Abstract
This is our third year as the Editors of Sociology and we are especially pleased to be the editors in this very significant year in the journal’s history. We celebrate the journal’s continued presence at the forefront of British sociology, publishing outstanding and original peer-reviewed articles to advance theoretical understanding and report empirical research on all sociological topics. The journal has continued to thrive during 2015 and we are pleased to see that our initiatives for the journal are now having a marked impact as we outline in our report below.
Following editorial practices of the last few years, we use this Editors’ Report to outline developments in the journal and to provide transparency in the peer-review process, including: submission numbers; acceptance rates; and article processing times.
The journal statistics for 2015 indicate that Sociology remains in a strong and healthy position in a number of respects. There were 349 original submissions to the journal in 2015. This differed slightly from the 382 submitted in 2014, which largely reflected the record number of submissions to the special issue on everyday life, published during 2015.
The thriving nature of Sociology presents a demanding workload for all involved in the journal. In order to manage this we have expanded the membership of both the Editorial and Associate Boards and we welcome the new members who have joined the journal. We would also like to thank all of the Editorial Board, Associate Board and other non-Board reviewers who are essential to the success of the journal.
Table 1 includes all original article submissions, by country. It is encouraging to see an increase in the number of articles submitted from outside of the UK, with Canada and Germany both significantly increasing. The submission figures from the USA have almost doubled this year, reflecting the international stature of the journal and perhaps our presence at the American Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association conferences. It is also notable that the total submissions for non-UK is higher than UK. However, one of our goals was to fully globalize the journal and especially to include sociological work from scholars in the global South and other areas that remain under-represented within international sociology. We are very pleased that the 2017 special issue, which is currently in progress, is entitled ‘Global Futures and Epistemologies of the South’, edited by Professors Gurminder K Bhambra and Boaventura de Sousa Santos.
Articles submitted by country in 2015.
Table 2 breaks down the decisions made in 2014 and 2015. We feel that this demonstrates a fair and robust peer-review process.
Article submission and actions.
Our reviewers consistently provide high quality and constructive reports on submissions, which we are confident impact on the quality of the articles we eventually publish. We are pleased to have maintained the journal’s impressive turnaround times for decisions. In 2014 our turnaround time was 68 days, but we are very pleased to report that this has been reduced further and in 2015 it was 58 days on average. We understand from author feedback (and know ourselves) that getting a quick response and editorial decision on manuscripts quickly is increasingly important as well as appreciated. Indeed, turning around manuscripts in times of growing pressure on academics is an excellent achievement the journal can be proud of and one we will seek to maintain.
Given the high volume of submissions, it is to be expected that only a small proportion of the articles submitted will be accepted for publication. In some cases we do make use of the immediate desk reject option, where a manuscript is not sent out for review. We do not take such action lightly. The reasons vary considerably, but the most common ones are that a manuscript has too little sociological content, or is too specialized for Sociology and should be considered by another journal. Increasingly as editors we want to ensure topic variation, so we may desk reject a manuscript if it covers a topic we have recently published without significantly extending existing debates. As editors, we aim to ensure the breadth, originality and innovation of what we publish.
Authors often ask how long it will take before an accepted article will be published. We are happy to report that the gap between acceptance and publication Online First is now approximately two months. Again, this reflects the quality, effectiveness and dedication of all involved in reviewing, editing and production. We acknowledge that these achievements also rely on the hard work of the BSA publications office and the staff at SAGE. Sociology also continues to occupy a healthy top quartile ranking in the field of sociology and we are delighted to report that this year the journal’s impact factor was 1.617, placing it 21 out of 142 journals in the discipline. This is a significant increase from the previous year and means we are a top-ranking sociology journal in the UK.
Developing Sociology
Over the past year we have worked to develop Sociology’s national and international profile through various activities. Reflecting our aim to ensure the journal has a closer relationship with the annual BSA conference, at the 2015 conference in Glasgow we organized: the SAGE Prize session; a workshop session on peer reviewing for early career researchers; a well-attended session devoted to the special issue on Everyday Life and another devoted to the 2014 special issue on the Global Economic Crisis. Further raising the journal’s international profile, we also had a presence at the American Sociological Association and European Sociological Association conferences.
In 2015 we supported Editorial Board members’ plans to develop four e-special issues which will be published throughout spring 2016. These form part of our plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the journal in 2016. The e-special issues are an innovative and valuable way of revisiting and reassessing past Sociology articles and bringing them together in thematic collections, and follow on from the success of this practice in recent years.
While it is important that Sociology is identifiable as the journal of the British Sociological Association we are pleased that the BSA and SAGE recognize the need to continue to promote Sociology at high-profile international conferences: this year the journal will be represented at, among others, the International Sociological Association conference in Vienna.
When we took over as Editors we promised to develop the journal in a number of ways and we are able to report some of those initiatives are coming to fruition. As we already noted, we have seen some results in our efforts to extend the international sensibility of Sociology and we return to this later in this report.
Other developments include continuing to build our social media presence and we are delighted that our Twitter account @sociologyjnl now has over 7500 followers, a very significant increase on the previous year. We are now seeing the value of our Twitter account. Using web-tracking, SAGE has informed us that this is leading to many more downloads of articles. This year we have made more articles free to access and have linked this with social media and key events, such as conference activities and the publication of the special issue.
We are also beginning to see our presence across a range of media platforms – with Sociology articles being featured in news stories, local media and radio and on the BBC’s ‘Thinking Allowed’ programme. We continue to expand our series of podcasts with contributing authors. In 2015 these were:
‘Interviewing Women Again: Power, Time and the Gift’: Sociology Podcast Number 10. Ann Oakley discusses her article ‘Interviewing Women Again: Power, Time and the Gift’, with Kath Woodward, Editor of Sociology. This article was published online in Sociology in May 2015.
‘A Day at the Beach: Rising Sea Levels, Horseshoe Crabs, and Traffic Jams’: Sociology Podcast Number 11. Lisa Jean Moore discusses her article ‘A Day at the Beach: Rising Sea Levels, Horseshoe Crabs, and Traffic Jams’, with Sarah Neal, Editor of Sociology. This article was published in Volume 49, Issue 5, the October 2015 special issue of Sociology.
We have also continued to explore the variety of ways that people engage with Sociology through linking the podcasts and social media – SAGE has reported extensive downloads of our podcasts and we will continue to monitor and develop these opportunities, as well as having a number of future podcast interviews planned.
As Editors we have enjoyed being able to ‘guest-edit’ our own special issue in 2015, about the sociologies of everyday life. We were especially pleased with the quality and diversity of the collection, which evidences and reflects the innovative sociological work in this field. In 2016, we look forward to the publication of the 50th anniversary special issue. This anniversary issue of Sociology reflects on the developing story of sociology as an intellectual and disciplinary pursuit. The special issue is guided by the theme of ‘Bringing Sociology Home’, while simultaneously recognizing the enormous strengths brought by the multidisciplinary developments of the last 50 years. The issue will include a mixture of short and substantive articles from a variety of contributors who have helped shape the discipline of sociology over the last 50 years.
In the next two years we plan to consolidate what the journal has achieved and develop its current strengths, while continuing to pursue our national and international status, appeal and relevance. We are presently renewing and capitalizing on our international advisory board membership as part of this strategy.
In the context of the success of Online First, which provides articles with a DOI and the increasing number of downloads, we now intend to pursue some more light-touch curating of the hard-copy published content. This means we are no longer so bound by chronology of acceptance date when deciding the content of each issue. This does not mean that each issue will be themed, but gives us the flexibility and opportunity to find connections between articles, where possible.
Over the course of this year, we will be working with the BSA and SAGE to enhance our social media initiatives. We are planning to extend the benefits of publishing in Sociology by offering authors altmetric facilities, which will make more immediately visible to authors who is reading and citing their articles in the journal. This sort of metric information may be of use in the context of forthcoming institutional audit exercises.
In summary, this has been another successful year for Sociology. We very much look forward to delivering new initiatives, supporting the work of everyone involved with the journal, as well as maintaining its presence at the very heart of the discipline, particularly in this landmark year of its publication.