Marketing folk commonly observe that complaints about a product are voiced much more readily than compliments. On this basis, the first issue of the re‐vamped Prometheus seems to have passed muster. There have been one or two compliments and absolutely no complaints. So, we proceed to the second issue.
The second issue is a little different from the first in that the debate section is missing. This was not intended. The proponent authors failed to deliver. If our debates are to address current issues, they cannot be prepared far in advance. Even so, we can do better. A lesson has been learnt.
This issue contains an interesting mixture of research papers. A masterly review of approaches to the information society over several decades is offered by Robin Mansell. Her sober conclusion is that the reality of the information society still does not live up to the hype that dogs the concept. Ian McShane and Julian Thomas restrict their view of the information society to Australian libraries, struggling to meet unbridled expectations of the digital economy and national legislation to facilitate whatever such an economy entails. A future issue of Prometheus will debate the significance of digital legislation in the UK.
Joanne Roberts writes about the diffusion of management knowledge, learning something from the interaction of the various groups who possess this knowledge. Her communities of practice approach makes some sense of the confusion of guru, consultant and academic knowledge in which managers try to earn a living.
Jason Potts examines failure in innovation, inevitably a neglected topic when there is greater incentive to hide failures than learn from them. But Potts goes further than mere inspection and suggests that behavioural biases may be responsible for innovation failure. Sandrine Thérèse and Brian Martin consider failure of another sort, failure to protect scientists who speak out. They look at a range of unsavory means by which colleagues and institutions meet out revenge by degrading those who stray from the accepted norm.
This issue may lack a debate, but it does contain a short rejoinder to those who commented in the last debate. John Houghton and Charles Oppenheim may have put the critics of open access publishing firmly in their place, but this will not be the last we hear of the matter.
Unlike the last, this issue carries book reviews, and so will succeeding issues. In an age when neither the book nor its review contributes to the metrics which indicate the value of academic endeavour, academics do not always rush to review. The book review – unlike the metrics – should not be allowed to slip into decline, and this journal will do its very best to stimulate the art form.
Stuart Macdonald
General Editor