About this Blog

The mission of this blog is to open the CQ Researcher up to be more participatory. What topics should we cover in the coming months? What’s your opinion on the latest pro/con question? What ideas do you have for making the Researcher better? We will share some of the behind-the-scenes, sausage-making that goes into the CQ Researcher. And we will blog about how a current news story or an issue in library land remind of a long lost Researcher report. But most importantly we will play and experiment.

About CQ Researcher
CQ Researcher is often the first source that librarians recommend when researchers are seeking original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues in the news. Founded in 1923 as Editorial Research Reports, CQ Researcher is noted for its in-depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy. Reports are published weekly in print and online 44 times a year by CQ Press, a division of SAGE Publications.

Each single-themed, 12,000-word report is researched and written by a seasoned journalist. The consistent, reader-friendly organization provides researchers with an introductory overview; background and chronology on the topic; an assessment of the current situation; tables and maps; pro/con statements from representatives of opposing positions; and bibliographies of key sources.

CQ Researcher received the American Bar Association's 2002 Silver Gavel Award for a nine-part series on liberty and justice issues, as well as the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Journalism Excellence in 1999 for a ten-part series on health care.

CQ Researcher Online offers access to CQ Researcher reports dating back to 1991. PDF files are available for reports from January 1996; color PDFs are available for reports published after January 2001.

About Editorial Research Reports
CQ Researcher's predecessor, Editorial Research Reports, was co-founded by Richard M. Boeckel and Bertram Benedict in 1923. As a young Capitol Hill correspondent for the New York Tribune covering the League of Nations debate after World War I, Boeckel realized how little he and his fellow reporters knew about the background of the issues they were following. Because of that "guilty conscience," as he called it, he enlisted two veteran Washington newsmen, Burt P. Garnett and Homer Dodge, to help him establish Editorial Research Reports. With the first weekly issue, dated September 1, 1923, ERR, as it was called, began providing in-depth reports on important issues of the day to subscribing newspapers, primarily for the benefit of editorial writers. In 1956, Congressional Quarterly purchased Editorial Research Reports and began publishing it under Boeckel's continued editorial direction and staff. Boeckel served as editor of Editorial Research Report for ten more years - 43 in all. In 1991, the publication's name was changed to CQ Researcher.


About CQ Researcher Plus Archive
In 2005, CQ Press began digitizing CQ Researcher's archive of Editorial Research Reports in order to offer the entire Researcher collection online. CQ Researcher Plus Archive adds more than 3,000 reports, published between 1923 and 1990 to CQ Researcher Online. Like CQ Researcher today, each report in the Archive addresses the significance and legacy of the events and issues of its day. And so, Archive content adds a new historical dimension to the CQ Researcher site, extending its coverage beyond politics and current events to the fields of history, sociology, cultural studies, and other social sciences.

To ensure that users get the full benefit of the rich content contained in the Archive, the CQ Researcher site created Issue Tracker, a new browsing tool that lets users trace topics through years and across decades. Issue Tracker allows researchers to quickly gather their research on the historical development of hot topics and events that have shaped the world and explore how issues and institutions have evolved over time.

Since the Archive draws on content that taps far back into other time periods, many older reports reflect the language of the day in which they were written. In some cases, reports use nomenclature or terminology that is no longer used and in some cases could be considered offensive by today's standards. In order to preserve the primary-source nature of these reports and truly reflect the historical times in which they were written, CQ Researcher decided to leave the original language of these older reports unchanged.


About CQ Global Researcher
Modeled after the award-winning CQ Researcher, CQ Global Researcher provides students with definitive, in-depth coverage of global affairs from a number of international viewpoints. Available exclusively online, CQ Global Researcher offers focused, readable, single-topic reports on vital world issues. Written by seasoned journalists with years of international experience, these reports make use of such popular sections as "current situation," "pro-con," and a new feature called "voices from abroad." By exposing students to a wide range of viewpoints CQ Global Researcher provides a comprehensive snapshot of today's most pressing issues.

For information on subscribing to CQ Researcher, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, or CQ Global Researcher please email librarysales@cqpress.com or call 1-866-4CQPRESS (866-427-7737).