Editorial: ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography

With this issue, we are relaunching ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography under a modified name that signals openness to the global academic community and the explicit goal to become an international go-to journal in the field of economic geography broadly defined. We aim to become a driver of the collective knowledge architecture in the field, while acknowledging the long-standing tradition of Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie in German geography since 1956. ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography invites contributions within the field of economic geography that develop novel conceptualizations and present new empirical insights into economic structures, processes and practices, as well as their variations and outcomes in spatial perspective. Themes of particular interest include the actors and institutions shaping regional economic development, the institutional and socio-economic triggers of localized knowledge generation and innovation, the flows of people, knowledge and resources over distance, the development and persistence of unequal economic geographies, the global organization of capitalism and its evolution in spatial perspective, the impact of new societal challenges across space, and related topical areas.

ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography is squarely situated in the field of economic geography aiming to contribute to international debates through its commitment to diversity regarding innovative themes and authors and pushing for a non-partisan agenda. The goal is to connect economic geography with neighboring disciplines such as urban and regional economics, international business, management and organization studies, economic sociology, political economy, or cultural, innovation and entrepreneurship studies, as well as spark exchanges with other subdisciplines in geography.

While we are repositioning the journal, we are aware of its legacy and historic role in German postwar geography. In this context, we would like to acknowledge the critical role of Walter Thomi, who took over ZFW in 1995 as leading editor and developed it from a journal directed at teachers’ education toward a dedicated economic geography journal based in the German-speaking world. Walter Thomi put his heart and soul and perseverance into the journal and laid the foundations for this next stage, which he wholeheartedly welcomes.

To further support the relaunch and invite a broad readership, ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography will be transferred to Diamond Open Access on a year-by-year basis, starting with the 2022 volume. All articles will immediately appear under the Creative Commons license CC-BY, at no publication costs for the authors. The Open Access transformation is based on Subscribe-to-Open, an alternative model that enables the full Open Access transformation of journals through the continuation of existing subscriptions. The prerequisite for successful transformation is that subscriptions are continued to the same extent as before (more information under https://www.degruyter.com/cms/pages/subscribe-to-open). We, the editors of ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, and the publisher De Gruyter would therefore like to thank all subscribers for their support, which has made the transformation to Open Access possible.