQS debate, we invite authors to empirically explore research activities undertaken in the social sciences, including their own. Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • How can biography and work be reconciled, i.e., how can everyday life, personal life, and scientific ambition be aligned with the demands of academia?
  • How can power situations be dealt with? What is the role of conflicts in knowledge production?
  • How are the defused or channeled conflicts in social science practice? How are positions in (informal) social processes balanced?
  • What forms of communication exist in scientific (work) environments? Are the coffee kitchen or the pub still relevant as places of encounters for social scientists?
  • How do scientists present themselves in their work? To what extent does appearance inform reputation? Can performance be critical to career opportunities?
  • What strategies are available to advance as a scientist, to attract attention, or to protect researchers? How do scientists act to fit in or mark their position? How can personal or research interests be shaped or distorted?
  • How do new modes of living—e.g., commuting or globalized careers—shape intellectual work? How is intellectual exchange organized and how does it potentially suffer when scholars travel frequently?
  • How have digitization and the ubiquity of video conferencing transformed scholarly work at home and in the office? Are (video) conferences replacing on-site reading circles and colloquia?
  • To what extent does an increasing mobility fuel professional conflicts due to non-attendance? What does it mean for the production of knowledge to face other scholars in person?

As editors of this debate we are anticipating an open and lively-critical debate in which contributors make reference to each other's contributions. We are interested (in the broadest sense) in qualitative work that draws on research traditions from the social sciences, regardless of their specific disciplinary or methodological orientation. Explorations of inter- and transdisciplinary working contexts are welcome.

Please send your contribution in FQS format or a clarifying preliminary request to: deb_explore@qualitative-research.net

Debate Editors: Franz Breuer, Thomas Etzemüller, Jo Reichertz

Articles Published

FQS Debate: We Are Talking About Ourselves!

Cultural and social scientists are interested in analyzing the lives of others. In so doing, they specifically do not limit their perspective to the surfaces, but see the pinnacle of their art in entering and illuminating the backstage of social representation. Regarding their topics, however, they have long been silent about themselves. In this new FQS Debate, which replaces the Debate on Ethnography of the Career Politics, we take up Francis BACON's much-hailed dictum but deliberately turn it around: "Of ourselves we speak!" is our motto.

The purpose of this debate is to scrutinize not only the social backstages of others but also our own. For both are inextricably linked in the processes of knowledge production. With an increasing interest in the social studies of the social sciences, a deliberate estrangement of our own scientific culture has begun more recently in the field of qualitative social research, see also FQS 3(3) and FQS 4(2). This has opened up a line of investigations dedicated to the creation of an empirically supported reflexivity in qualitative research. In this way, some of the dynamics of social and cultural science work already were made visible in qualitative social research and beyond. However, much remains in the dark.

In this FQS Debate, we, the editors, invite authors to conduct empirical explorations of cultural and social science work, including their own. We hope to see not only classic scientific-analytical articles, but also autoethnographic narratives, fictionalized reports, videos, clever polemics, graphics, and drawings; and we are open to alternative forms of presentation.

Authors may choose between two different forms of publication:

  1. Contributions in FQS format, which go through a peer-review process, and
  2. Contributions in moderated blog format. This format includes the option of anonymous authorship, which should, for example, enable the discussion of power issues in academia. It is still in preparation. We are planning to make it available in August 2021.

In both formats, we would like to see an open, lively, critical and respectful culture of debate in which the authors refer to each other. We are interested (in the broadest sense) in qualitative studies of all social and cultural science research traditions, regardless of their concrete disciplinary or methodological location. Explorations of inter- and transdisciplinary work contexts are specifically welcome.

In particular, we invite contributions in three interrelated areas of study. They are to be understood as suggestions and contributions to the debate that go beyond these are also welcome.

1. Explorations of Cultural and Social Scientific Research

The production of knowledge in the cultural and social sciences involves numerous stages, from the selection of topics, methods, and teams to the publication and reception of results. Cultural and social scientists initiate, maintain and terminate research relationships. They produce, process, interpret, share, archive, lose, and discard data. They interpret and discuss their work in research teams, reflect, write notes, memos, comments and essays, read, and edit. The list goes on. Exploring the many facets of knowledge production in detail has great potential for science studies (where the focus—until recently—was on the natural sciences), but also for cultural and social science research itself. First of all, the envisioned debate may help increase the level of reflection. It creates an empirical basis that may raise awareness for details of knowledge production in concrete research projects. Furthermore, it may make visible which aspects of cultural and social science work—that up to now have not (or not sufficiently) been reflected upon methodically and methodologically—are epistemologically effective and should therefore be subject to methodological reflection. Last but not least, a qualitative investigation of work in the cultural and social sciences also has great potential for the teaching of methods, because it shows which elements of the research process should be emphasized in the classroom—especially when they have not, or only marginally, been addressed in methodological textbooks so far.

Possible questions in this area include:

  • Who produces cultural and social scientific knowledge and how does it come about?
  • Which actors, practices, materialities, and institutional contexts are relevant?
  • In which places do cultural and social scientific knowledge emerge, and how do these geographies or architectures translate themselves into knowledge?
  • How do cultural and social scientists mobilize their extra- or preacademic resources (networks, habitus, experiences from paid or voluntary work, travel, etc.) in concrete research projects?
  • How do they reflect, justify, and use methodologically dubious but epistemologically productive dynamics and events in the research process?
  • How can we use these insights for the methodology and teaching of cultural and socio-scientific research processes?

2. Explorations of Cultural and Social Scientific Career Policies

Here we would like to stimulate self-reflection on the scientific field in regards to its dynamics, work and careers with which difficulties and with which practices do cultural and social scientists establish and assert themselves in the scientific endeavor? This also means: What does failure (which is even more concealed and hushed up) look like? What constitutes failure? What form does failure take?

  • How do social scientists align biography and business, i.e., how do they fit everyday life, life plans, partnerships and scientific ambitions into the requirements of the scientific business?
  • Which strategies of advancement, attention generation and self-protection do they choose? How do they act to indicate their own position? How do these dynamics (re-)shape one's own scientific work/interests/topic choices?
  • How do new forms of life (e.g. commuter existences or globalized careers) shape intellectual work? How is intellectual exchange organized, how does it possibly suffer when researchers constantly or often are on the road? Do (video) conferences replace the former continuity of on-site reading circles and colloquia?
  • How do cultural and social scientists deal with power situations? What role do conflicts play in the production of knowledge?
  • How do cultural and social scientists present themselves? What role does their appearance play for their own reputation? Were there situations in one's own or an observed career in which performance was decisive?
  • What role does gender, social origin and migration background play? Can language skills hinder (dialect) or promote (active English) reception?
  • What do forms of communion look like at institutes? Does the coffee kitchen and the evening pub still have meaning? How are positions in (informal) social processes balanced? How are conflicts defused, channeled, rendered civil? and Does increasing mobility possibly fuel conflicts due to non-presence?

3. Explorations of Cultural and Social Science Scholarly Communication

As authors of scientific publications, cultural and social scientists face specific writing challenges for different academic and non-academic publics. It is necessary to bring about communicative translation performances to appropriately depict which field-immanent and represent them in (scientifically) legitimate modes of presentation and argumentation. For successful scientific careers it is becoming increasingly relevant to have the competence for engaging in scientific communication that resonates in and with different public spheres. The writing process resembles a complex assembly of practices, which we want to investigate in this debate.

Although the performativity of ethnographic texts is now often cited as a quality criterion for the presentation of qualitative research results, it is not discussed in terms of concrete knowledge products such as articles in journals, ethnographic monographs, or graduate theses. In the production of various written formats, it is again up to the authors to make deliberate decisions concerning: the selection and fit of the targeted peer-review journal or other, (including non-academic) publication venues, regarding the basic textual-aesthetic composition (non-fit/fit with established standards of presentation); the choice of stylistic as well as theorizing framework; the representation of field actors in relation to the mapping of social-structural explanations; the type and extent of the thematization of the (for example ethnographic) self for the production of researcher credibility; the types of argumentative persuasion; the chosen degree of generalization; and so on.

Possible questions in this area include:

  • How do cultural and social scientists produce texts for different publics? And what role do the chosen genres/representation modes (feuilleton, interviews, storytelling, science slam, etc.) play? What resonances, relations to each other, and pitfalls can be observed?
  • Which (il-)legitimate modes of thematization and tabooing of field-involvement can be reconstructed?
  • Which topics and actors are (not) represented in cultural and social science work, for example in the field of social inequality, and why? Which social narratives are thereby potentially reproduced?
  • What do authors experience in formulating and receiving feedback regarding the ethnographic writing and reception, for example in journalistic formats, but also in peer review contexts?
  • How does the follow-up communication of different actors take shape in response to the science communication conducted?

Forms of Contributions and Modes of Participation

The qualitative investigation of cultural and social science research processes and their academic actors requires methodological self-reflexivity and distance of the investigators from their field involvements. Against this background, we facilitate participation in different genres, as outlined above.

Please send your contribution as text, video, blog entry, drawing, photograph, etc. to: Franz Breuer, Thomas EtzemüllerJo Reichertz, Wolff-Michael.

Privacy Statement

Privacy Statement

The data collected from registered and non-registered users of FQS falls within the scope of the standard functioning of peer-reviewed journals. It includes information that makes communication possible for the editorial process; it is used to inform readers about the authorship and editing of content; it enables collecting aggregated data on readership behaviors, as well as tracking geopolitical and social elements of scholarly communication.

We use this data to guide our work in publishing and improving FQS. Data that will help us in developing our publishing platform (Open Journal Systems) may be shared with its developer, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), in an anonymized and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics. The data will not be sold by FQS or PKP nor will it be used for purposes other than those stated here. The authors who publish in FQS are responsible for the data they report in their articles. Those involved in editing FQS seek to be compliant with industry standards for data privacy, including the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision for "data subject rights." The GDPR allows for the recognition of "the public interest in the availability of the data," which has a particular saliency for those involved in maintaining, with the greatest integrity possible, the public record of scholarly publishing.