About the Journal

Focus and Scope

 The international journal NOvation – Critical Studies of Innovation, was launched to contribute to the rethinking and debunking of innovation narratives in academic and practitioner fora, corporate circles, and policy-making milieus. The journal questions the current narratives of innovation and sets up a forum for discussion of the different discourses and practices of innovation, extending those interpretations beyond its virtues to also consider its implications.

NOvation publishes annual thematic issues, composed of 6-10 articles around aggregating themes proposed by Guest Editors, usually introduced by a 'positioning' paper and/or editorial note. The journal also has a section of critical reviews of referenced books in the focus and/or scope areas of innovation studies.


Statement of Aims

Putting together several scholars across at least three continents, NOvation is in itself proof of an urge to open the field of innovation studies and other interdisciplinary –and every disciplinary– areas engaged with STI discourses. New generations have been bold in internationalising their practices and contributing to a broader kind of inter-cross-disciplinary problems and interpretations. Like this, our Editorial Board is encouraging co-authorship between disciplines, promoting special issues with guest editors, in subjects that debate different areas and engage the innovation field with new and more critical generations.

We should emphasise that there is now a younger generation of researchers, more open to this view than the mainstream researchers and scholars are, frequently entrenched as the latter are in University chairs or established research institutions, whose agendas tend to be shaped according to policy agendas. In fact, from the very beginning, "innovation studies" has been a policy-oriented field. Otherwise, there are indeed many scholars who do not recognise themselves in that normative orientation, at the same time being critical of the current system of bibliometric validation and ready to publish in this Journal.

There is a need to look critically at innovation studies presented as the unavoidable path to scholars and experts and get better pictures of innovation than the one this field has been used to. This Journal questions then the current narratives of innovation and offers a forum to discuss some different interpretations of innovation, not just its virtues but also its implications.

In this sense, NO refers to the non-innovative behaviours, which are as crucial to our societies as innovation. Failures, imitation and adverse effects of innovation, to take just some examples of non-innovation or NOvation, are minimised and rarely form part of innovation theories. The following topics comprehend this journal scope of interests and critical approaches:

- Deconstructing theories and models of innovation;

- Deconstructing the discourses proposing, idealising and selling them;

- Confronting diverse ontologies of policy and development with rational innovation models and other views of officials and development agencies;

-  Not just deconstructing, but also constructing different models and proposing alternative narratives.

Besides, the areas that NOvation calls to collaborate represents an interdisciplinary field with many disciplinary and thematic affiliations – Economics and sociology of innovation, History of Science and Technology, Conceptual history, Intellectual history, Public Policy, Institutional History, etc. –, with a wide scope of methodological possibilities:

  1. Critical analyses: from and on studies of innovation, being those approaches more disciplinary or interdisciplinary;
  2. Discourse analysis: deconstructing actors' rhetoric, policy-makers frameworks and scholars' theories and argumentation;
  3. Intellectual history: documenting scholars' theories and trajectories;
  4. Conceptual accounts: studying the concepts used in the field, the travelling of concepts among fields (academic and public) and their transformation into catchwords;
  5. Case studies: helping to understand and mapping the uses of innovation and to rethink current narratives.

The critical study of innovation is essential because innovation as a word is everywhere in contemporary societies. Innovation is in the political discourses, cultural and knowledge debates, and the political economy of nowadays global economics. It is not for the sake of being against it but to make up for the lack of empirical basis that the pro-innovation bias has. We are indeed interested in understanding "why innovation is (un)important' in connection to other categories of human agency contributing to progress", or put in other words: understand 'why, where and when' innovation could be– or not be– important to progress and development of human endeavour in different contexts and regions.

Adopting a critical stance and studying innovation not from a performative place, that's our challenge to innovation studies communities across the globe. Indeed, the field of innovation studies is normative and programmatic. People like to construct new theories or visions. They are not used to historical, conceptual and critical analysis of innovation. This is what we want to build at NOvation. This journal examines those who research, study or talk about innovation, the vocabulary and the concepts used, the discourses developed (past and present), the theories constructed, the assumptions, values and ideologies behind the theories, ideas, views, etc. This why our look towards innovation is concerned (though not exclusively) with historical and genealogical aspects: in short, what is the 'originality' of the theories? To what extent do the alternatives challenge existing theories? This includes looking at the context of the emergence of the alternative theories; the origin of the alternative theories, evolution and recent developments; the goals (explicit and implicit) and rationales of the theories; conceptual and discursive aspects – namely, to identify precursor terms and to study a particular semantic field. In sum, our contribution at NOvation is anchored on the assumption that it has become vital to our contemporary legibility to scrutinise the discourses held in the name of, or uses of, the theories (in the academic community, among practitioners and/or policymakers). This is to unveil the normativeness of those discourses or theories: what role do values and policy play in the new narratives? That is to study the politics and ideology of innovation. (Godin, 2019; Godin et al., 2021)

Benoît Godin (NOvation founder)

Tiago Brandão (Managing Editor)

References

GODIN, B. (2019). The Invention of Technological Innovation: Languages, Discourses and Ideology in Historical Perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/the-invention-of-technological-innovation

GODIN, B., GAGLIO, G, VINCK, D. (Eds.) (2021). Handbook on Alternative Theories of Innovation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/handbook-on-alternative-theories-of-innovation-9781789902297.html

Peer Review Process

This is a journal that adopts an open peer-review process (minimum of two reviews per manuscript).

The manuscripts approved by the Editors for peer-reviewing will be forwarded to at least two independent reviewers. NOvation evaluation is an open process in which evaluators do have access to the name(s) of the author(s) and vice versa. The body of reviewers is formed only by PhD colleagues, researchers and/or professors, mostly (but not exclusively) from foreign institutions. The evaluation is done taking into account the scientific quality and correctness of the contents, the structure of the text and the quality of writing, looking through our detailed guidelines for reviewers and following compulsorily our detailed Evaluation Form. Reviewers will either recommend acceptance, rejection or request modifications, always supported by a qualitative justification on a commentary box, shared with the authors (and always in a constructive tone). It is up to the Editors to take the final decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript, although based on the opinions expressed by the reviewers – one acceptance and one denial should be untied by a third independent reviewer. The status of the submissions can be tracked by authors within the OJS access to the backstage, with the same login used for submission.

The list of collaborating reviewers in each issue is published on the credits page of the complete composition of the thematic issue, as well as on the journal's website, where their titles and institutional affiliations are also indicated. Finally, each published article has an indication of the times for completion of the evaluation.

In sum, the journal adopts an open review system and follows these guidelines:

  • minimum number of reviewers: two;
  • in case of controversy among the referees, the article is submitted to a third referee;
  • evaluation system: open review (not blind review);
  • the regular time for the evaluation process: up to 90 days for the entire process;
  • referees selection: by invitation (according to the Editorial Board and/or Guest Editor's suggestions based on the journal shortlist of past and prospective collaborators) and/or by subscription through OJS (Editorial Board; a PhD degree (minimum) is recommended.

NOvation is prospecting to publish the open peer review process. Reviewers are asked, through the evaluation form, if they would be willing for their reviews to be published together with the article's final version.

Publication Frequency

Annual thematic issue.

Open Access Policy

This journal offers immediate free access to its contents, following the principle that making scientific knowledge freely available to the public provides greater global democratization of knowledge. NOvation is an open access journal under a Creative Commons - CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship of the work and initial publication in this journal.

Likewise, NOvation Open Access format and model imply that it does not practice Article Publishing Charges (APCs) of any kind, i.e., the author does not have to pay any fee for submitting an article or for the peer review process.

 

Research Ethics and Integrity Policy

NOvation declares its commitment to practices that value ethics and research integrity and expects the same from everyone involved in the editorial process: editors, reviewers and authors.

This policy follows the guidelines of national and international documents to ensure compliance with the principles of ethics and research integrity, namely: Guide to good practices for strengthening ethics in scientific publication of SciELO Program, Guidelines of 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Editors' Guide.

Editorial Team Commitments

Confidentiality – the editorial team is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of any information related to manuscripts submitted to the journal throughout the entire editorial process. Although an open peer review process is adopted, the submitted paper and the confidentiality of the authors is a commitment of the editorial board and guest editors until the final publication of the article.

Impartiality – the editors and evaluators responsible for receiving the manuscripts, evaluate the manuscripts submitted to the journal objectively and based on the criteria and policies pre-defined by the NOvation management bodies. Therefore, they have the commitment to evaluate and decide for the publication or not, from what is foreseen in the Editorial Policies of the journal, in an impartial way. The Editorial Board can be consulted to help with the necessary decisions.

Editors must also be impartial in resolving conflicts resulting from allegations of misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, misuse of data, attribution of improper authorship) in the development of research for a manuscript submitted to the journal, considering the flowchart proposed by COPE's Core Practices to mediate the conflict.

Transparency – it must be observed by the Editorial Team in the preparation, compliance with the journal's policies, and conduction of verification processes for complaints about misconduct in the research development of a manuscript submitted to the journal.

Conflict of Interest – the editorial team must inform the editor of any potential or existing conflict of interest before acceptance of the review or during the review process. If a conflict of interest is related to the editor responsible, this one must refuse the review and pass the activity on to the associate editors or one of the Editorial Board members.

Commitments of Reviewers

Confidentiality – it is based on the commitment to maintaining the confidentiality of any information related to the manuscripts assigned for its evaluation and opinion.

Impartiality – manuscript evaluation must take into account the merit of the research and the journal's Editorial Policy. The assessment and decision must not be influenced positively or negatively by professional, personal and/or financial motivations.

Transparency – if any evidence of misconduct is identified (e.g., plagiarism, misuse of methods, fabrication and/or falsification of data) in the research being evaluated, it is up to the reviewer immediately to inform the editor. The reviewer is also responsible for informing the editor when they don’t feel qualified to review a manuscript for thematic incompatibility.

Objectivity and Completeness – it refers to the commitment to presenting objective and sufficiently justified opinions, to support the editor's final decision.

Punctuality – reviewer must immediately notify the editor in case of impossibility to review the manuscript (within a stipulated period of up to 5 days). And, when accepting the task of issuing an opinion on a manuscript, the reviewer is responsible for complying with the deadlines established by the journal (up to 6 weeks).

Conflict of Interest – reviewer is responsible for informing the editor of any potential or existing conflict of interest before acceptance of the review or during the review process.

We recommend Nature's free online course “Focus on Peer Review” for reviewers who wish to improve their knowledge about this activity.

Authors' Commitments

Guidelines for Authors – it comprises the commitment to complying with the general rules presented in the Guidelines for Authors, considering that, in this way, many issues related to misconduct in research are minimized.

Authorship – recognize as authors all those who contributed directly and significantly to the conception of the research presented in the manuscript, who participated in the writing and critical review of the manuscript, and assume responsibility for the information presented. Authors are also committed to declaring the roles and responsibilities of each author based on the CRediT – Contributor Role Taxonomy, as described in the Guidelines for Authors.

Information Sources – observance of ethics concerning information sources is essential to guarantee research integrity. Authors are responsible for properly citing all sources used in their research, following the Guidelines for Authors.

The authors must be aware of properly citing and identifying information sources when they use a third-party publication.

NOvation journal understands plagiarism as “[...] essentially an ethical issue that consists in the act of taking for oneself, in any form or means, an intellectual work of another person, presenting it as their own. [...] It is the misappropriation of a text, music, painting or any other intellectual work, in which the usurper assumes authorship, deliberately omitting the credits for the original author [...]” (Wachowski; Costa, 2016, p. 110).

Any suspected plagiarism or other misconduct in manuscripts submitted to NOvation will be investigated following the flowchart proposed by COPE's Core Practices.

Plagiarism detection policy – In the first stage of the evaluation process, it is the editors' responsibility to be alert to signs of plagiarism. When there is any suspicion, the manuscript is then submitted to the specific software for possible detection (e.g., CopySpider, Turnitin, Plagiarism Checker).

Conflict of Interest – all authors are responsible for informing the editor of any potential or existing conflict of interest when submitting the manuscript and/or during the editorial process.

Data Policy

In terms of data policy, the Data Availability Statement encourages authors to make explicit the sources used, either intrinsic to the writing of the scientific paper, or explicitly in an attached statement – while preserving the specificity of the social sciences and humanities. Each article may therefore be accompanied by a 'Data Availability Statement', identifying the research data used in the article and, where appropriate, referring to datasets available on the web and/or in institutional repositories (interview material, primary sources outside institutional archives, etc.).

Sources of Support

We thank the institutions that currently and/or in the past have provided financial and/or logistic support to our journal.

Journal History

The International Journal NOvation – Critical Studies of Innovation is underway to contribute to the rethinking and debunking of innovation narratives in both the interdisciplinary STS – Science, Technology and Society, and the wide array of STI –Science, Technology, and Innovation disciplinary fields.

Our first steps date back to April 2017, where this endeavour was already in perspective with Benoît Godin (INRS, Montreal) and Dominique Vinck (UNIL, Lausanne) book (2017), entitled “Critical Studies of Innovation. Alternative Approaches to the Pro-Innovation Bias” (Edward Elgar). From then, a first Issue was proposed: “X-innovation: Re-inventing Innovation Again and Again” (with B. Godin, G. Gaglio and S. Pfotenhauer as organizers), in the meanwhile launched in 2019 (June).

Since January 2021, after our first Editor-in-Chief passed away, the Journal has been running collectively, counting on our Managing Editor and several members of the Editorial Board to publish two more issues. On April 2023 the journal came finally to migrate to a new host platform, in Brazil, the Federal University of Paraná. Based in Curitiba, Southern Brazil, NOvation maintains the same spirit of pushing forward the critical studies of innovation research agenda.