I’m very pleased to see that Sociological Science is open for article submissions, and expects to start publishing articles early next year. The journal is designed to ameliorate several problems that beset academic publishing. It’s an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that promises a fast turnaround time in review. It’s common enough in some fields for authors to get stuck, literally for years, in Reviewer Hell. There, papers are subject to repeated rounds of review, new reviewers are added at each round, new demands are placed on authors, and later reviewers routinely object to content in the paper—e.g., further supposed theoretical development or methodological bells and whistles—that was added at the behest of earlier reviewers. Reviewer Hell is only one of the pathological forms peer review can take. but recently it’s become a real problem for some of the leading journals in the field. Sociological Science promises a 30 day up-or-down review process, with no “development” effort and no R&R process. They hope to accomplish this with a relatively large pool of Deputy Editors with authority to accept or reject articles.
As a properly open-access journal, they’ve chosen to fund themselves through submission and publication fees instead of signing up with a major journal publisher or soliciting institutional support from a university or a foundation. The fee schedule is graded by rank, so students pay least and full professors pay most. The incentive is that authors retain copyright on their work and everything published is available ungated and immediately.
All in all, I think Sociological Science is a really worthwhile effort to provide an alternative model for publishing serious peer-reviewed work in a timely and accessible way. I hope it succeeds.
{ 5 comments }
Manta 09.17.13 at 9:22 pm
“papers are subject to repeated rounds of review, new reviewers are added at each round,”
“Repeated rounds of review”: good, the author can improve the paper by listening to the suggestions of the reviewer
“New reviewers added”: what kind of idiot does that?
Eszter Hargittai 09.17.13 at 9:45 pm
I am very excited and hopeful about this endeavor. I’m just not sure how they’ll pull it off in terms of work load. It seems like a lot of work for the editorial team. I also very much hope that they succeed!
adam.smith 09.17.13 at 9:46 pm
that depends. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not. That depends not just on the reviews/reviewers, but also on what you want to get out of the paper – if it’s something you’d like to get out quickly for one reason or the other, turn-around times of multiple years total can be more than just a little frustrating.
Jennifer Lena 09.18.13 at 2:40 pm
I have no idea if this is true, but the twitter feed reported that they expect >1,600 manuscripts in the first year. That compares to 764 submitted to the American Sociological Review last year. I have no doubt the really excellent people on the editorial team can handle this, but sheesh…
kim weeden (one of the deputy editors) 09.18.13 at 11:39 pm
@4: I didn’t write the tweet, but I suspect the >1600 estimate assumes the same daily rate of submissions in days 3-365 as in days 1-2. So, it’s just a touch noisy…
Still, the journal’s off to a great start, and we’re pleased with (and grateful for) the positive response it’s received in the blogosphere.
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