Editorial

Citation

Blackman, C. (2017), "Editorial", Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 1-1. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPRG-11-2016-0050

Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance

With this first issue of 2017, we are pleased to announce that the journal has changed its name to Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance. The decision to change the title of an established journal is not to be taken lightly and follows extensive consultation with the editorial board over the past year. There are several reasons for doing so, and they are perhaps worth explaining.

When info was launched in 1999 by Camford Publishing, the intention was to publish a journal aimed at a business, policy-making and academic community. Over the years, the journal’s focus has shifted to serving mainly an academic audience, although it still has relevance to business and policy-making audiences. As a mainly academic journal, it was felt that info as a title was not best suited to this aim.

A second reason concerns issues over the full title – info: The journal of policy, regulation and strategy for telecommunications, information and media. In some cases, the journal has been referred to just by its short title, sometimes by its full title and occasionally by the subtitle without info. This confusion has had a couple of unfortunate consequences. First, it has not helped the journal in terms of its citation score, arising from different permutations of the title being used. A second consequence is it has hindered efforts to promote recognition of the journal. A further, and related, issue concerns the difficulty the title poses for search. Type “info” into a search engine and the journal is not easily visible, similar to what happens in Google Scholar.

The new title, Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, better reflects the journal’s editorial scope, which is concerned with the impacts of information and communications technologies on the economy and society. In particular, it covers the implications of two important technological transformations, namely, the rise of mobile communications and the internet, resulting in the emergence of a digital economy and society. The journal seeks to analyse these technological changes from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on concepts and models from economics, the political, social and behavioural sciences, decision analysis, engineering and law.

What remains the same is a commitment to produce a broad-ranging and readable journal on the most important policy impacts of digital technologies.

Thus, the journal welcomes submissions on topics concerning, for instance, governance in the digital age; competition in the digital economy; self and coregulatory models; aspects of wired and wireless networks; spectrum requirements for 5G; consumer demand and access to infrastructure, information and services; regulation of online platforms and digital services; cybersecurity; the internet of things; data protection and privacy; digitisation of media and content; consumer-driven innovation; etc.