What is Publikon?
The fast informational and technological innovations of the last fifty years have generated great public interest towards sciences, including social sciences. Those interesting researches and workshops, which previously had been known to only a restricted number of people, can be published and made readable within minutes through the internet, and they can be edited in printed and electronic versions, too.
Regarding the innovations and expectations, the Publikon portal intends to find answers to the social challenges of the 21st century, meeting scientific demands. It wishes to collect and systematise them by processing primarily written materials (studies, essays, keynote publications, theses, dissertations) produced in higher education institutions, and also studies, analyses, discourses, reviews written by researchers. On the other hand, with the wish to spread knowledge to a wide audience, it will aim to reveal historical and topical, exciting and gripping topics from the field of social sciences.
Why was Publikon established?
Publikon, which is a portal for social sciences, considers the needs of numerous target groups and thereby it intends to become a useful point of reference both for researchers and for those who would like to read or come undone. The information to be found on the website will be searchable by a conscious syllabus and structure, sorted in the following groups:
Media watch – interesting topics mostly from the international media
Country reviews: political, economic, social and historical analyses about countries, regions and regional co-operations
The Third and Fourth World; the phenomena of globalisation; problems of Africa and Asia; Near East and Middle East; Latin America
Interesting political, historical and sociological analyses, studies
Politics of the European Union
Minority policy, minority protection and the questions of identity
The role of media in shaping politics – a fourth branch of power?
Political marketing and political communication
Book commendatory and reviews
Programme recommendations and news about topical events (conferences, meetings, discussions)
Reports, interviews, background analyses of current topics
In the past decade in the United States and in Western Europe the exclusively online scientific publications have been visited very frequently, and they are becoming popular in our country as well. Surveys reveal that about two thirds of internet users read news and studies on the net. This rate will most probably increase in the future, just like the need to find material from acknowledged sources with a reliable academic background. We aim at developing our portal according to these needs.
There are an increasing number of people also in Hungary who read in foreign languages therefore it is particularly important that from time to time we publish materials in English, German, French and other languages. For the sake of this we wish to strengthen the co-operation between young Central European social scientists and we plan to generate mutual researches and projects.
The technical and editorial background of Publikon
The portal was founded in 2005 by two organisations, which are active in two different fields:
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MarkCon marketing communication agency based in Pécs. It covers informatics and the technical background, as well as marketing and research development and the editing of the portal
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Europe Centre PBC. also based in Pécs is a non-profit organisation managing the Europe House/International House in the capital of Baranya County . It co-ordinates the definition of the professional frames and foundations of the portal. Furthermore it takes part in generating the networking of different social actors, and in effectuating various projects stemming from this co-operation. It efficiently integrates the institutional background of the DRC Summer School, run by the Europe Centre PBC and its Viennese partner (IDM), as a central-eastern European university base, into turning the portal to become international.
The co-operation of the civil and economic sectors is especially important for us, because according to our experiences the meeting of different views and arguments results in excellent projects.