Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences

Editorial At a first glance, the emergence of a new scientific journal in the ever-growing market of scientific journals may raise eyebrows. Would a new journal rather aid a solution or contribute to the “replicability crisis” recently acknowledged in some social scientific disciplines? Are there not already more scientific outlets than anyone can ever follow? And do not we all have enough items on our reading lists already? At a second and closer look, it becomes clear that if, in the past, effort had been devoted to developing high-quality measurement instruments, it often went unnoticed. Documenting such effort is not a typical goal of journals focusing on substantive research, because measurement is just perceived to be a vehicle to answer substantive questions. In addition, even if an instrument was published, it was most often only recognized and reused in its discipline of origin. A transfer of knowledge among disciplines, even though they aimed to study the same constructs, only seldom happens. A slight imbalance then needs to be addressed; substantive questions can only be meaningfully answered if measurement as such is sound. We reason that a new interdisciplinary journal specifically devoted to disseminating open measurement instruments freely, across cultural and language barriers, while supporting open access, open data, and open methodology can aid researchers around the globe and across many disciplines.