Amfiteatru Economic, the Measure of Lastingness (Excerpt from the book Amfiteatru Economic, Year XX, by Vasile Dinu and Laurențiu Tăchiciu, ASE Publishing House, Bucharest, 2018)
I started writing about economics and economy in the “big press”, both academic and mass-media, around the same time, somewhere in 2002. This, after having explored journalism during the university studies. I had understood the difference in the literary species between an article dedicated to the mass-media field and one published in academic journals, long before the biblio- and sciento-metric tsunami reached Romania, with its (inter)national indexations and citations of the scientific publications. Yes, I knew that we are subject to professional honesty criteria valid for every piece of written text (as for any other thing done in this world with good faith and sapience) and that, once fulfilled, everything will fit in properly: many readings, positive reviews. In the meantime, I was to become editor-in-chief for several publications. Both media-media and academic-type. I had known for some time about Amfiteatru Economic and about the fact that it had become the most “international” Romanian scientific journal of economics, I knew about the fact that the rigor was ritualistic and that the recognition of its quality had become a landmark for the young local journal(ist)s and I knew it was being produced in the same building where I was working as teacher, just two floors above my office. At one point, I invited Professor Vasile Dinu, the creator and custodian of this journal, to reveal to the readers of the pop economics magazine that I was then editing, in a few words, his personal editorial credo. I like to know that we still powerfully share the belief that science, including its publishable version, is ultimately part of a continuum in which there is a sound fundamental exchange of substance between the generalist press of reflection and opinion, and the genuine explicitly- academic one, that they are not parallel universes and that professionals can wisely accommodate both. 20 years are a measure for a beginning of lastingness. I wish for Amfiteatru Economic to stay beyond any metric.
