1 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY 1 (2011): 1-5. DEFINING INFORMATION POLICY BY SANDRA BRAMAN ∗ Professor Braman introduces the first issue of the journal with an exploration of the definition, scope, and relevance of the concept of “information policy.” She sets forth the five criteria which define it as a coherent field of study, and notes the timeliness of its having a journal, as information policy increasingly shapes the world in which we live. Historically, new scholarly journals appeared when new subjects of study achieved disciplinary or subdisciplinary status. Today, they are also created when new audiences and communities of scholarly practice appear. In the area of information policy, we see all three types of developments. As a subject of study, information policy emerged as a distinct field during the last decades of the 20th century as one manifestation of the shift from an industrial to an information society, in a manner parallel to the appearance of the micro- and macro-economics of information. In both law and economics, the new fields offer a coherent lens into ideas and realities that have long histories but that were not previously understood to be related to each other. An audience for information policy analysis has appeared among those undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, policymakers, policy analysts, and members of the public who find it necessary to understand the combined effects of the laws and regulations involving information from across legal silos historically treated as unrelated to each other. The interdisciplinarity of the community of scholarly practice engaged in information policy analysis is exemplified in the fact that the editors of this new journal sit in a college of communications rather than in either an information science unit or a law school. This is neither the time nor the place – nor is there the space – to engage in a comprehensive review of the literature on information policy. This type of analysis can be found elsewhere in my own work, and in that of a number of other scholars. Reviews of this literature fall into two types. Those that focus on the phrase “information policy” itself are more narrow in focus, tend to report on a much shorter history, and draw almost exclusively from information science. Those that orient instead around the subject matter tend to be much more broad in their scope, place contemporary information policy within a long historical context (even the Romans kept detailed records on their ∗ Professor, Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Defining information policy. Journal of Information Policy 1(1), 1-5, 2011.