Dear HES-List Colleagues,  
those of you who are (rightly) concerned over the decision of the SSCI of dropping HOPE
from the indexed journals, may be interested in the following letter, which was sent to
the SSCI people from the Executive Committee of the European Society of the History of
Economic Thought. I know that the editors of EJHET are sending a similar letter. Let us
hope that our joint efforts will be successful
  
Annalisa Rosselli  
  
  
******************************************************************  
Mr. Ryan Joyce   
Editor, Social Sciences/Arts & Humanities   
Editorial Development, Thomson ISI   
3501 Market Street Philadelphia, PA  19104   
                July 29, 2005
  
Dear Mr. Joyce,  
  
we have heard from our colleagues at the History of Economics Society that the History of
Political Economy (HOPE) journal  is being dropped from the Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI). As officers of the European Society  for the History of Economic Thought we cannot
but share their concern over this decision, and not only because  historians of economic
thought would lose a useful tool of research.
  
As you are certainly aware, in Europe and elsewhere an increasing number of government
agencies which allocate funds to research departments and individual scholars are making
use of quantitative indicators of scientific productivity including number of citations,
which is perhaps the most widely applied.  Although many objections are being raised
against these criteria, they are accepted by the majority of scholars as long as they are
perceived to be fair and representative of the actual output of  scientific work. This
would not be the case for the activity of the over 250 present members of our society, who
publish in journals specialised in the history of economic thought. HOPE is the oldest of
them, and has always been regarded as one of the leading journals in our sub-field,
together with the European Journal for the History of Economic Thought (EJHET), which is
particularly important for us in Europe,  and the Journal of the History of Economic
Thought (JHET).
  
We believe that a clear picture of what is going on in our sub-field cannot be obtained
unless due account is taken of at least all three of these journals. Thus, far from
endorsing your decision to drop HOPE, we strongly urge you to consider including the other
two above-mentioned  journals among those that you currently index.
  
We are confident that you will reconsider your decision in the light of these points.  
  
The Executive Committee of the European Society for the History of  Economic Thought  
  
Richard Arena, President, CNRS-LATAPSES, France  
Annalisa Rosselli, Vice-President, Universit� di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy  
Pierluigi Porta, Secretary, Universit� di Milano Bicocca, Italy  
Pascal Bridel, Treasurer, Universit� de Lausanne, Switzerland  
Antonio Manuel Martins Almodovar, University of Porto, Portugal  
Daniel Diatkine, University of Evry, France  
Antoin Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland  
Yiorgos Stathakis, University of Crete, Greece  
John Vint , Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK