When the BMS adds a new section

Abstract

This issue 155 sees the launch of a new section, or category of articles, entitled ‘Micromacro’. This is the seventh section in the journal since it was revived in 2018. The original sections are not thematic. They fit the different types of narratives about the method that we wanted to publish and encourage. We presented them in our first issue (137/138) but they have evolved a little since then. This editorial is an opportunity to revisit them. The ‘Implementation’ section is the basic section, the one that is open to the stories in which our colleagues give a reflexive account of the research they carry out. The strength of these accounts is that they do not propose themselves as models. On the contrary: it is by delivering with precision and sincerity the background of their investigations that our colleagues offer fellow colleagues ideas on different ways of tackling a subject, approaching a field, using a technique, combining several methods, etc. while favouring the diversity and inventiveness of research. This section is accompanied by two others, one more theoretical and epistemological, the other more practical. The first, ‘Models and protocols’, publishes – rarely (four articles so far) – reflective texts on methods, partly detached from a particular research project. The second, ‘Tools and instruments’, reports on the design, testing or improvement of tools made available to the scientific community. From our first issue as BMS editors, we have also inaugurated a section particularly important to us: ‘The method of my thesis’. Open to young PhDs, this one is aimed at recounting what thesis itineraries really are, beyond the forms of rationalisation that the standard formats in scientific journals encouage. This section as it is conceived in BMS instead offers our young colleagues to value the methodological and reflexive work carried out during their thesis. Another specificity of ‘The method of my thesis’: we commit ourselves not to refuse the articles that are proposed to us for this purpose and to assist for as long as necessary the authors in the revision and improvement of their text until publication. To do so, we rely on the reviewers who are willing to play the game and offer young colleagues essentially positive advice and suggestions. We would like to thank them for this. Alongside this section we have designed another for our more experienced colleagues. For this one we ask them to revisit their careers from the perspective of the methods they have used in over the course of their work. We had some difficulty finding a suitable name for this section. Since issue 151 it has been called ‘The design of their work’. We would like to thank Philippe Cibois, Nonna Mayer, Sidney Tarrow, François Dubet, Christine Musselin, André Blais, Erik Neveu and Don Dillman for honouring us with this methodological return.