Dear readers,
We are happy to present the sixth issue of our Review. The world is still facing global threats, and the COVID-19 pandemic continues, yet the quest for knowledge cannot be stopped! The academic community has adapted to the new working conditions, mastered new forms of communication, and actively shares and communicates scholarship through online modes.
It cannot be denied that we all miss travel, meeting colleagues, face-to-face discussions, and casual conversations between and after conference panels. Yet there is a blessing in disguise. Virtual formats are less funding-dependent and allow for more frequent meetings in collaborative projects which has had a positive impact on scholarship. It is possible to participate in different conferences in faraway locations without a need to secure travel funds. Finally, new forms of public outreach have made academic scholarship more accessible for millions of interested readers.
Our Review has been originally designed as a digital open-source international scholarly platform. The COVID-19 pandemic has not changed much our editorial policy. We have re-introduced the sections Conference Papers and Bibliography and expanded the section Reviews. The difficulties that we have been facing have a somewhat different nature: the scientometrics pandemic. Science managers increasingly require scholars to publish only in highly ranked journals, a situation that creates difficulties to recruit new authors for the journals that are not yet indexed in Scopus or Web of Science. We are grateful to the friends of our Review that we have been so far able to keep a good balance of the materials written by well-established and emerging scholars.
Emerging scholars need their own place to start publishing, and half out of the twenty papers in the sections Articles and Conference Papers in this issue were written by young scholars including MA and PhD students. Writing a scholarly paper has been a novel experience for many of them, but the rejuvenation of the academic community expands research themes in the Nordic studies and revitalizes national traditions.
This issue includes important materials of the round table Images of Karelia: Emergence, Perception, Outcomes, as well as continued conversations about the history of the Nordic studies in Russia and Russian studies in Finland, as well as the important of the Finnish language for today’s Republic of Karelia.
We hope that many readers will find this issue of The Nordic and Baltic Studies Review interesting and wish you good health, productive work, and well-being.
Irina Takala
Alexander Tolstikov
Alexander Krivonozhenko
Petrozavodsk, December 24, 2021
