EDITORIAL

Volume 8 of Narrative Inquiry is the continuation of seven productive vol­umes of the Journal of Narrative and Life History, where a substantial amount of research involving narratives and narrative analysis has been published over the last seven years. The new title reflects a decision to focus more strongly on narrative in the future. Life histories and life stories are nar­ratives, and there is no reason for them to be singled out. We continue to welcome contributions that focus on theoretical and methodological issues posed by the study of life histories. In the past, the Journal of Narrative and Life History has published work spanning numerous disciplines from diverse countries and cultures and we like to think that we have played a role in the expanded influence of narrative work in psychology, linguistics, education, communication, religion, anthropology, sociology, law, medicine, geography, history, among other disciplines.

In its broadest sense, narration can be an action as well as a product in the form of a text, film, dance, and the like. Central to narrating is the act of ordering for a number of different purposes. With narrative, people strive to configure space and time, deploy cohesive devices, reveal identity of actors and relatedness of actions across scenes. They create themes, plots, and drama. In so doing, narrators make sense of themselves, social situations, and history.

When people narrate, they do so for many reasons – to remember or ar­gue or convince, engage, entertain, or fool their audience. Because narrative ordering serves so many different purposes, any study of narrative is a truly interdisciplinary enterprise, one that transcends traditional boundaries of dis­ciplines as far apart as science and literary studies.

Narrative Inquiry is a forum for an exchange of presuppositions and goals that starts with work within our traditional disciplines and moves toward a general interdisciplinary integration – with narrative as the connecting theme. The journal will accept theoretical and empirical papers that substantially advance our understanding of the structure and purposes of narratives, drawing on a variety of approaches and methodologies. In this sense then, Narrative Inquiry is not only another journal for publishing empirical papers on the use of narratives in social activities. It is a journal where the contributors are expected to make explicit their underlying theoretical claims as well as their disciplinary-based presuppositions. Furthermore, contributors are expected to display their methodology or demonstrate how they approach narratives in their interpretive work.

In the course of initial inspection and substantive peer-review, each sub­mission to Narrative Inquiry will be carefully scrutinized for the adequacy of the empirical documentation in light of the theoretical claims from the contributors' discipline. Since it is our belief that this journal belongs to the community of scholars who are interested in narrative inquiry, we are committed to a somewhat hands-off editorial policy when it comes to sending out submitted manuscripts for reviews. We believe that even if a manuscript does not meet the standards necessary for publication, the author still deserves the privilege of a response in the form of reviewers' critique. Thus, the only manuscripts that receive editorial rejections and are returned to the authors without a review are those that are of poor fit with the journal's mission or those that would need too much work before they could be published.

In addition to theoretical and empirical investigations, Narrative Inquiry will publish review essays, book reviews, and short notes and announcements. As a new feature we will publish articles together with commentaries from leading scholars in the field. We also invite our readers to comment on articles that appeared in previous issues. And although this first issue of Volume 8 does not entail any commentaries, there will be several of those on the articles by Freeman and by Cheyne and Tarulli (this volume) in the second issue later this year.

Article submissions should be double-spaced and not exceed 8,000 words; commentaries should be no more than 4,000 words.  The language of publication will be exclusively in English, preferably with an American spelling, and the manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the 4th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. One copy of the manuscript should be submitted to Michael Bamberg, Clark University, Department of Psychology, Worcester, MA 01610-1477; phone 508-793-7135. An electronic copy in Word format (.doc) should be emailed  to <narrinquiry@clarku.edu>. First author's name, address, telephone num­ber, and e-mail address must accompany the submission. Further information is available through the journal's website at <http://www.clarku.edu/narrinq>.

In line with the editorial philosophy of openness, we are following a semi-open peer review/commentary system. The identity of both of the author(s) to the reviewers, and of the reviewers to the author(s) will be made known – unless the specific author or reviewer indicates otherwise. Authors, who de­sire a blind review should prepare their manuscripts accordingly, providing identifying information only on the title page. In addition, we are asking the author(s) to state (in a separate letter accompanying their manuscript) three names of potential reviewers, including their postal addresses. Although we cannot guarantee that the manuscripts will be sent out to those names given, this procedure will help us to better expedite the reviewing process.