Scientific debates involve academic discussions associated with topics, techniques, and even societal aspirations. Still, scientists are also concerned with the management of science. New institutional demands and opportunities enable scientists to better manage the ways in which outputs are produced and disseminated. REGION is indeed a clear example of academic answers to such new challenges and trends.

Parallel discussions and changes are also taking place in academic institutions. In 1954 Walter Isard founded the Regional Science Association. Over time the Association has changed and nowadays the organizational structure serves as an umbrella organization overseeing superregional organizations, including the European one, ERSA, which likewise, covers 19 sections.

Regional science is not only an academic discipline. Practitioners and policy makers are also involved at conferences and workshops. Meetings, such as the upcoming 2016 ERSA Congress in Vienna, are an imperative ingredient to the assignments of researchers and policy makers alike. As Borghans et al. (2010, p. 868) point out, conferences “provide the possibility to acquire feedback on a paper, to get informed about the work of others, and to talk to colleagues to exchange ideas. A relaxed atmosphere and being away from the office can promote creativity”.

Nevertheless, discussions are not only taking place in shared physical spaces. They are also occurring in the literature, particularly in journals, newsletters and in electronic media. In our first Editorial we briefly reviewed several historical papers addressing the state of the art of Regional Science as a discipline. The third volume of REGION picks up the baton and presents a Manifesto proposing the creation of a new think-tank platform – the Regional Science Academy. We are proud to publish such an outcome, for it presents REGION as an environment that houses and promotes such discourse. In this line, we will be pleased to publish reactions to the Manifesto in the future.

The journal is in excellent shape, with several Special Issues in preparation, receiving high quality submissions and waiting for new ones. We take this opportunity to thank Roberto Patuelli for his excellent service to REGION as Managing Editor in the last two years. He took over the responsibility and difficult mission of launching a new journal. The Editorial Team in an optic of shared responsibility continues this task, pursuing with haste the inclusion of this journal in to the most prestigious indexing platforms. We are proud of our journal and want the world to know that Regional Science now has an open-access publication with the highest standards for quality.

References