Editorial

Abstract

Every year, as editors, we present a comprehensive overview of the ins and outs of our journal to the members of the Editorial Board. This allows us to set our shortand long-term strategic and operational goals in order to further strengthen the European Journal of Social Work as an academic forum where researchers in all areas of social work can exchange knowledge by publishing, disseminating and debating matters of research, theory, policy, education and practice. One of the elements that are addressed during this overview is the geographical distribution of the submissions that our journal annually receives. An interesting trend within those submissions is the steady but long-lasting increase in submissions from the Nordic countries and especially from Sweden. This, of course, has to do with (i) the importance countries give to social work, (ii) the degree of academisation of social work as a profession, but also with (iii) the access to journals and familiarity with the doxa of academic writing. Our former colleague Staffan Höjer wrote about it at length and pointed out that, for example, Sweden has twice as many social workers per 100,000 inhabitants than countries like the UK or the United States of America. Furthermore, the academic discipline of social work was introduced in Sweden in 1978 in the context of the integration of social work education in the Swedish universities, which was steered by the development of the Swedish welfare state (Höjer & Dellgran, 2013). To this day, we see the results of this professionalisation and academization of social work. Whilst of course as a journal we aim for diversity and wish also to support authors from countries with a less well-established research culture and infrastructure, in this issue we exclusively present articles written by colleagues from Sweden. We do this not only to highlight the strong development of academic social work in Sweden, but also to highlight the diversity of social work as a profession in Sweden, and beyond. In this issue, you will find contributions concerning active labour market programmes, repression, participation, home care, discretion, empowerment, evidence-based social work, health social work and automated decision-making. We hope you enjoy this issue and we are looking forward receiving your submissions in the future.