Definition of specific quality factors for variable-configurative research strategies, i.e., participatory and future-oriented research strategies in this case.
As of today, a greater part of future-oriented research takes place in the context of scientific disciplines that give a lot of importance to the analysis of medium-term and long-term future developments, e.g. demography, economic prognostics, climate research, risk research, technology assessment and (economic or technological) innovation research.
In the initial years, the results of these future-oriented research processes (forecasting, foresight, etc). of the think tanks were mostly considered as military or trade secrets and therefore published very rarely.
IF promotes a future-oriented research perspective, and develops appropriate theories and methods.
Good futures research is thus future-oriented research based on the present [32].
This paper shows the results of future-oriented research based on the qualitative analysis of megatrends, which were used to describe the main trends setting the direction for future development in transportation and their likely effects.
Thus, the situation today is paradoxical: most of the scientifically substantiated future-oriented research done today is not carried out under the label of "futures research".
The European Journal of Futures Research intends to contribute to the promotion of a scientific basis for future-oriented research.
Future-oriented research projects must, by definition, exclude the execution of planned intervention(s), i.e., in a stricter sense, exclude implementation (with the exception of the occasional, initial implementation steps).
The general objective of our future-oriented research position is to offer a new conceptual and interdisciplinary basis for constructing and assessing future welfare models.
