The National Documentation Centre (EKT) and the Hellenic Association of Social Policy have marked a new collaboration with the electronic publication of 'Social Policy'. From now on, the journal will be available with Open Access on EKT's eJournal platform, as part of its ePublishing service which contributes significantly to improving the validity and international impact of scientific journals.
Hellenic Association of Social Policy is the scientific association of professors, researchers and students of Social Policy in Greece. Since its foundation in 2001, membership has grown to 250. Its objective is to advance teaching, research, dialogue and knowledge focusing on scientific academic matters of Social Policy. Its mission is to highlight the role of social policy in covering social needs and ensuring universal social rights for the collective welfare. Its goal is to develop co-operation/solidarity between the members of the social policy community in Greece and to strengthen corresponding international scientific/research co-operation.
The scientific journal, which the Society has published since 2013, promotes the study of social policy and its interdisciplinary approach, while the subjects cover a broad spectrum of interest such as social security, health, social care, employment and the labour market, education, immigration, anti-crime and housing policies. Other than scientific articles, 'Social Policy' includes book reviews from the Greek and international arenas, and short critical reviews of current social policy issues associated with the whole range of socio-economic inequalities such as poverty, social exclusion, social discrimination, unemployment etc.
The economic and social crisis of recent years with its particularly adverse effects on large sectors of the population is presenting the scientific community and policy makers with unprecedented concerns. The greatly diminished or even cancelled intervention policies for mitigating human suffering, mass poverty and unemployment, reduction of health facilities, dismantling of labour relations, intensity of social inequality and discrimination are indicative of the urgent issues under discussion.
Both the Society and its ejournal hope to promote, organise and publicise these dialogues. In its effort, it is fully supported by EKT, which provides the publishing platform, while SPSP is responsible for the scientific content. So far, there have been 7 issues, all of which are available at https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/eekp/issue/archive.
The content of the latest issue covers matters currently concerning the country's scientific community. The four scientific articles featured deal with important aspects of social policy during the years of the crisis. They refer to the recent implementation of the Social Income of Solidarity, the impact of the economic crisis on the sub-national dimension of exercising social policy, as well as the dimensions of the labour market over the last 6 years. Equally important, they consider issues of wider concern in the social policy debate of the last 15 years such as the attempted 'Europeanisation' and immigration policy.
It is hoped that the articles featured in all issues of 'Social Policy' will contribute in a fruitful way to the numerous aspects of the socio-economic debate.
Note that the EKT's eplatform ePublishing (http://epublishing.ekt.gr/en) comprises three platforms: for ejourals (http://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr), conference proceedings (http://eproceedings.epublishing.ekt.gr) and books-monographs (http://ebooks.epublishing.ekt.gr). The platforms host the total content of each publisher (journals, monographs, conference proceedings) and enables the co-existence with other reputable publishers.