World Transport Journal Mission Statement
The only practically-oriented journal dealing with
the major issues in a field of international concern, World Transport Policy and Practice provides a high-quality medium for original and creative ideas in world transport. Experts in transport, the environment,
economics and ecology contribute probing papers dealing in an informed
and even-handed manner with key issues in transport,
case studies and reports of trials, and assesses the difficulties of balancing
economic and ecological considerations as we strive to develop a better transport
system in all respects.
World Transport has a philosophy based on the equal importance of academic rigor and a strong commitment to ideas, policies, and practical initiatives that will bring about a reduction in global dependency on the car, the lorry and aircraft.
The Journal and its founders and collaborators share a life-long commitment to sustainable transport which embraces the urgent need to cut global emissions of carbon dioxide, to reduce the amount of new infrastructure of all kinds and to highlight the importance of future generations, the poor, those who live in degraded environments and those deprived of human rights by a planning system that puts a higher importance on economic objectives than on the environment and social justice.
World Transport embraces a different approach to science and through science to publishing. This view is based on the honest evaluation of the track record of transport planning, engineering and economics. These interrelated disciplines have embraced a quantitative, elitist and mechanistic view of society, space and infrastructure and have eliminated people from the analysis.
[We also invite you to consider the mission statement of the electronic edition, as well as to have a look at the two background notes that follow and which are intended to fill out this first statement. On the other hand, the best way to see what we are trying to do is to peruse the two dozen issues that have been circulated world wide over the last half dozen years. There can be no clearer statement of our intentions than to judge us by these actual accomplishments.]
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Whence the Journal?
[We reproduce this note to our readers and contributors of late 1999 by way of quick background on the transition to the present e-Journal, as you will see in more current detail here.]
As we roll up the first polluting kilometers of this new century, and after half a decade of experience with our Journal now behind us, we are asking ourselves a certain number of questions about the future. In these first years we have somehow been able to keep our production schedules and get out some pretty interesting numbers, some of which had elicited a rather enthusiastic public response. But it is, we are not afraid to say, a rather difficult row to hoe.
We have tried to do this without the usual supporting institutional structures, which may have been a mistake, though it has had for us the great advantage of leaving all aspects of editorial and production policy to us without any influence from commercial or other interests. On the downside since we lack the usual marketing resources, this has made it among other things somewhat difficult to get the level of subscription support that is needed to guarantee the journal's survival.
One of the avenues that we are exploring as a probe of the future, as you can see here, is that of morphing into either a purely electronic journal. Or, better yet we think, some combination of the two. We are not the only ones in this situation of course as we enter into this post-Gutenberg are. And though it is cold comfort we find it interesting to see that a reference as venerable and as indisputably valuable as the Encyclopedia Britannica are asking themselves many of these same questions, and are, as we, experimenting with the electronic/print mix in an attempt to find a way into the future. Their problem is also our problem, though some might note an eventual scale difference
Do you have any thoughts for us on this? One very helpful thing for starters would be if you would take the time to see if any of the institutions that you work with or know with a mandate in this area might be interested to support us as Contributing Subscribers. As part of our policy, we have made an effort to keep even these subscriptions affordable by the usual standards, which means of course that we need to have several hundred institutional subscribers just to help cover bare production costs.
If you do have anything to share with us on this, we would like to offer you as well as the usual private communications the possibility of going on line with a letter to the group as a whole. We are quite sure that the final solution that we find to this dilemma will be the result of a group process and useful feedback from people like you.
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Updated 4 September 2000