Meet Prof. Wen Hua Kuo

We sat down with our new Editor-In-Chief, Prof. Wen Hua Kuo, to ask a few questions about East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, including his plans for the journal and what it can do for authors looking to publish their science, technology and society research.

Here is what he had to say.

Publishing with Routledge from 2021.

Flexible, dynamic, and responsive to contemporary issues, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (EASTS) values the academic traditions of the region and welcomes innovative science, technology and society (STS) scholarship that is transdisciplinary and transnational. EASTS is indexed in several major indexes, including PubMed, SCOPUS, ProQuest and more.

Aiming to actively engage with the global STS community and to critically assess how science, technology and society are co-produced and mutually evolve, EASTS welcomes, but is not limited to, research articles, research notes, review articles, and reflective essays.

Which topics are you most interested to cover in the journal?

In general, we welcome innovative, interdisciplinary STS works that treat East Asia as a region and method. In particular, we expect empirical studies on how science and technology shape the ways in which East Asia connects with the modern world intellectually and in practice.  
 
Building upon our strength in critically examining the making of modern East Asia through science and technology, our specialty also encompasses sociology and anthropology on contemporary issues, such as the assessment of scientific knowledge, science communication and governance, and ELSI. We pay special attention to work that captures the dynamic and interactive nature of global science and technology, and we appreciate work on topics beyond East Asia proper. 

As the Editor-in-Chief for EASTS, what are your plans for the coming year?

The year 2021 is still going to be challenging for academia, and EASTS is no exception. In addition to providing timely and reliable scholarship that helps us to understand how COVID has changed the way the world operates and how we are coping with the pandemic, we expect to increase our intellectual influence with the help of our publisher.

Our plans include the promotional (such as this webpage) and events (such as on-line conferences and workshops) that better reach our readership in this region. We also hope to establish a scholarly yet reader-friendly website. Maintained by our editorial team, this website will complement the one run by the publisher, containing curated papers from past issues and featuring multimedia materials that reflect fresh scholarship in and about our region.

What are the current challenges facing the STS research community?

As a flourishing field that has intellectual roots in East Asia and that has been incorporated into some of the research traditions of the region, the primary challenge for STS might not now be to clarify its definition but instead to show how its perspectives and approaches can enable us to offer insights into existing scholarship on science and technology.  

Meanwhile, it’s time for Asian STS scholars to engage with mainstream communities. COVID has eroded the foundations of academia, and this is a common challenge we are all facing. We are certain that STS is the best way to respond to these challenges. Nonetheless, we are also aware that there is no hard and fast rule in STS for achieving this. This is why EASTS has chosen to work with a global publisher like Routledge and hopes thereby to work more closely with STS scholars around the world.  

As a prospective author, what are the benefits of publishing in an STS journal like EASTS?

First and foremost, EASTS is a highly respected journal. It is the scholarly gateway for the English-speaking world to understand STS in East Asia, and an intellectual platform for Asian scholars to interact. The immediate benefits for any prospective author considering EASTS are engagement with STS specialists who will encourage you, appreciate your work, provide valuable suggestions for improvement, and, when your work is published, a wide readership of interested scholars.  
 
Besides all this, as an Asia-based journal we treasure our intellectual traditions and expect to form a distinctive STS voice of our own. For those who share our mission and who work on themes and theories both within the mainstream and in the lesser travelled byways of academic thought, EASTS will be a reliable partner in making ideas widely heard.